Can you set a different lead time for every SKU?
Yes. Lead time is a per-SKU number in Restoc, so a six-day domestic reorder and a seventy-day container can sit in the same store without one dragging the other out of shape. And because nobody is typing a number into hundreds of rows, you can set one lead time per vendor and it fills every SKU that has none of its own.
Lead time is the one number your store cannot work out for you
Shopify knows what you sold and what is on the shelf. It does not know that your candle jars take nine days from a UK supplier and your glassware takes ten weeks on the water. That gap is the whole reason a single store-wide lead time produces reorder points that are wrong in both directions: too late on the slow imports, too twitchy on the local stuff.
So Restoc takes lead time as a merchant-input number per SKU and feeds it, with sales velocity over your chosen window, into the reorder point calculation. Two places to put it: on the SKU itself, or once per vendor for everything that has no SKU-level number. The questions below cover which one wins, where the vendor comes from, and what is deliberately store-wide instead.
Questions
Can you set a different lead time for every SKU?
Yes. Lead time is stored per SKU, not per store, and it is a number you supply rather than one Restoc guesses. The reorder point engine takes that SKU's lead time together with its sales velocity over the selected window and returns the stock level at which the SKU should be reordered. Change the lead time on one SKU and only that SKU's reorder point moves.
Do I have to type a lead time into hundreds of SKUs one at a time?
No. There is a vendor lead times screen in settings that lists each distinct vendor in your catalogue with a lead time field against it. Set one number for a vendor and it applies to every SKU under that vendor that has no lead time of its own. That is the realistic path for a 500-SKU store: set your eight or ten suppliers, then hand-correct the handful of SKUs that behave differently.
What wins if a SKU has its own lead time and its vendor has one too?
The SKU's own lead time wins. The vendor number is a fill, not an override: it only reaches SKUs that are blank. So you can set a vendor to 30 days and still mark one fast-moving variant from that supplier at 10 days because you keep a standing order on it. Clear the SKU's number and it falls back to the vendor's again.
Where does the vendor on each SKU come from?
From the vendor field on the Shopify product, pulled in on sync and shown alongside the SKU on the dashboard and in the weekly reorder report. If you already use that field as your supplier field, the vendor lead times screen will have your suppliers in it the moment your catalogue syncs. If you do not use it, or you use it for a brand name rather than a supplier, SKU-level lead times are the way in.
Is the sales velocity window per SKU as well?
Not on every plan. The velocity window, 7, 14 or 30 days, is a store-wide setting on Starter at $29 a month and Growth at $59 a month, and Pro at $99 a month adds a per-SKU override for SKUs that need a different window. Lead time is per SKU on all three. If your problem is bursty items rather than slow suppliers, the sibling page on choosing a window is the one to read.
What should I actually enter as a lead time?
Count the days from the moment you would place the order to the moment the stock is sellable, not just the shipping leg. That means supplier confirmation, production if they make to order, freight, customs if it crosses a border, and your own receiving and putaway. If your supplier is reliably late, enter the number they actually hit rather than the one on the quote. The lead time glossary page works through how to get that figure from your own purchase history.
Should I pad the lead time to cover demand spikes?
Padding lead time is one way merchants buy themselves a buffer, but it mixes two different things in one field and makes the reorder point harder to explain later. The cleaner reasoning is to keep lead time as the honest transit-and-handling figure and treat the buffer as safety stock, which is its own decision with its own trade-off in tied-up cash. The safety stock page covers how merchants size that separately.
What happens after I change a lead time?
The reorder point for that SKU is recalculated from the new lead time and its current velocity, and the dashboard's reorder status and days of inventory remaining reflect it. If the new number puts the SKU below its reorder point, it is an item the alerting job can fire on, by email and, on Growth and above, by Slack webhook. It will also appear in the weekly reorder report with a suggested order quantity, viewable in-app and exportable as CSV.