How to find out what you need to reorder

Working out what to order is the job most people open What is Inventory? for. On Selling › Inventory, choose Everything low, read the Cover and Reorder columns, then press Draft N purchase orders to turn the list into one draft order per supplier.

Before you start

• To see the page, you need the Settings › Permissions row that opens Analytics and Inventory. It starts at lead.
• To draft orders, the Purchase orders and Brain modules must be on, and you need Edit purchase orders and the buying calendar.
• Each Shopify vendor you order from needs a supplier under Buying › Suppliers. See How to add and set up a supplier.

Which view should you use?

Everything low. It lists the products across your catalogue that need ordering, and it is the only view with the button that drafts orders.

To prepare one supplier's order, press the filter button beside the search box and choose that vendor. The list, the summary line and the drafts then cover that vendor alone.

Switch to Top 100 by units when you want to see your best sellers, healthy ones included. Getting between views is How to choose a stock view and ranking window.

What do Cover and Reorder mean?

Cover is roughly how many days the stock you can ship lasts at the expected rate of sale, shown as ~11d. Compare it with how long the supplier takes to deliver: cover shorter than the lead time means you are already late, whatever the stock level says.

Reorder is enough units to cover expected sales over the vendor's lead time plus seven days of safety stock, less what is In stock and Incoming. Fill cost is that quantity multiplied by the cost per item recorded in Shopify.

Click a Reorder figure to see how it was reached. The panel shows Suggested reorder, Covers (Your vendor's lead time plus safety stock), Demand and Days of cover.

Where does the expected rate of sale come from?

From the forecast Tideswell works out every night for each product. The Demand line, in that panel and when you rest on a thumbnail, names the method, so you always know what you are looking at:

• seasonal forecast
• trend forecast
• 30-day average, not a forecast, for a product with no forecast yet

A forecast also shows its likely range in brackets, as units per day. The ranking window on the view menu does not change any of this.

The forecast itself, and the Settings › Forecasting page behind it, are covered in How to read demand and set your forecast.

Where does the lead time come from?

From the Lead time on the supplier that matches the product's vendor in Shopify, set on its page under Buying › Suppliers. With no lead time recorded, Tideswell assumes 14 days, plus the seven days of safety stock.

Recording real lead times is the single most useful thing you can do for these suggestions. Kaimen Knitwear takes 60 days, and until that is on its supplier page, every knitwear row is ordered as if it took 14. See How to add and set up a supplier.

The supplier's lead time also sets the status pill. A row turns Critical when its cover is no longer than the lead time, and Low when it has 5 or fewer in stock or less than a week of cover beyond the lead time.

What is the summary line at the top?

How many products need restocking, roughly what it costs to fill them, and roughly how much in sales is at risk if you do not. It reads like 12 to restock · ~$4,860 to fill · ~$9,200 sales at risk.

Sales at risk is what the at-risk products would sell over their supplier's lead time. Quote it when somebody asks whether an order can wait: it turns a stock question into a money question.

What do In stock and Incoming mean?

In stock is Shopify's Available figure, added up across the locations you ship from. It leaves out units already sold to orders waiting to ship, so it can be lower than the on-hand count Shopify shows.

Incoming is what Shopify records as incoming at those locations. Orders you raise in Tideswell live under Buying › Purchase orders, and the drafting step below counts them when your workspace is set to.

How do you check one product quickly?

Rest on its thumbnail. A larger picture opens with its Status, In stock, Days of cover and Demand, plus Incoming, Suggested reorder, Price and Vendor when it has them.

That is faster than opening anything, and it is usually enough to decide.

How do you turn the list into purchase orders?

1. On Everything low, filter to the vendors you want, or leave the list whole.
2. Press Draft N purchase orders beside the summary line. The number is how many orders it will make.
3. Check the box. It lists one order per supplier with its products and units, then Left out with a reason for each product it could not place.
4. Press Draft N purchase orders in the box.

The box then reads Drafted N purchase orders, with a link to each one. Nothing is sent to anyone: they are drafts under Buying › Purchase orders, ready for you to check and send. See How to write a purchase order.

Undo in the same box removes every draft it made, until someone starts working on one of them.

Your workspace may use its own words for purchase orders and suppliers; Settings › Terminology shows both.

Why might a draft quantity differ from the Reorder column?

Because each draft works its quantity out again, from the stock at the locations your workspace owns and from what is already on order. Which orders count is the Orders on order setting under Feed settings on Buying › Data feeds › Open to buy, covered in How to send your open-to-buy file to a buying planner.

A draft also uses the Lead time (days) and Minimum order (units) recorded for that product under What they supply on the supplier's page, where you have set them.

If a line with a Confirm locations link shows in place of the button, follow the link to Buying › Data feeds › Open to buy and confirm which locations are yours. Drafting waits for that so it never counts stock that is not yours.

Why was a product left out?

The Left out list gives the reason in a sentence. The common ones, and what to do:

• No vendor in Shopify: give the product a vendor in Shopify.
• Has no supplier record, after the vendor's name: add that vendor under Buying › Suppliers.
• Already on an order number, which is still a draft: change the quantity on that draft.
• Your own stock and what is already on order cover it: nothing to order.

Why does a row have no Cover or Reorder figure?

Cover shows a dash when there is nothing to divide: no stock to ship, or no expected sales. Reorder stays blank when the suggestion is zero: stock and incoming already cover the lead time, or there are no expected sales.

Both are blank when the status reads Not tracked, meaning Shopify is not counting stock for that product. Turn on Track quantity for it in Shopify and the figures appear at the next refresh.

What else can fill an order?

For products you keep between a set minimum and maximum, use Buying › Replenishment in the left menu instead. It fills one supplier's order up to your limits. See How to set stock limits and reorder up to them.