Shopify has announced Stocky's retirement. Purchase orders and receiving are now native to the Shopify admin, and Sidekick can suggest what to reorder from your sales history — but neither one tracks batch expiry or reasons about lead time and safety stock the way a dedicated forecast does. That's the gap Foreshelf fills.
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Confirmed via Shopify's own announcement (June 17, 2026) — this is not a Stocky-app feature, it's built into the main Shopify admin:
Sidekick can: answer "what should I reorder?" conversationally, using your sales history to suggest quantities, and manage PO details in conversation — adjusting quantities, applying bulk discounts, adding tariffs, converting currencies.
Sidekick does not: track batch or lot expiry dates, apply FEFO (first-expired-first-out) logic, or compute a reorder point from lead time and a statistical safety-stock buffer the way a dedicated forecasting engine does. It also can't connect to systems outside Shopify (ERPs, dedicated inventory platforms). Independent write-ups on this are still inconsistent with each other as of this writing — treat any specific claim about Sidekick's forecasting depth (including this one) as worth re-checking against Shopify's own current documentation before relying on it for a purchasing decision.
| Capability | Shopify native + Sidekick | Foreshelf |
|---|---|---|
| Create, send and receive purchase orders | Yes, native since June 2026 | Yes, plus receiving with partial-quantity tracking per line |
| Conversational reorder suggestion | Yes, via Sidekick, from sales history | Yes, via Marcus, explained with the underlying math (velocity, lead time, safety stock) |
| Batch / lot expiry tracking | No | Yes, FEFO by design |
| Reorder decision that checks expiry before recommending | No | Yes — this is the specific gap Foreshelf fills |
| Dead stock detection in dollars | No | Yes, real time |
| Import Stocky purchase-order history | Not applicable | Yes, CSV import with a preview before committing |
With native POs and Sidekick's conversational suggestions covering the basics, the honest gap left for a dedicated app is narrower than it used to be — but it's still real for any catalog where expiry matters. Foreshelf's reorder recommendation is computed jointly from demand forecast and batch expiry, and will reduce or refuse a suggested reorder when the math says most of the incoming stock would spoil before selling through. Neither Shopify's native tools nor Sidekick do that as of this writing.
Every week of lost order history degrades your future forecasts. Migrate while your Stocky exports are still available — the import takes less than 10 minutes.
Don't just replace Stocky — upgrade to an agent that watches your inventory around the clock and proposes the fix before you lose the sale.