Shopify: "Inventory policy is not included in the list"
The field accepts exactly two values, and blank is not one of them — which is why this message usually means a missing cell rather than a wrong one.
What you are seeing
The import is refused at the validation step and the message reads as though you typed something invalid, even though the cell looks empty.
Inventory policy is not included in the list
Fulfillment service can't be blank
Why it happens
Variant Inventory Policy accepts `deny` or `continue`. Anything else is refused, and because a blank is also "anything else", an empty cell produces a message that sounds like a typo. Nine times out of ten there is nothing in the cell at all.
The rows that are empty are usually the continuation rows — the second and later variants of a product — because most exporters treat those columns the way they treat Title.
How to fix it
- Check the continuation rows first, not the product rows. The product row is nearly always filled in correctly and it is not the one being complained about.
- Set every variant row to `deny` unless you deliberately sell past zero stock.
- Watch the casing and the whitespace: a trailing space after `deny` is not `deny`.
Where this came from
We broke a real Shopify store on purpose to answer these questions, and kept what it said. Nothing on this page is quoted from documentation.
What we did not measure. We observed this alongside the fulfillment-service message on the same import, so the ordering claim above is inference from one file rather than a separate measurement.
Observed 2026-09-04. The store this was measured on has since been deleted, so these answers are an archive rather than something we re-run — we would rather tell you the date than imply it is checked continuously.
Check your file before you upload it
The Pre-Flight Report reads your supplier file and names every blocker, with the row it is on, before you go near an importer. It is free, it needs no account, and it does not send your file to a model.