The Restock guide

🚀Getting started

What Restock does, and the 5 minutes that make its suggestions sharp.

Restock tells you what to reorder, how much, and when, so you stop running out of your best sellers and stop tying cash up in stock that doesn't sell. It reads your products, stock, costs and orders from Shopify, and it never changes your stock unless you confirm a delivery.

Your first 5 minutes

1. 1Open Suppliers and set each supplier's usual delivery time and country. Until you do, Restock assumes 14 days, and holidays like Chinese New Year can't be added.
2. 2Open Settings and choose your stock goal: from Lean (least cash in stock) to Safe (almost never sold out). Balanced suits most stores.
3. 3Go back to Today. Products that need you are at the top, with how many to order and why.
4. 4Optional: add the "Notify me" button to your product page, so sold-out pages collect customers instead of losing them.

📋The Today page

Your daily restock brief: what needs you, what it costs, and what to do.

Today is where you start each day. The banner at the top sums up how many products need you and how many sales are at risk if you wait. The ring on the right is your stock health: the share of your selling products that are on track.

The four cards

• Sales at risk if you wait: sales you would lose on products that run out before a delivery can arrive.
• Orders to place now: what the suggested orders cost, at your cost prices.
• Cash stuck in slow stock: money sitting in products that haven't sold in 90 days.
• Your stock goal: the goal used for every suggestion, with a link to change it.

What each status means

Ordering in one click

The button in the banner ("Create purchase orders") drafts one purchase order per supplier for everything that must be ordered now. Nothing is sent to anyone: you review the drafts first on the Purchase orders page.

🚚Reading the stock runway

One bar per product that shows, at a glance, whether you'll run out first.

Each product in the list has a runway: the colored bar is how many days your current stock lasts at its sales speed. The small truck line marks how long a delivery from its supplier takes.

• Bar ends after the truck: a new order would arrive before you run out. You're fine.
• Bar ends before the truck: you will run out before a delivery can arrive. Order now; the gap is shown as expected lost sales.
• All bars use the same 60-day scale, so you can compare products at a glance.

Next to the runway, the small chart shows units sold per week over the last 8 weeks, so you can see at a glance whether a product is growing, steady or slowing down.

🔍"Why?": how each number is calculated

Every suggestion explains itself, step by step, with your own numbers.

Press "Why?" on any product to see the full reasoning. There are no hidden rules: the same steps apply to every product.

1. 1Sales speed: the average of the last 8 weeks, counting only days the product was in stock. One unusual day (like a single bulk order) is ignored. If sales are clearly rising, Restock uses today's speed instead of the average, which would lag behind.
2. 2Stock left: how many days your current stock lasts at that speed.
3. 3Delivery time: from your supplier settings, plus extra days when a holiday in the supplier's country falls inside the delivery window.
4. 4Safety buffer: extra stock for the days that sell more than usual. It's sized from how far off past forecasts were for this product over a full delivery period, so products with bumpy sales get a bigger buffer. Your stock goal decides how much.
5. 5Reorder point: sales during the delivery time plus the safety buffer. Below this, it's time to order.
6. 6Order quantity: enough to get back above the reorder point and cover the number of days your stock goal sets, minus what you have and what's already on the way, rounded up to whole units, the supplier's pack size and minimum order.

🌍Suppliers, delivery times and holidays

The settings that matter most for good suggestions.

Restock creates a supplier for each product "Vendor" in Shopify. For each supplier you can set:

• Usual delivery (days): from the day you order to the day stock arrives. This is the most important number in the app.
• Worst case (days): optional; how late deliveries can be on a bad day.
• Country: Restock adds that country's holidays automatically, for example Chinese New Year and Golden Week for China, or Diwali for India. The card shows the next closure and how many extra days it adds if you order today.
• Minimum order and Packs of: orders are raised to the minimum and rounded up to whole packs.

Hiding vendors that aren't suppliers

If a "vendor" isn't a real supplier (for example sample products), use "Not a real supplier? Hide from Restock". Its products are left out of suggestions and reports. You can show it again at any time.

