No alert arrived: the four things to check
When a SKU looks low and no low stock alert email has arrived, the cause is almost always one of four things: the SKU has not crossed its reorder point yet, the alert is addressed somewhere else, your mail host filtered it, or that crossing was already sent once. The dashboard's recent alerts panel narrows it down fast, because it lists each crossing Restoc raised and whether it has been delivered
Where an alert can go missing
The alert path is short, so the list of places it can break is short too.
Restoc compares each SKU's stock against a reorder point worked out from two inputs: a sales velocity window of 7, 14 or 30 days, and the lead time you enter for that SKU. When stock crosses that point, a background job opens one alert for that crossing and sends it by email, and to a Slack incoming webhook on Growth and above. The job is idempotent, so re-running it does not send the same crossing twice. It marks an alert delivered only after a send succeeds, so a failed send is retried rather than quietly dropped.
Read the dashboard before you change anything
The dashboard carries a recent alerts panel: the most recent eight alerts, each with the time the crossing was detected and whether it has been delivered. That one screen separates a missing email from a missing crossing, which is the fork everything below hangs on. The same screen shows current stock, days of inventory remaining and reorder status for every active SKU, so you can see what the calculation thinks whether or not mail reached you.
Four candidates remain when the panel and your inbox disagree:
- Nothing crossed. Low to your eye is not the same as below the reorder point. The threshold moves with velocity and lead time, so a slow SKU can sit at four units and still be above its point.
- The alert is addressed elsewhere. Reorder alerts go to your account email until you change the address in Settings > Alerts, where you can also switch email alerts off entirely or point them at a purchasing inbox.
- The mail was filtered. Alert email leaves through Amazon SES. A shared inbox rule, a spam folder or a strict filter at your mail host will swallow it before you see it.
- It already fired. One alert per crossing, by design. A SKU that stays below its point does not re-send every morning.
Work down that list in order. The first and fourth are answered by the panel itself. The second is settled in Settings > Alerts, and the third at your mail host.
Questions
I can see the SKU is low, so why did no email arrive?
Alerts fire on a crossing, not on a feeling. The reorder point is worked out per SKU from your sales velocity window and the lead time on that SKU. A SKU selling half a unit a day with a seven day lead time has a low threshold, and may still be above it at five units. Open the dashboard and read the reorder status for that SKU. If it is not below its point, there is nothing to send. If the threshold itself looks wrong, lead time is the input to change.
How do I check whether the alert fired at all?
The dashboard's recent alerts panel lists alerts as they are raised, with the time the crossing was detected and the delivery state beside each one. If a crossing is listed and your inbox is empty, the problem is addressing or filtering, not the calculation. If nothing is listed, no SKU crossed its point in that period. The panel holds the most recent eight alerts, so for a standing list of everything currently below its reorder point, use the weekly reorder report instead.
What does not delivered yet mean next to an alert?
It means the crossing was recorded and the send has not succeeded. The job marks a row delivered only on a successful send. Anything that fails stays queued and is tried again on the next run rather than being thrown away. If no channel can deliver at all, for instance email alerts switched off with no Slack webhook saved, the alert waits until one can. Give it a working destination in Settings > Alerts and the next run picks it up.
Which address do reorder alerts go to?
Your account email, from the moment you connect a store, until you change it. The alert address lives in Settings > Alerts, so you can point alerts at a purchasing inbox instead of your own. If someone on your team pointed alerts at a shared address, check that address before assuming delivery failed. The same screen has the switch that turns email alerts off, which is worth confirming is still on.
Could my mail host be filtering the alert?
Yes, and it is the most common cause once the settings check out. Alert email is sent through Amazon SES, so it is ordinary transactional mail. It is subject to the same spam rules, inbox tabs and forwarding rules as everything else. If the recent alerts panel records a crossing as delivered and nothing reached the inbox, the mail was filtered after it left us. Check spam and any shared or group inbox rules first, then allow the sender at your mail host.
I turned on Slack and nothing arrived there either.
Slack alerts come through an incoming webhook, and that channel is part of Growth at $59 per month and above. Starter at $29 per month sends email alerts only, so on Starter there is no Slack delivery to debug. On Growth or Pro, confirm a webhook URL is actually saved in Settings > Alerts: a toggle with no URL behind it has nowhere to post. Email delivery runs independently of Slack on every plan.
Why did I only get one email for a SKU that was low all week?
Because alerting is deliberately once per crossing. The background job opens a single alert when a SKU crosses its reorder point, and does not re-fire for the same crossing on later runs. That is what keeps a 200 SKU store from drowning in mail. If you want a standing list of everything currently below its point, that is the job of the weekly reorder report, not the alert stream.
My store just connected and no alerts have fired at all. Is something broken?
Probably not. Velocity drives the reorder point, and a SKU with no recorded sales in your chosen window has no velocity to work from, which leaves its threshold sitting very low. Until sales accrue in that window, few SKUs will cross anything. Use the dashboard's days of inventory remaining column in the meantime to see which SKUs are genuinely close, and save a lead time on the SKUs you care about so the point is right when the sales data catches up.