Purchasing for online-only stores
Selling online only does not make purchasing simpler. Nobody walks past an empty shelf, so you find out about a stockout from the numbers. Stockroom watches those numbers and turns them into purchase orders.
- Reorder points from real sales
- Alerts before you sell out
- No POS required
Replenishment from your own sales
Every signal here comes from your own Shopify data: your orders, your stock and your suppliers' delivery record.
- Reorder points from your sales. Up to two years of your own sales history and each supplier's lead time become a reorder point and an order-by date, per location where that matters.
- What is about to go short. A projected shortfall report shows what crosses its reorder point inside 7, 14, 30 or 60 days at your current rate of sale, and whether incoming stock covers it by its expected date.
- Out-of-stock alerts in near-realtime. Sent to Slack and email as soon as an item goes out of stock, and grouped so a flash sale is one message instead of two hundred.
- Rules scoped the way you buy. As many named alert rules as you need, each scoped by vendor, product tag and location, with daily, weekly or monthly digests at an hour you pick and its own recipients.
- Home ranks what needs you. The worst problems come first: items out of stock with an estimated amount per day at risk, items running short with nothing incoming, POs past their expected date and drafts left idle for a week. Rows clear when the situation resolves, so there is nothing to dismiss.
- Overstock counts too. Dead stock, days of supply and stock sitting above the maximum level you set.
From a number to an order
Once you know what to buy, the review turns it into draft purchase orders.
- Drafts out of the review. Work through what needs ordering, then generate the drafts: one PO per supplier, or per location, with per-line destinations when a supplier feeds more than one.
- Suppliers assign themselves. Vendor and product-tag rules per supplier apply everywhere a PO is created, so a new product already has a supplier.
- Add a line by name. The items field searches your product names as well as codes, and shows a thumbnail, the SKU and what is available at that destination. Type two characters and use the arrow keys instead of opening a picker for every line.
- Costs already filled in. Unit costs fill in from your own catalog data as soon as you add a line, with no API round trip and nothing to look up.
- Send it and move on. Email the PO as a PDF with your own numbering, taxes, per-line discounts and freight charges on it. Add items after ordering and Stockroom nudges you to resend.
- Incoming shows up in Shopify. Mark a PO ordered and the incoming quantity appears on your Shopify product pages, attributed to Stockroom in the inventory history. Your team sees it without opening another app.
Stock held somewhere else
If your stock is in a warehouse or a 3PL, receiving and counting have to work for the people there.
- Every location is just a location. Receive a delivery against the location it arrived at, with its own invoice reference and its own costs. Incoming for your other destinations is left alone.
- Receive a whole PO in one click. When there is no counting to do, Receive all builds the receipt from every outstanding line. One confirmation shows the units, the location and whether product costs will be updated.
- A counting link for people without logins. A counting session can be handed out as a named link that needs no Shopify or Stockroom account, so a warehouse team or a temp counts on their own phone and the numbers land in your session.
- Transfers on Shopify's own documents. Moving stock between your locations creates Shopify's native transfers, so the document lives in your store. In transit is a status, and stock scans in at the destination.
- Stock on hand as of a past date. Units and value at cost as of any date you name, on FIFO or weighted average, which is the figure your bookkeeper asks for at year end.
- Pick and pack in the same app. The orders waiting in Shopify become a pick list in bin-walk order, picked on a phone by anyone with a link, packed at a bench that verifies each item by scan, with packing slips and Shopify Shipping labels from the same screen.
Common questions
Do I need Shopify POS?
No. Nothing in Stockroom requires Shopify POS, and nothing requires POS Pro. The POS tiles only appear on stores that use POS, so an online-only store never sees them.
We use a 3PL. Does this work?
If the 3PL is set up as a Shopify location, yes: purchase orders receive into it, transfers move stock between it and anywhere else, and reorder points can be set per location. Stockroom does not integrate with 3PL software directly. It works through the Shopify location and the stock levels your 3PL already maintains there.
How much sales history does the forecasting use?
Up to two years of your own Shopify orders, combined with the lead time each supplier has delivered in, worked out from your own receipts. Products added to Shopify recently are excluded from dead stock.
Does any of this reach our accountant?
A COGS report on FIFO or weighted average, stock valuation as of a date, and twenty-three reports that all export to CSV or arrive by email or Slack on a schedule. If you want it inside QuickBooks, MyWorks Sync is the paid product from the same team, and it carries orders, inventory and more.
We sell on more than one channel.
Stockroom reads the stock and sales of the Shopify store it is installed in, whichever channel the order came through. It does not reach into marketplaces that live outside Shopify.
Does picking change our stock levels?
No. Shopify committed the units when the order was placed, and fulfilling it is what deducts them. A pick list organises the work between those two points and does not touch stock levels. The one exception is when a picker reports a short and chooses to count the bin, which applies an adjustment you can see.
Try it on your own catalog
Install Stockroom free from the Shopify App Store. No trials, no credit card.