Long supplier lead times: setting a reorder point when stock is 60 days away
When your supplier needs sixty days, your reorder point has to cover sixty days of selling, and the alert has to reach you before you cross it rather than after. Restoc is built to take the lead time you enter for each SKU, pair it with that SKU's measured sales velocity, and send an email or a Slack message the moment stock crosses the line.
Sixty days away is a different job
You buy in containers, not in cases. The order goes to the factory, the factory builds, the goods sit on a boat, a broker clears them, and a pallet finally lands at your unit. Sixty days, give or take, between the day you commit the money and the day you can sell the unit.
That changes what a low stock warning is worth. A warning at ten units left is genuinely useful if your supplier ships in three days. On a sixty-day lead time, the same warning is a notice that the window closed about eight weeks ago, and there is nothing you can do with it except write an apology to the customers on the back-order list.
Merchants in this position describe it the same way. Still doing it in a spreadsheet, one tab per supplier, a column of half-remembered guesses about how long the last shipment actually took. The job is not demand science. It is narrower than that: I do not need a full ERP, I just want to know when to reorder, and I want to know while I can still act on it.
The decision in front of you
Order early and cash sits on a pallet for weeks. Order late and your best seller goes dark for the length of a shipping cycle, while the ad spend you already committed keeps pushing traffic at a sold-out page. Merchants who catch the reorder point early can avoid that gap, which is the whole reason the number matters.
Between those two mistakes sits one figure: the stock level at which an order placed today arrives about as the shelf empties. Two inputs decide it.
- How fast the SKU sells. Units per day, measured over some window. Pick a short window and the number chases every promotion. Pick a long one and it lags a real change in demand.
- How long your supplier actually takes. This is the number only you can supply. No app can see your factory's queue or your forwarder's backlog, and Shopify does not know either. Our lead time note covers how to work it out from your own past shipments.
A long lead time also changes how wrong you can afford to be. The honest move is to pad the lead time you enter rather than hope. If your last three shipments averaged sixty days and one of them took seventy-five, enter seventy-five. The reorder point rises with it and the alert arrives earlier, which is the cheap end of the trade.
How Restoc is built to handle a long lead time
- Set the lead time per SKU
Lead time is a number you type, in days, for each SKU. The wax from a supplier down the road can sit at seven days while the glassware coming by sea sits at sixty, and the two reorder points come out accordingly. The field takes a whole number of days within a sane bound, from 1 to 365, checked on the server when you save, so a stray keystroke cannot quietly leave a container SKU on no cover at all.
- Choose the sales velocity window
Pick 7, 14 or 30 days, and nothing else is accepted. Restoc averages sales over that window to get units per day. The window is store-wide; the Pro plan adds a per-SKU override for the odd SKU that needs its own setting.
- Restoc computes the reorder point
The calculation engine takes your velocity window and your per-SKU lead time and returns that SKU's reorder point. It is written as a tested pure function, so the same inputs always give the same number, and it recomputes as stock and sales move. The awkward cases are pinned by tests: a SKU with no sales, a SKU with less history than the window, a SKU already at zero stock, all return a defined, non-negative number rather than a blank.
- The alert fires on the crossing
When a SKU crosses its reorder point, Restoc sends an email, and a Slack message through an incoming webhook on Growth and above. Delivery runs through an idempotent background job, so one crossing produces one alert rather than the same line every day until you act.
- Prove the channel before you lean on it
The Slack webhook URL is checked for the expected format when you save it, and a test send fires a sample message through it, so you confirm the channel works on a quiet afternoon rather than during the one crossing that mattered.
- Sort the dashboard by soonest to stockout
The dashboard shows current stock, days of inventory remaining and reorder status for each active SKU, sortable by runway and by reorder status, with soonest-to-stockout first by default. With a few hundred SKUs, the lines that need a container booked sit at the top instead of somewhere in the scroll.
- Place the order from the weekly report
The weekly reorder report lists every SKU below its reorder point with a suggested order quantity, viewable in the app and exportable as CSV. The export carries the same SKUs, stock, runway and suggested quantities as the screen, with no truncation for a store near its SKU cap, which matters when the CSV is what you send the factory.
Picking a velocity window when lead time is long
| Window | What it measures | Where it fits a long lead time |
|---|---|---|
| 7 days | The last week of selling, noise and all | A launch or a live promotion, where last week is the only honest signal. Expect the reorder point to move around week to week. |
| 14 days | A fortnight, which absorbs one odd day | A middle setting for steady sellers that spike occasionally. Less jumpy than 7, quicker to react than 30. |
| 30 days | A month of selling | Usually the steadiest base for a 60 or 90 day lead time, because one heavy weekend should not swing an order you will be living with for a quarter. |
The window is not the horizon
One point worth being exact about, because it trips people up. The velocity window is the period Restoc looks back over to work out units per day. It is not a cap on how far ahead the reorder point reaches.
