From forecast to supplier order

Creating a purchase order is easy. Knowing what belongs on it is the actual work.

Shopify's admin can create, track, and receive a purchase order natively now. What it doesn't do is tell you which SKUs need reordering, how much to order, or whether ordering right now is even a good idea. That decision layer is what purchase order planning really means.

What Shopify now covers natively

As of June 2026, Shopify's admin includes native purchase order creation, supplier transfers, partial delivery tracking, multi-location routing, and POS receiving. This is a genuine platform capability, not something limited to Stocky or any single third-party app — full sourcing on our Stocky migration page.

If your only need is recording and tracking POs you already know you want to place, Shopify's native tools may be sufficient on their own.

What still needs a dedicated app

The gap is upstream of the PO record itself: deciding what to order and how much. That decision needs three things Shopify's native PO tool doesn't compute:

  1. Which SKUs actually need reordering — based on current velocity against remaining stock and lead time, not a manual review of every product.
  2. How much to order — enough to cover the lead-time gap plus a safety margin, without overordering into dead stock. See inventory forecasting for the underlying math.
  3. Whether ordering now makes sense at all — for perishable or dated inventory, a batch nearing expiry can make a fresh reorder counterproductive even when stock is genuinely low. See expiry-aware inventory.

How Foreshelf fits in

Foreshelf computes the reorder recommendation — SKU, quantity, timing, and supplier — from real sales and inventory data, then proposes a draft purchase order. Marcus explains the reasoning and asks for your approval before anything is created; nothing executes without a merchant confirming it, and per-order and daily spend caps apply regardless of that approval. Full mechanics at purchase order docs and how Marcus decides.

Foreshelf does not replace Shopify's native PO record-keeping, transfers, or POS receiving — it decides what belongs in the order before it's created.

See the reorder math on your own numbers

Free, no signup.