My wholesale customer orders in cases, but Shopify sells single units — how do I convert?
Keep selling the single unit in Shopify and convert at order entry: 2 cases × 12 bottles per case = 24 bottles on the draft order. The risk is doing that multiplication in your head forty times a day. NeatPO only converts when you have saved a packaging rule for that product; until then, a quantity in cases is an issue to resolve, never a silent 2.
No install needed for the sample. Plans start at $149/month, billed by Shopify, with a 7-day trial.
Do it now
- In NeatPO → Rules → Packaging units, add a rule: from “case” to “bottle”, factor 12, for that product.
- Upload the order. Lines in cases now show the converted quantity in units you sell, with the rule that was applied.
- Check the price: a case price on the PO is divided by the same factor before it is compared with your catalog unit price.
Why not create a “case” variant in Shopify?
You can, and many stores do, but a case variant has its own inventory count. Sell a case and Shopify does not know twelve singles left the shelf, so you oversell the singles. Converting at order entry keeps one inventory number per physical item.
Different packaging words for the same product
One salon orders “boxes” of 6, a distributor orders “cartons” of 24 of the same shampoo. Each packaging word is its own rule on that product, so “2 boxes” becomes 12 bottles and “2 cartons” becomes 48 without either rule getting in the way of the other.
What happens with a unit it does not know
If a line says “3 boxes” and there is no rule for boxes on that product, the line stops with an issue that names the unit. You can add the rule (it applies to future documents), type the quantity in units yourself, or mark the line as unprocessable with a reason so it is left out of the draft. A result that is not a whole number of units — half a case of 7 is 3.5 bottles — is also raised rather than rounded.
A worked example, price included
The PO line reads “Repair Shampoo 1L — 2 cs — 96.00 per case”. Your Shopify variant is one bottle at $8.50, and you have a rule: 1 case = 12 bottles. NeatPO puts 24 bottles on the line, restates the quoted price as $8.00 per bottle, and shows it beside the $8.50 catalog price with a price-difference warning.
You then decide which price the draft carries: the Shopify catalog price, the price quoted on the PO, an agreed price you saved, or one you type with a note. Whatever you choose is recorded on the line, so later nobody has to wonder why that customer paid $8.00.
The honest limits
- Rules apply to your whole store. A rule meant for one buyer only is not applied to documents yet, so keep buyer-specific wording store-wide for now.
- Rules are created by you; NeatPO does not infer case sizes from product titles or previous orders.
- A rule converts a packaging word to units of one Shopify variant. Mixed cases (“assorted case of 12”) still need manual lines.
Checked against the product on October 7, 2026.