Set reorder points and stock levels

Reorder points and stock levels are the thresholds that drive your Reorder list and your stock alerts. You own them - Stockroom suggests values from your sales history, but never overwrites anything you set.

You can set four levels per variant, from Inventory (fastest for a lot of products at once) or from a product's own dashboard in the Costs & replenishment section:

Leave a field blank and Stockroom shows a ghost value - the suggestion from your sales history - which acts as the working threshold until you enter your own.

Reorder point and max level work as a pair: the reorder point is the trigger and the max level is the target. Reorder and transfer suggestions top stock back up to the max, so keep the max above the reorder point to leave room for a meaningful order - set them equal and suggestions only appear once stock falls below the number, and only for the gap back up. A saved 0 is a real value, not a blank: only empty fields fall back to ghost values or your all-locations defaults. If you have saved values you want to undo in bulk - a 0 everywhere, say - a CSV import with clear in those cells empties them again.

A count below zero counts as zero when Stockroom sizes an order. With a Max level of 2 and -1 on hand, the suggestion is 2, not 3. That is deliberate: a count below zero is nearly always a counting gap - an oversell against shelf stock, a receipt nobody recorded - rather than units you owe a customer, so filling it would size the order to repair your books instead of your shelf. Your sales history already counts every unit that sold, including the ones that took the count negative, so real demand is in the suggestion either way. The same floor applies to transfer suggestions and to Fill suggested quantities in the purchase order editor. It is the default rather than a rule - see below if a negative count means something different in your store.

The negative still shows on the row, so you can always type a higher quantity if you genuinely owe those units. If the count is simply wrong, correcting it is the better fix - see Stock adjustments: corrections with a paper trail or Count your inventory with stocktakes. Once the count sits at zero or above, suggestions fill the whole gap back up to your max level.

If you are setting values for a lot of products, you do not have to open each one. On Inventory, open the columns picker (the columns icon above the table) and turn on Low stock, Reorder point and Max level. They are off by default.

Click any of those values to open a small editor for that product. It lists every variant, so a product in three sizes shows three rows, and you can switch location at the top to set that location's overrides. Each row shows what is on hand, and empty fields show a grey suggestion you can accept with Apply suggested.

Because a product can have several variants, the value in the table is a summary. A single number means every variant agrees; a range like 2-3 means they differ, and the editor shows which is which. A grey number is a suggestion from your sales history, not a value you saved.

The Levels filter above the table narrows the list to Needs values, Levels set or Ignored - so "which products still have no reorder point" is one click. Pick Needs values and an Apply all suggestions button appears, which fills every empty threshold at once. A Supplier filter beside it narrows the table to one supplier's items - everything you have bought from them or linked to them by supplier SKU - so you can start from one vendor and narrow from there.

Without a location picked, these columns show your all-locations values. Pick a location above the table and they show that location's numbers instead.

Some stores order to a customer rather than hold stock, so a count below zero is a real backlog: sell one machine you do not stock and you are one unit short until the supplier ships. If that describes your store, go to Settings > Reordering and turn on Count negative stock when sizing orders.

With it on, the count below zero is added to the order instead of being treated as zero. A Max level of 2 with -1 on hand then suggests 3 - enough to clear the unit you owe and refill to your max. It applies everywhere an order is sized: the Reorder list, automatic restock drafts, Fill suggested quantities in the purchase order editor, and transfer suggestions. A transfer is still limited to what the other location can spare above its own max level, so turning this on will not empty a healthy location.

The setting is off to begin with, and it is one choice for the whole store, not per product. Leave it off if your negatives are usually counting gaps - filling those sizes the order to repair your books rather than your shelf, and a badly wrong count can ask for a very large order.

Above the table you will see Combined, Default, and a tab for each of your locations. Default is where most people set their levels: those values apply to any location that does not have its own, and each location is compared against them separately. Pick a location to set overrides just for that one; blank fields there fall back to your Default values. You can also mark a variant Exclude from reorder so it never appears in suggestions or the Reorder list. Variants that do not track inventory in Shopify are excluded automatically - with no counted stock, there is nothing to reorder.

A location's own levels always win. If you set a max level on a location tab and later change the number on Default, that location keeps its own - which is the usual reason an order comes out smaller than you expected. So you do not have to go looking, the Default tab names any location holding its own levels for that product, in a note under the table. On a product with several variants you only see one tab at a time, so an override set on another one is easy to miss.

If you would rather be told to reorder based on everything you hold, rather than on each shop separately, use the Combined tab. Stockroom adds up the stock at every location and compares that one total against the levels you set there.

Say you keep 60 units spread across three shops and you set a combined reorder point of 30. You get one suggestion for the business when the total drops to 30, instead of three separate suggestions as each shop dips below it. The suggested order ships to your busiest location, and you can change that on the draft order before you send it.

While a combined reorder point is set for an item, its Default and per-location levels are not used, so the two can never ask you to buy the same stock twice. Reorder point alerts and the Inventory list's Low stock filter follow the combined total as well. Out of stock alerts stay per location - being unable to sell at one shop is worth knowing even when there is plenty elsewhere.

When Stockroom has a suggestion, click Apply suggested to save it as your own. It only fills fields you left empty - it never changes a number you typed. To replace numbers you have already saved, use Apply all suggestions - on Inventory > Suggested levels, or on Inventory with the Levels filter set to Needs values - and tick Replace values I've already set.

In the product page's Supplier ordering section you can also set, per variant: Supplier SKU (their part number for the item), Pack size (how many units the supplier ships together), Minimum order, and a Pack name ("case", "box"). These shape quantities rather than thresholds: reorder suggestions lift to the minimum and then round up to whole packs, and the PO editor shows the breakdown - "3 cases of 4" - with a caution on quantities that break the pack or sit under the minimum. Quantities everywhere stay in single units - packs are context, never a forced rounding. A new line on a purchase order starts at the case quantity when the item has one (or the minimum, rounded up to whole packs), so a product that ships six to a box lands as 6 - and you can type any number over it.

You can also set all three without leaving a purchase order: in the PO editor, click the pack note under a line's quantity (or Set case size on a line that has none) and enter the pack size, pack name and minimum order right there. It saves to that PO's supplier for the product, so future orders and reorder suggestions use it too.

Buy the item from more than one distributor? Each of them can carry their own part number, case size and minimum in the same section, under Other suppliers for this item - see Buy the same item from more than one supplier. The values at the top of the section are the fallback, used for any supplier without a row of their own.

Setting levels for many products at once? Export, edit and import them as a spreadsheet - see Import and export reorder points by CSV.

Stock alerts only ever fire on levels you have saved, not on raw suggestions. Saving a suggestion, or typing your own value, is what turns on alert coverage for that product.