Supplier prices drift over time. When you mark a purchase order as ordered, Stockroom can update your Shopify cost per item to match the PO - and move your selling prices with it, so your margins hold instead of quietly eroding. It is always your choice, one order at a time.
How it works
When you click Mark as ordered, Stockroom compares each line's unit cost to the product's current cost in Shopify, to the cent. If any cost differs (or a product has no cost in Shopify yet), you will see an Update costs and prices? dialog listing the changes, with two cards so each decision stays yours:
Update costs - each listed product's cost in Shopify moves to this order's cost.
Update prices - selling prices can move too, pre-filled with a suggestion that holds your current margin at the new cost (details below).
Ordering only some of a product's variants, but the new cost applies across the range? When Update costs is ticked and the products on the order have other variants, a checkbox appears underneath - Also update the other variants of these products, with the exact count it will touch. Tick it and those variants move to the same new cost, so ten colourways stay aligned without putting all ten on the order. Variants already at that cost are left alone, and the choice starts unticked on every order - it is never remembered. The same checkbox appears when receiving changes costs. Update prices has its own copy of the checkbox, so a range that sells at one price can be repriced the same way - those variants take the price you typed in the dialog, exactly as typed. The one case it skips: a product on the order twice at two different prices, where there is no single price to spread.
Tick either, both, or neither - the two cards are Update product costs and Update selling prices, an unticked card reads Not this time, the confirm button always says exactly what it will do, from Order & update costs and prices down to a plain Order, and a summary above it counts what will change. Cancel leaves everything untouched, including the order's status.
If nothing would change - no cost differs, you typed no new prices, and no supplier price list is waiting for a cost - the PO is marked ordered with no dialog. The dialog also opens when you have typed new selling prices on the order (its intro then says so) and, for a supplier you keep a price list for, when a line's cost is missing from that list or differs from it: the Supplier price list section at the bottom saves the cost to the list and never changes Shopify. A supplier with no price list is never asked.
One thing worth knowing: this update matches your product costs to the purchase order. It does not average them, and it does not include shipping or duties, because nothing has arrived yet. Averaging against stock you already hold, and true landed cost, both happen when you receive - see Landed cost: what your stock really costs.
Updating selling prices to hold your margin
When a cost rises and the price stays put, the margin quietly shrinks. The dialog shows that on every row as a badge - for example Margin 55% → 54% - even while price updates are unticked. Tick Update prices and each row gains a New price field, pre-filled with the price that keeps today's margin at the new cost.
Round to controls how suggestions land: .99 endings, .95 endings, Whole numbers, or No rounding. Suggestions always round up, so the margin you are holding is a floor.
Every suggestion is editable - type any price and the badge beside the field recalculates its margin live.
Blank price fields are left untouched. Clearing a field is how you skip one product while updating the rest.
Your choices are remembered - both checkboxes and the rounding come back the way you left them next time. The first time, price updates start unticked, so nothing reprices your store until you choose it once.
What it will and will not touch
Drafts never change your catalog - costs are only ever pushed as part of marking a PO ordered.
Zero or blank line costs never overwrite a real cost.
Custom lines (items not linked to a Shopify product) are skipped.
If the PO is in a different currency than your store, Stockroom converts each cost at the Exchange rate on the purchase order. Set that rate on the PO first - without one, cost updates are not offered, because Stockroom will not guess a rate.
A product with no recorded cost gets no price suggestion - there is no margin to hold. You can still type a price yourself.
If a new price would reach a product's compare-at price, the dialog warns you: the sale badge in your store would stop showing. Compare-at prices themselves are never changed.
Price updates set the base price only - market-specific prices from Shopify Markets are untouched.
The updates run in the background, so your product cost and price fields catch up a moment later.
Related
When you receive stock, Stockroom can update costs again using the true landed cost, including shipping and duties. See Landed cost: what your stock really costs.