A 30-day window with a 60-day lead time is normal and correct. Restoc measures a month of selling, turns it into a daily rate, and then covers the full lead time you entered at that rate. The window and the lead time are two separate dials, and only one of them is about your supplier.
What this gives an importer specifically
A lead time per SKU, not one store-wide guess
Most catalogues are mixed: some lines come from a local maker, some come by sea. Each SKU carries its own lead time, so the sea freight lines get the long reorder point they need without inflating everything else.
Alerts timed to the window, not to an empty shelf
The trigger is the reorder point crossing, which on a long lead time happens while you still have weeks of cover. That is the only moment an alert is worth anything when the next pallet is two months out.
One crossing, one alert
Alert delivery runs as an idempotent background job with a guard against duplicate sends. A SKU that sits below its reorder point for a fortnight while you negotiate with the supplier does not bury your inbox or your channel.
Slack for whoever places the order
On Growth and above, alerts go to a Slack incoming webhook alongside email, so the person cutting the purchase order sees it in the channel rather than in someone else's inbox, and a test send confirms the webhook before a real crossing relies on it.
The longest wait at the top of the list
The dashboard sorts on days of inventory remaining, soonest to stockout first, and the same per-SKU runway figure is your sanity check against the suggested quantity in the weekly report, before you commit a container's worth of cash.
The SKU cap you pay for is the cap you get
Tracked-SKU limits are enforced server-side at sync time, and the app shows current usage against your plan limit with an upgrade prompt as you approach it, so a growing catalogue does not silently stop being watched.
Priced like an app, not like an ERP
Starter is $29 a month for up to 200 tracked SKUs, Growth $59 for up to 1,000, Pro $99 for up to 2,000, each with a 60-day free trial, billed by Shopify on your Shopify invoice. The billing screen shows the trial end date, days remaining and the first charge date, with a reminder a week before. Paying a year at a time is ten months' price for twelve.
What Restoc does not do, plainly
If stock is sixty days away, you should know exactly what you are and are not getting.
- No demand forecast and no seasonality curve. Restoc measures what has sold, over 7, 14 or 30 days. If your fourth quarter triples velocity, the window only picks that up once it starts, so a seasonal buy is still your judgement call.
- No safety stock field. There is no separate buffer input. The lever you have is the lead time number, which is why padding it is the practical way to hold cover for a late container. Our safety stock note explains how merchants size that cover.
- No purchase orders and no supplier records. Restoc tells you what to order and roughly how much. Sending it, chasing it and receiving it stay where they are today.
- One location per plan. Reorder points are computed per SKU against a single location.
- Web app only. There is no mobile app and no browser extension. Alerts come to email or Slack, which is where a warehouse floor actually reads things.
Restoc is not launched yet. We are taking names on the waitlist and we would rather tell you what is built than let you find out after you have paid.
Questions
How do I set a reorder point for a 90-day lead time?
Enter 90 as the lead time for that SKU. Restoc takes the units-per-day figure from your chosen velocity window and uses the lead time you supplied to compute that SKU's reorder point, then alerts you when stock crosses it. If your shipments have run longer than 90 days before, enter the longer figure instead.
Does the velocity window have to match my lead time?
No. The window, 7, 14 or 30 days, is only the period Restoc looks back over to work out how fast the SKU sells. The lead time is what the reorder point has to cover. A 30-day window with a 60-day lead time is a normal setup.
Can different SKUs have different lead times?
Yes. Lead time is a per-SKU input, so an imported line can sit at 60 days while a locally supplied line sits at 7, each with its own reorder point.
What happens when my supplier's lead time changes?
Change the number. Lead time is accepted as a whole number of days from 1 to 365, checked on the server when you save, and the reorder point is recomputed from the inputs rather than stored as a fixed threshold, so a longer lead time raises the reorder point and brings the alert forward.
Can I add safety stock on top?
There is no separate safety stock field. The reorder point is built from your velocity window and your lead time only. Merchants who want cover for a late shipment pad the lead time they enter, which raises the reorder point by the same logic.
Can the alert go somewhere other than email?
Email is included on every plan. Slack alerts through an incoming webhook are available on Growth and above, alongside email, and a test send lets you confirm the webhook works before a real crossing depends on it.
Will Restoc raise the purchase order with my supplier?
No. It tells you which SKUs are below their reorder point and a suggested order quantity, in the app and as a CSV export that carries the same figures as the screen. Placing and chasing the order stays with you.
Can I use Restoc today?
Not yet. Restoc is on a waitlist while it is being built. Join the list and we will tell you when it opens, with a 60-day free trial on every plan at launch, billed by Shopify on your Shopify invoice.