Restock learns real delivery times

When you receive deliveries in Restock, it records how long each order really took. After 3 orders from a supplier, its card shows the real track record, for example "Usually 3 days late; suggest planning with 33 days".

🎯Choosing your stock goal

The trade-off between sold-out days and cash on your shelves, made visible.

More stock means fewer sold-out days, but more cash tied up. In Settings, drag the slider and four numbers update instantly with your own products:

• Deliveries covered: how often stock would have lasted until the next delivery, measured by replaying your own past sales.
• Each order covers: how many days of sales one order should last after it arrives.
• To order today: the cost of today's suggested orders at that goal.
• Average cash in stock: the safety buffer plus half an order, on average.

🧾Purchase orders

From suggestion to supplier order in a few clicks.

1. 1On Today, press "Create purchase orders". Restock drafts one order per supplier with the suggested quantities, costs and margins.
2. 2On Purchase orders, open "Email text for your supplier" and copy the ready-made message into your email, or send the order your usual way.
3. 3Press "Mark as sent". From now on, the quantities count as stock on the way, so Restock never suggests ordering them twice, and the expected arrival date is shown.
4. 4If you change your mind, "Cancel order" removes it from the plan.

📦Receiving deliveries

Count what arrived and update Shopify stock in one confirmation.

1. 1On Purchase orders, press "Receive delivery" on the order that arrived.
2. 2Scan each item with a barcode scanner, or type its SKU and press Enter: every scan adds one to the right product. You can also use the − / + buttons, or "Everything arrived".
3. 3If the supplier charged a different price, change "Cost each": the margin updates as you type, and the new cost is saved on the product.
4. 4Choose the location where the delivery arrived, then press "Add … units to Shopify stock". Nothing changes in Shopify before this button.

• Partial deliveries: receive what came; the rest stays "on the way". If the rest will never come, choose "Close: the rest won't come".
• More than ordered: Restock warns you, then adds what really arrived.
• Safe by design: a double click or a retry can never add the same delivery twice.

🔔"Notify me" and waiting customers

Turn sold-out pages into a list of customers ready to buy.

Adding the button to your store

1. 1In Restock, open Waiting customers and press "Add the button to your product page".
2. 2Your theme editor opens with the "Notify me when back" block ready. Press Save.

The box only appears when the size or color a shopper picked is sold out. It takes the look of your theme's own "Add to cart" button automatically, and you can change every text in the theme editor.

How it helps your orders

Each person waiting counts as a sale waiting to happen: Restock adds them to the next order's quantity and explains it under "Why?".

Telling customers it's back

When a product with waiting customers is back in stock, Waiting customers shows "Back: notify now". Copy the emails (or download them as a CSV file) into the email tool you use, send your message, then press "Mark as notified".

📈The Report card

Proof that the suggestions work, measured on your own sales.

Your grade

Restock goes back in time week by week, plans with only the sales it would have known then, and checks whether its reorder point would have lasted until the delivery. The grade is the share of delivery periods it covered.

What each stock goal would have done

The same test, run for every goal from Lean to Safe, so you can see what a safer goal would have changed before you choose it.

Last 30 days: what really happened

Restock records your stock every day. Each time a product really sold out, the report shows whether Restock warned you early enough to reorder in time, how many days before, and the sales it cost. Avoidable sales are the ones you'd have kept by ordering when Restock said.

🔒Your data and privacy

What Restock reads, what it stores, and what it never does.

• Reads: products, variants, stock levels, unit costs, locations and orders (quantities and dates), to forecast demand.
• Stores: your supplier settings, stock goal, purchase orders, daily stock levels, and the emails of customers who used "Notify me".
• Changes in Shopify only when you confirm: received stock and the new unit costs you typed.
• Never: sells or shares your data, or contacts your customers or suppliers on its own.
• Uninstalling: everything Restock stored for your store is deleted automatically.

💬Questions and troubleshooting

Quick answers to the most common questions.