Inventory alerts when a 3PL holds your stock
When a 3PL holds your stock, you cannot walk past the shelf and see it looking thin. Restoc is built to watch the inventory and sales numbers already in your Shopify store and send you an alert when a SKU crosses its reorder point.
The shelf you cannot walk past
Your fulfilment is handled. That is the point of a 3PL. Your daily sense of what is running low went with it.
A merchant who packs their own orders gets a free signal every morning: the box looks thin. You do not get that signal. Your pallets are in a building you may never have visited, counted by people you email. Your view of your own stock is a number in Shopify that the warehouse syncs back, a 3PL portal with its own login, and a cycle count that lands in your inbox when someone remembers to send it.
So the day goes like this. You open Shopify, click into a product because you have a feeling about it, see 34 units left, and run the arithmetic in your head. We move a few a day. The supplier takes weeks. The warehouse needs days to receive the container after it lands. Then you do the same for the next SKU, or you do not, and a few weeks later your best seller is out and nobody noticed until a customer asked.
The job in front of you is not forecasting. It is one question, asked every day about every SKU: is there still enough time to reorder this before it runs out. That is arithmetic. Arithmetic should not need you.
What Restoc watches, and what it does not touch
Restoc installs on your store through Shopify's OAuth flow and pulls real-time inventory levels and historical sales data through webhooks plus a scheduled sync job. That is the entire data path. Shopify is the one place your warehouse, your storefront and Restoc can all agree on, so Restoc reads Shopify and nothing else.
Said plainly now, so nothing is a surprise after you install:
- Restoc does not log into your 3PL and does not connect to a warehouse management system. If your warehouse syncs levels back into Shopify, Restoc sees what Shopify sees. If your warehouse is slow to sync, Restoc is working from the same stale number you are.
- Restoc does not track inbound purchase orders, containers or receiving. The lead time you set is where all of that waiting is accounted for.
- Restoc reads the vendor field on your Shopify products, so SKUs are grouped by the supplier who makes them. It does not know your supplier's calendar or your warehouse's receiving times. You enter those days once.
- One location per store, on every plan. If your stock is split across two warehouses and you need a separate reorder point for each, that is not here yet.
- It is a web app. No mobile app, no browser extension. The alert comes to you by email, and to Slack on Growth and above.
That is a narrow tool on purpose. You already have a fulfilment stack. What you are missing is the one number nobody in it is responsible for telling you.
How it works when the warehouse is not yours
- Install on your Shopify store
Shopify's OAuth install flow connects the store and starts pulling inventory levels and historical sales data, through webhooks plus a scheduled sync job. Nothing is typed in by hand and no spreadsheet is uploaded.
- Set lead time once per supplier, not SKU by SKU
The scheduled sync fills each SKU's vendor from its Shopify product, and a vendor lead times screen in settings lists every distinct supplier in your catalogue. Enter the days against the supplier and that figure fills every SKU of theirs that has no lead time of its own. A 400-SKU catalogue from nine suppliers is nine numbers.
- Count the days stock waits to be received
For a 3PL-fulfilled store the lead time is not just the supplier's quote. Add the freight, and add the days the warehouse takes to receive and put away before a unit is sellable. Any SKU that behaves differently keeps its own per-SKU lead time, which overrides the supplier figure.
- Pick the sales velocity window
7, 14 or 30 days, store-wide. Short windows follow a spike quickly. Long windows ignore one odd week. On Pro you can override the window for a single SKU that does not behave like the rest.
- Add a safety stock percentage for the bursty ones
Average daily sales times lead time assumes the selling is even. It often is not. A store-wide safety stock percentage is added into the reorder point calculation, and the resulting cushion is shown in units on the dashboard, in the weekly report and in the CSV, so you can see exactly what it added.
- Read days of inventory remaining, worst first
The dashboard shows current stock, days of inventory remaining and reorder status for every active SKU, sortable and defaulting to soonest-to-stockout. That turns "34 units" into "nine days", which is the number you can act on without a calculator.
- Get the alert when a SKU crosses its reorder point
Email on every plan, Slack through an incoming webhook on Growth and above, with a test send on the alerts screen so you can confirm the channel works before you rely on it. Delivery runs through an idempotent background job, so a crossing produces one alert, not a repeating drip every time the job runs.
- Place the week's orders from one report
A weekly reorder report lists the SKUs below their reorder point with a suggested order quantity, viewable in the app and exportable as CSV. One sitting, one list of purchase orders to send to the suppliers the report already names.
