Stocky replacement, feature by feature: where each job went

Stocky did not get one replacement. Shopify moved some of its jobs into the admin (purchase orders, receiving, transfers, counts, reports), left others to apps (weighted average cost, landed cost, supplier defaults), and ended the rest. The part with a deadline is your Stocky data. Read-only export access lasts at least 90 days past 31 August, so it runs to 29 November 2026 at the earliest.

Stocky covered a lot of ground in one place: purchase orders, receiving, transfers, stocktakes (or stock takes, if you are in the UK or Australia), reorder suggestions, supplier records and reports. Shopify's listing says it came included with a POS Pro subscription, which is part of why so many stores used it. This article goes through those jobs one at a time and says where each one lives now. After this paragraph we say "count" for the physical job.

Three outcomes, and one date#

Shopify's help center says the app "will no longer be available after August 31st, 2026". Its transition page gives the rest of the timeline. Stocky left the App Store on 2 February 2026. On 31 August 2026 the app and its APIs stopped working. Shopify then says it will keep Stocky read-only for at least 90 days, so you can export.

Count the 90 days from 31 August:

30 (to 30 Sep) + 31 (to 31 Oct) + 29 (to 29 Nov) = 90

That makes 29 November 2026 the earliest the window can close. Shopify's wording is "at least", so it may last longer, and we have not seen an exact end date. Plan for the earliest one.

Every Stocky job ended in one of three places, and we tag each below:

• Native. It lives in the Shopify admin or POS now.
• App. Shopify's own page tells you to use a third-party app, or you need extra data work.
• Gone or manual. Nothing replaces it, or you do it by hand.

The map#

The next four sections explain the rows that need more than one line.

Purchasing: orders, receiving and suppliers#

Stocky let you start a purchase order blank or from its own suggestion, email it as a PDF or CSV, receive stock, and put the unreceived part on backorder. In Shopify you create and manage purchase orders in the admin. Once an order is marked Ordered, you make an inventory transfer to track shipments, receive stock and add cost adjustments such as shipping, fees and duties.

Partial deliveries work through that transfer. A transfer can carry several shipments, and each receipt records accepted and rejected quantities. That does the same job as Stocky's backorder, with one difference: the order sits behind a transfer, not on its own screen.

Four gaps come straight from Shopify's page. You cannot email a purchase order from Shopify, so you download the PDF and send it yourself. You cannot turn a customer order into a purchase order, or merge two orders. The native CSV upload adds product lines to a new draft and nothing else. And purchase order APIs are not generally available, so an integration built on Stocky's API cannot be pointed at Shopify as it is.

Suppliers are the loss that stings. Stocky kept a cost price list, a currency and pack sizes for each supplier. Shopify has one Vendor field per product, a supplier you assign to each order, and payment terms and currency saved on each order, not as a default for the supplier. Shopify also says suppliers cannot be exported from Stocky. Copy the details off your Stocky screens by hand while you still can.

Counting: stocktakes and adjustments#

Stocky counted by hand or with a desktop scanner in keyboard mode. Its help page says the camera, Shopify POS and POS GO were not supported for scanning, and that partial counts by filter worked only with a scanner. Confirmed adjustments synced to Shopify. Two behaviors may have shaped your habits. Stocky treated units in unfulfilled orders as available, so its page told you to pick and pack first. And "Zero out missed items" hit the whole location, including products you never scanned, and could not be undone.

Shopify's replacements, as its transition page describes them:

• Quick Count in POS, built for spot checks, with up to 1,000 items per session.
• Stock counts in the admin, where you plan a full-location or cycle count, staff count in parallel, and a manager approves the result before inventory changes.
• An offline route: export inventory to CSV, count on paper, import the result and keep both files as your record.

Shopify's changelog dated 28 September 2026 adds the requirements for counting in POS: POS Pro and POS 11.16 or later. A count is created in the admin, counted by scan or typing, submitted, then approved, and Shopify keeps a record of what was counted, when and by whom.

We have not tested what a native count does to orders placed between the count and the approval. If your store sells while you count, test one small count first. Our article on counting while the store keeps selling explains why the order of events matters. For strict audit needs, Shopify's own page suggests an app.

Reordering and low stock alerts#

Stocky had demand forecasting for purchase orders, which estimated order quantities from sales history and supplier lead times. It also had a low stock view and an ABC analysis that graded products on the past eight weeks of sales.

