Shopify inventory update went to the wrong warehouse / wrong location
The numbers uploaded fine, but they show up against the wrong location — or a brand-new location you never created. This comes down to how Shopify's multi-location inventory CSV matches location columns by exact name. Here's what to check.
What you'll see
Stock counts update without any error, but when you check Settings → Locations, the quantities are sitting against a warehouse that isn't the one you meant — or there's a new location in the list you didn't create, holding the numbers that should have gone to an existing one.
Locations are matched by exact name, not position
In a multi-location store, Shopify's inventory CSV has a separate quantity column for every location, and each column's header is the location's name exactly as it appears in Settings → Locations. On import, Shopify matches columns to locations by that text string. It does not go by column order, and it does not fuzzy-match.
Two common ways this breaks: a location gets renamed in Shopify (say, "Warehouse" becomes "Main Warehouse") after you already had a template downloaded with the old header — re-uploading that old template creates a fresh location called "Warehouse" and puts stock there, next to the renamed one. Or someone builds the file by hand and types a location name that's close but not identical — extra whitespace, a different abbreviation, wrong case — with the same result.
How to check and fix it
Compare your file's location column headers against Settings → Locations character for character. If you find a mismatch, the safest fix is to re-download a fresh inventory export from Shopify right before you edit it, rather than reusing an older saved template — that guarantees the headers match your store's current location names.