Why this fits a merchant whose stock lives elsewhere
The signal you lost when you outsourced the warehouse
You gave up the thin shelf. Restoc is built to replace it with an alert that arrives before the last unit sells, calculated from your own store's numbers rather than a feeling you had on a Tuesday.
Supplier lead times, entered once
Lead time belongs to the supplier more than to the SKU. Set it per vendor and it covers every SKU that vendor makes, so onboarding a catalogue is an afternoon rather than a week of one-row saves.
Receiving time counted as the delay it is
Most reorder maths stops at the supplier. Yours cannot. Because you control the lead time, the dock-to-available days at the 3PL go in too, and the reorder point moves out to cover them.
A cushion for the weeks that are not average
The safety stock percentage sits on top of lead-time demand and is shown in units, so when a truck is late or a SKU sells in bursts you are not relying on the average being kind.
No extra portal to check
You already have a Shopify admin and a 3PL login. Restoc does not ask you to open a third screen daily. The alert comes to your inbox, or to the Slack channel your ops conversations already live in on Growth and above.
A list your supplier can read
The weekly report exports as CSV with suggested order quantities and the safety stock units behind them, so the reorder conversation with a supplier or a warehouse contact starts from a file rather than a forwarded screenshot.
Priced for a store, not a logistics suite
Starter is $29 a month for up to 200 tracked SKUs, Growth is $59 for up to 1,000, Pro is $99 for up to 2,000, and every plan carries a 60-day free trial. Billing runs on your Shopify invoice.
Where the waiting goes
| Stage | Who you chase | Where it belongs in Restoc |
|---|---|---|
| Supplier production | Your supplier | The vendor lead time you set once for that supplier |
| Freight and customs | Your freight forwarder | Part of the same lead time number |
| Receiving and put-away | Your 3PL contact | Added to the lead time, or to that SKU's own override |
| The week that is not average | Nobody | The store-wide safety stock percentage, shown in units |
| Available to sell | Nobody, it is the sync | The current stock figure Restoc reads from Shopify |
| Sell-through | Your customers | Sales velocity over a 7, 14 or 30 day window |
| Reorder point crossed | Restoc | Email alert, and Slack on Growth and above |
Questions
Does Restoc connect to my 3PL or my WMS?
No. Restoc connects to Shopify only, through Shopify's OAuth install flow, and reads products, inventory levels and orders. If your 3PL writes stock levels back into Shopify, Restoc works from those levels. There is no warehouse integration and none is promised.
My warehouse only syncs stock to Shopify once a day. Is Restoc still useful?
Yes, with that limit understood. Restoc is only ever as current as the number in Shopify, and it refreshes through webhooks plus a scheduled sync job. A once-daily sync still gives you velocity, days of inventory remaining and a reorder point, which is the part nobody is calculating today. It will not make your warehouse feed faster.
How should I set lead time when stock has to be received at a 3PL?
Enter the whole wait, not just the supplier's quote. Start on the vendor lead times screen: set the days against each supplier and that figure fills every SKU of theirs without its own lead time. Include production, freight and the days the warehouse typically takes to receive and put away. If receiving usually takes four days, those four days belong in the number, otherwise the reorder point fires too late. Any SKU that is different keeps its own lead time, which wins over the supplier figure.
Some SKUs sell in bursts rather than evenly. Does the reorder point account for that?
There is a store-wide safety stock percentage that is added into the reorder point calculation on top of lead-time demand, and the units it adds are shown on the dashboard, in the weekly report and in the CSV export. It is one percentage for the store, not a per-SKU figure, so you can see and audit exactly what cushion every reorder point carries.
Can the alert go to Slack so my ops person sees it too?
Slack alerts, through an incoming webhook you configure, are on the Growth plan at $59 a month and above, alongside email. The alerts screen has a test send so you can confirm the channel works before a real crossing depends on it. Email alerts are on every plan, including Starter at $29 a month.
My stock is split across two fulfilment centres. Does that work?
Not yet. Every plan covers one location, so Restoc treats your store as a single pool of stock and cannot hold a separate reorder point per warehouse. If per-location reorder points are the thing you need, Restoc is not that tool today.
What does Restoc store about my store?
Your store's .myshopify.com domain and its Shopify access token, tracked SKU details including your own SKU code, lead time and computed reorder point, sales quantities and dates per SKU with the Shopify order reference, your alert settings and your plan state. No customer names, addresses or payment details are stored.
What happens at the end of the 60-day trial?
The trial runs 60 days and is built so at least one full weekly reorder cycle completes before the first charge lands. Subscriptions are billed by Shopify on your Shopify invoice, and annual billing is offered at ten months' price for twelve months.