Per Shopify's transition page, the native answer has three parts. Sidekick can recommend items to reorder from sales data and draft purchase orders or transfers. Min and max levels live on each variant in metafield definitions that you set up and keep current. Shopify Flow sends low stock alerts. We have not tested Sidekick's suggestions, so we cannot say how good they are.

The inventory reports help too. One shows estimated days until each variant runs out, based on recent sales. The ABC report now grades on the last 28 days, not Stocky's eight weeks.

Stocky window: 8 x 7 = 56 days
Shopify window: 28 days

A window half as long reacts faster and swings more, so expect some products to change grade.

Here is the part you do by hand. Say a variant has a minimum of 20, a maximum of 60 and 12 on hand. It is below the minimum, so order up to the maximum.

60 - 12 = 48 units to order

If the supplier sells cases of 12, that is 4 cases exactly. Now say 15 are on hand.

60 - 15 = 45 units needed
45 / 12 = 3.75 cases, so order 4 cases = 48 units

Three cases would leave you at 15 + 36 = 51, under the maximum. Shopify says case packs in metafields are for reference only and staff convert them to units, so this rounding stays a manual step. Also count units already on an open order. Shopify's inventory states page says incoming units cannot be sold until they are received, so they are easy to forget when you check stock.

If you need seasonal forecasting, you need an app built for it. Apps built around forecasting and purchasing exist, and they differ in method, so read each vendor's own page for what it does. Our list of Stocky alternatives is a starting point for that comparison.

Reports, costs and labels#

Stocky's reports included ABC analysis, best sellers, low stock, purchase orders by delivery and payment status, stock on hand (current and historical), adjustments and transfers. Shopify offers nine inventory reports (month-end snapshot and value, sales per day, sell-through, ABC, inventory remaining and adjustment reports), custom reports, a purchase order cost report and a purchase order to transfer status report. There is no native report for total spend by supplier. Shopify says to export Analytics data or use outside tools.

Cost is where the biggest gap sits. Each variant has one static Cost per item field, and Shopify says it does not change when stock is received. Weighted average costing and landed cost allocation are not native, and Shopify tells you to use an app. The purchase order carries shipping, fees and duties as adjustments, but spreading them over the lines is your job. Our landed cost example shows the arithmetic.

Labels moved too. Shopify says to print them with the Retail Barcode Labels app from the product list, not from the purchase order screen, and that labels do not fill in from partial receipts. For a large partial receipt it suggests exporting to CSV or using a labeling app.

What to export before access ends#

Shopify says Stocky's reports can export completed purchase orders as CSV, stocktake history and historical cost data. Do these, in this order:

1. Completed purchase orders, all of them, not only the open ones.
2. The cost data. Without it you cannot say what a supplier charged you last spring.
3. Stocktake history. Stocky's page says it does not save historical inventory data, so each stocktake CSV is your only copy.
4. Your min and max levels per variant, if you used them.
5. Supplier details, typed or copied by hand, because there is no export. Names, contacts, terms, currencies, pack sizes and price lists.

Name each file with the date and keep the folder outside Shopify and outside Stocky.

The usual mistake is to export what feels urgent. A team grabs the open purchase orders because a delivery is due, and leaves the completed ones for later. Three months on, the accountant asks what one supplier charged in the spring. The data sat behind a window that has since closed. Our page on exporting your Stocky data has the click path.

A first month, in order#

1. This week: export everything in the list above.
2. Next: write down your suppliers, lead times, minimum orders, case sizes and payment terms in one sheet or in metafields. Shopify's page says to use variant metafields or metaobjects for lead times, supplier SKUs and case packs.
3. Then: run one real purchase order through the admin. Receive a short delivery, reject one damaged unit, and look at what happened to Cost per item. Shopify says it will not have changed.
4. After that: decide who orders and when, and with what. Fill the min and max levels for your top 20 products first.
5. Last: run one count at one location and compare the result with what Shopify showed.

Where this map is thin#

We read Shopify's pages and tested none of its newest tools under live sales. The tags above follow Shopify's own wording, and Shopify's help pages change. Check the transition page before you decide.

Our verdict is this. Stay native if you have a handful of suppliers with stable prices and you can live with one cost per variant and manual case rounding. Add an app when you need weighted average cost, landed cost across lines, or supplier defaults, because Shopify itself names those as gaps. The rule flips the moment you cannot say, at month end, what you paid per unit.

Be fair to Stocky when you compare. It came bundled with POS Pro, so some of what you now buy separately used to ride along in that one subscription.