Moving from Stocky

Keep your inventory context. Shopify covers the basics now — here's what's still missing.

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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What Shopify now covers natively

Confirmed via Shopify's own announcement (June 17, 2026) — this is not a Stocky-app feature, it's built into the main Shopify admin:

  • Creating and editing purchase orders (Products → Purchase orders), no app required.
  • Marking a PO as ordered auto-creates a linked transfer for receiving.
  • Partial deliveries: multiple transfers per PO, each shipment tracked separately.
  • Routing incoming stock from one PO to multiple locations.
  • Receiving inventory on the spot in POS, without opening the back-office admin.

What Sidekick handles — and what it doesn't

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.

What still needs a dedicated app

Capability Shopify native + Sidekick Foreshelf
Create, send and receive purchase ordersYes, native since June 2026Yes, plus receiving with partial-quantity tracking per line
Conversational reorder suggestionYes, via Sidekick, from sales historyYes, via Marcus, explained with the underlying math (velocity, lead time, safety stock)
Batch / lot expiry trackingNoYes, FEFO by design
Reorder decision that checks expiry before recommendingNoYes — this is the specific gap Foreshelf fills
Dead stock detection in dollarsNoYes, real time
Import Stocky purchase-order historyNot applicableYes, CSV import with a preview before committing

Where Foreshelf adds value now

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.

Stocky sunset migration checklist

Save your data while you still can

  1. In Stocky, export as CSV: purchase orders and stock reports. Stocky does not offer a standalone supplier-contact export — if you need emails or phone numbers, copy them out manually while access remains available.
  2. Install Foreshelf and open Settings → Stocky import.
  3. Drop your purchase-order CSV: Foreshelf maps the columns automatically, rebuilds supplier names and lead times from your order history, and shows a preview before committing anything.
  4. Done — your supplier relationships, lead times and order history are in Foreshelf, and forecasts start immediately from your Shopify sales.

Why not wait?

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.

Move once. Move up.

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.