Reorder points on Shopify: the complete guide
A reorder point is the stock level at which you place the next order — early enough that new stock arrives before you sell out, late enough that you are not sitting on cash. This guide covers the formula, the safety-stock part everyone skips, and the choices around Stocky’s August 31, 2026 end-of-life date.
The reorder point formula
The classic formula is short:
Reorder point = average daily sales × supplier lead time + safety stock
Example: a product sells 3 units a day on average and your supplier takes 10 days to deliver. You will sell roughly 30 units while waiting, so without safety stock the reorder point is 30 — order when the 31st-to-last unit sells. Every term matters: get lead time wrong by three days and the reorder point is off by nine units.
Safety stock and service levels
The naked formula assumes demand and lead time never vary. They always do — a product that averages 3 a day sometimes sells 8, and a 10-day supplier sometimes takes 15. Safety stock is the buffer that absorbs both kinds of variation, and the honest way to size it is statistical: measure how much your daily demand and lead times actually swing, then pick a service level — the percentage of demand you want to cover. Covering 95% of outcomes needs a bigger buffer than 90%; covering 100% is impossible without infinite stock, which is why it is a dial, not a switch.
A useful property of the statistical approach: products with no variance data yet — new products, freshly migrated catalogs — get a safety stock of zero rather than an invented number, and the buffer grows as real data accumulates.
Reorder point vs. order quantity
The reorder point answers when; it does not answer how much. Ordering just enough to climb back to the reorder point puts you right back at the trigger the moment stock arrives. A better pattern is ordering up to a target above the reorder point, and subtracting everything already on the way:
Order quantity = restock target − stock on hand − inbound − already ordered
The last two terms are where manual spreadsheets quietly fail: forgetting an inbound transfer or an order you placed last week means ordering the same stock twice.
Where simple averages break: slow sellers
A 30-day average works for products that sell every day. For a product that sells once or twice a month, the average whipsaws: one sale entering or leaving the window can swing the estimate by double digits, and the reorder point jumps around with it. Estimating slow movers from how often demand occurs and how much per occurrence is far more stable than averaging a mostly-zero series — worth checking for in any app you evaluate if long-tail SKUs are a big share of your catalog.
Choosing a Shopify reorder point app after Stocky
Until 2026 the default answer was Stocky, free with POS Pro. Its end-of-life date is August 31, 2026. Shopify now offers native supplier management and purchase orders, Sidekick recommendations from sales that can create a draft PO, and low-stock notifications through Flow. That still differs from a stored replenishment policy with per-product reorder points, supplier lead times and minimum order quantities (full comparison here). When evaluating a replacement, the questions that separate the field:
- Does it compute safety stock from your data, or ask you to guess a number?
- Does the suggested quantity subtract inbound stock and orders already placed?
- Can it store per-supplier lead times and minimum order quantities?
- Does the alert reach you where you work — email or chat — rather than only in-app?
- If you are coming from Stocky: can it import your existing reorder points and lead times?
UreyukiBox answers yes to all five — that is the niche it is built for — and we keep an honest list of what Stocky still did better in Stocky vs UreyukiBox.
Common questions
Q.Does Shopify have built-in reorder points?
Not as a persistent Stocky-style replenishment policy. Shopify tracks inventory, Shopify Flow can send low-stock notifications, and Sidekick can use sales data to recommend products and draft a purchase order. Shopify’s transition tools do not store the same per-product and per-location policy with supplier lead times and minimum order quantities.
Q.How do I replace Stocky’s reorder points on Shopify?
Start by deciding whether Shopify’s native combination is enough: suppliers and purchase orders in admin, Sidekick recommendations from sales, and Flow notifications. If you need a durable reorder point computed per product from sales pace and supplier lead time, watched automatically and carried into a supplier-ready purchase order, use a dedicated inventory app. In UreyukiBox that combination starts on the $19/month Starter plan; the free plan covers up to 100 products and the Stocky migration, but not reorder point automation.
Q.What should a Shopify reorder point app actually do?
Four things, and most apps stop before the fourth: store a lead time per supplier, compute a reorder point per product rather than one global threshold, alert you when stock crosses it, and carry that straight into a purchase order you can send and receive. An app that only alerts leaves you doing the arithmetic; an app that only writes purchase orders leaves you deciding the quantity in a spreadsheet.
Q.What is a good service level to start with?
Most stores start at 90–95%. A higher service level means more safety stock and less risk of selling out; 99% is worth it for products where a stockout is expensive, while 90% frees up cash on products where a short gap is tolerable.
Q.How do reorder points work with multiple locations?
Each location has its own stock level, so a single global reorder point can mislead — the total may look healthy while one warehouse is empty. UreyukiBox’s current location limits are one on Free, two on Starter, five on Pro and unlimited on Business.
Reorder points, without the spreadsheet
UreyukiBox computes reorder points with service levels and statistical safety stock, alerts you by email, Slack or LINE, and drafts the purchase order with inbound and already-ordered stock subtracted. Available now on the Shopify App Store.
The interface, the App Store listing and support are available in English. Alerts and supplier emails use English for stores outside Japan and Japanese for stores in Japan. The migration tools and the CSV import work on any Shopify store. Purchase orders follow your store too: totals are in your store’s currency, with editable purchase-tax presets for 53 countries. The US, Canada, Brazil, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Malaysia start with no tax line because one national rate would be misleading.
Related guides
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Stocky alternatives: 14 apps compared
Price at feature parity, reviews, cold-start evidence, POS and migration path — including where ours loses.
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Stocky shutdown checklist
What needs the August 31 API deadline, what remains read-only afterwards, and what to preserve first.
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How to export your Stocky data
The exact screens — including the Low Stock report, where your reorder points and lead times actually are.
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What happens to your data on August 31
Data by data: what stays in Shopify, what is not moved automatically, and how the read-only window works.
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Stocky vs Shopify’s native purchase orders
What the free built-in feature covers, and the gap it leaves.
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Stocky vs UreyukiBox
An honest feature-by-feature comparison, including where Stocky is still ahead.
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How to migrate from Stocky
Six steps in the order that protects your data, even before you pick an app.
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Move from Stocky to UreyukiBox
One Stocky migration entry for API copy through August 31 and standalone Stocky CSV import from September 1, without requiring API copy; Order limits/Statistics table import, review and export are also supported.
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Planning inventory with no sales history
Calendar timing needs no product history; the current app waits for variant sales before forecasting quantity.
All guides in one place: the UreyukiBox blog