How does the purchase plan decide what to order?

It orders a product on the first day your stock, plus what is already on its way, would no longer last through the lead time and your safety stock. Each order covers the lead time, the safety stock and the weeks you order for, and you find the plan on the Forecast page's Stock & cash tab.

Sales come from the forecast itself: the same units, product by product, that the profit forecast prices, so the two can never assume different demand, and a What if or a planned event moves them on the days it moves orders. Stock is today's level from Shopify. Stock on its way, Shopify's incoming quantity, has no arrival date in Shopify, so it counts as arriving at the end of the product's lead time, the latest it can come.

Three settings shape it: the lead time from the Products page, a product's own where it has one; the safety stock, 14 days of sales unless you change it; and the weeks you order for, eight unless you change it. Each order is priced at the product's unit cost on the day it is placed, including a cost change you have scheduled. To size a product's safety stock from how much its sales and its supplier's deliveries swing, use the safety stock calculator.

Each product shows where it stands, from Sold out and Order today through an order date within the next 14 days to Covered for now and Enough stock. Sales a shelf cannot meet are counted as lost rather than owed, so stock never goes below zero, apart from units Shopify already oversold. Products whose stock Shopify does not track are left out and counted, because a made-to-order product must never read sold out, and gift cards and digital products are not stock at all. The reorder alert can email you on a product's order-by day.