About Retrace

What Retrace is

Retrace is a Shopify inventory tracking app that helps merchants understand how stock levels change over time.

It records inventory-related activity such as orders, refunds, transfers, manual edits, and app-driven stock changes, then gives each SKU a timeline. When Shopify’s current count no longer matches the record of tracked changes, Retrace flags the mismatch so merchants can investigate what happened before the next order turns it into a customer problem.

Retrace is not meant to replace Shopify, your warehouse process, or your inventory planning tools. It sits beside them as a visibility layer: a clearer way to see what changed, where the count split, and what evidence is available.

Why Retrace exists

Between 2015 and 2019, I worked as a product manager at TradeGecko, an inventory management startup that grew from a few hundred merchants to several thousand. Many of those customers ran Shopify stores. They were smart operators with real processes, but they kept running into the same problem:

A stock level changed and they just couldn’t figure out why.

A count would be wrong. An order would need to be cancelled. A transfer, refund, fulfillment app, manual correction, or third-party integration might be involved. But the audit trail was usually scattered across orders, exports, app dashboards, adjustment screens, and someone’s memory.

At the time, I thought the problem belonged to the awkward early days of ecommerce systems. Shopify was still a relatively new platform. Inventory workflows were moving from spreadsheets into connected software, and some degree of mess felt natural.

I left TradeGecko and mostly stopped thinking about the problem. I assumed it would be solved soon enough.

Years later, it still shows up. Stores now have more apps, more fulfillment paths, more locations, and more ways for stock to be held, moved, overwritten, or corrected. Often, without the store owner noticing until the number looks wrong. The software stack is better and more reliable, but the story behind the inventory number is still too easy to lose.

Retrace is my attempt to build the thing I wished more merchants had back then: a calm, reliable way to retrace the event chain.

Retrace isn’t a heavier inventory system or a forecasting suite. Nor is it a tool that pretends to magically know everything that happens to stock in Shopify. Instead, Retrace records what it can see or fetch from Shopify, uses that data to show how inventory changed over time, and makes discrepancies easier to investigate.

The goal is simple: when Shopify says there’s stock available and yet the shelf says zero, you shouldn’t have to become a detective after the customer has already ordered and is waiting for the “Order has shipped” email.

— Evgeny Lazarenko, Founder, Retrace

Built by an independent product studio

Retrace is built by Odd Tempo, an independent product studio based in Toronto.

Odd Tempo builds B2B software products for specific operational problems that are often ignored or underserved by larger companies and startups. For Retrace, that means staying focused on one job: helping Shopify merchants understand inventory changes clearly enough to act with confidence.

We are intentionally not trying to turn Retrace into a full inventory management system, ERP, forecasting tool, or multi-channel operations suite. There are already good tools for those jobs.

How Retrace handles trust

Inventory data is operationally sensitive. We treat it that way.

Data access

Retrace asks for the Shopify permissions needed to follow inventory changes across products, variants, inventory levels, locations, orders, fulfillments, transfers, returns, and related operational records.

For reconciliation features, Retrace may also request permission to write inventory updates back to Shopify. Retrace does not change inventory on its own. Any correction must be authorized by a merchant user.

Privacy

Retrace is not shopper-facing. It does not place storefront tracking pixels, track shoppers across stores, sell personal information, or use merchant-customer information for marketing.

Some Shopify records used to explain inventory changes may contain customer or order-related information. When that happens, Retrace processes that data only to provide inventory tracking, drift detection, timeline review, support, compliance, and merchant-authorized reconciliation.

Security

Retrace uses technical and organizational safeguards such as access controls, credential protection, encryption in transit and at rest, row-level security at the database level, logging, environment separation, backups, monitoring, and security reviews.

No system is perfectly secure, and we do not pretend otherwise. If we find an issue that affects merchants, we will handle it directly, communicate clearly, and fix it.

Retrace is not currently SOC 2 compliant. Merchants who require a formal security or compliance review should contact us before installing.

Product limits

Retrace shows that Shopify stock changed, how it changed over time, and whether the count stayed aligned with the tracked inventory record.

When Shopify provides reliable attribution, or when Retrace captures it at the time of a write, we show who or what caused the change. When exact attribution is not available, we still surface the change instead of hiding it or guessing too confidently.

Retrace does not claim to reconstruct every past Shopify adjustment or identify the exact app or staff user behind every historical change. The goal is clarity from the available event trail, not omniscience.

Support expectations

Retrace is currently in private beta. Merchants participating in the Early Access Program get personalized support, assistance, and a direct line to the founder.

We prioritize issues involving app access, data accuracy, inventory corrections, user experience, and anything that could affect store operations. For store-specific issues, it helps to include your Shopify domain, the affected SKU, the location, the approximate time of the change, and a short description of what looked wrong.

See the Retrace FAQ for additional and related questions.

Contact

For product support: support@useretrace.com

For private beta access: use the Join Beta form on the Retrace website, or email support@useretrace.com with a short note about your store and the inventory problem you are trying to investigate.

For privacy requests: privacy@useretrace.com

Retrace is operated by Odd Tempo Inc., an Ontario corporation.

Legal: see the Retrace Privacy Policy for details on data processing, retention, and merchant privacy rights.