You’ve just received an email that hits you like a punch in the gut.
“This is the second time I've had issues with your orders. I purchased an item last week, and now you tell me my order is canceled because it's out of stock. This is unacceptable!”
Panic sets in. You know this is just the beginning. What starts as one bad review can quickly turn into a flood of negative feedback across social media. If you’re restocking inventory manually, inaccurate counts, delayed updates, missed orders (and such emails) are bound to happen, costing you money. But there’s a way out.
Automation saves time, reduces human errors, and ensures stock levels are always accurate. This means faster restocking, more satisfied customers, and ultimately, improved profitability.
In this article, we'll learn how automation can simplify inventory restocking, key features to look at in inventory restocking tools, popular options available, and steps to automate the process.
Why Automate Inventory Restocking?
Managing inventory manually may seem manageable at first, especially for small businesses or those just starting out.
Typically, businesses rely on spreadsheets or paper logs to track stock levels, record sales, and order new inventory. They have to physically count their inventory, rely on manual calculations to predict demand, and place orders with suppliers based on guesswork or outdated data.
While this approach might work in the short term, it is prone to errors, requires a lot of time and effort, and can still lead to issues like stockouts and overstocking.
Automated inventory restocking, on the other hand, saves the day by
- Giving you a real-time view of your inventory
- Predicting demand by analyzing historical sales data
- Making it easy to add more products to your roster
- Automatically triggering reorders on time
- Eliminating manual entry, calculations, and guesswork
Key Features to Look for in Inventory Restocking Tools
Now that you understand automation can solve a lot of your restocking headaches, the next step is finding the right inventory restocking tool that can automate processes.
But with so many options out there, how do you choose the right one for your business? Below are four important features to look for when evaluating your options.
- Real-time inventory tracking
Real-time inventory tracking is important to get an accurate view of your stock levels at any moment, without waiting for the next manual count.
Manual stock counts can quickly become outdated due to delayed updates or human errors. With automation, you can access up-to-the-minute inventory data and adjust your purchase orders (POs) accordingly.
Plus, you can set up alerts when stock drops below your set thresholds, helping you prevent stockouts.
- Demand forecasting and analytics
Accurately predicting demand is one of the hardest parts of inventory management and relying on guesswork or outdated data can lead to irreversible mistakes.
Your inventory restocking tool should automatically predict future demand by analyzing historical sales data, trends, and seasonal patterns. This ensures that you order just the right amount of stock, keeping it aligned with customer demand and reducing overstocks and stockouts.
- Automatic supplier notifications and purchase orders
When you thought you still had 20 units in stock and planned to reorder next week, you suddenly realize you’re out, just when a customer places an order. Manually restocking often comes with such surprises.
Automation makes this easy by setting reorder triggers based on predefined stock levels, and automatically generating and sending purchase orders to suppliers when it’s time to replenish your inventory.
This helps businesses manage thousands of SKUs across multiple suppliers and eliminate gaps in availability without spending hours monitoring inventory or creating purchase orders.
- Integration with Shopify and other business tools
Your inventory restocking tool must integrate with your existing tools, like Shopify or other eCommerce platforms, accounting software, and sales channels.
Manual restocking often requires cross-checking data across different platforms. With automation, data flows smoothly across your tech stack, so that your sales, stock levels, and financial data are always in sync.
For instance, when a sale occurs on your Shopify store, your inventory counts update automatically across all channels, including physical stores and other marketplaces. Such tools also automate cross-channel inventory allocation and stock transfers between locations.
Popular Inventory Restocking Apps for Shopify
If you're running your business on Shopify, here are some of the top inventory restocking tools available in the Shopify App Store.
1. Prediko
Prediko is an AI-powered inventory solution that goes beyond just inventory restocking. It helps you manage every aspect of your supply chain, from production to demand forecasting. With its carefully designed features, it ensures you have the right amount of stock at the right time.
Its core features include:
- Buying Table: Get suggestions on what to buy, when to buy it, and how much, helping you keep the right inventory levels. Receive low-stock alerts when it’s time to restock.
- AI Demand Planning: Prediko’s AI algorithm distributes your revenue target across the next 12 months by analyzing your historical sales data, seasonality, and growth trends.
- Insights & Analytics: Track granular data like product performance, number of POs that are late or due, and excess SKUs, etc with reports delivered straight to your inbox. Get daily notifications about current stock status and automated nudges (based on lead times, stock cover units, and safety stock) to reorder the right number of units.
- Purchase Order Management: Prediko auto-syncs in real-time with Shopify, allowing you to create purchase orders directly from the Buying Table with a click. You can track the POs in real time and connect with suppliers from the app itself or via email.
- Raw Materials Management: Manage bills of materials and made-to-order production, while accurately predicting the demand for raw materials.
2. Sumtracker
Sumtracker is an inventory management tool ideal for both single-store and multi-store owners. It allows you to sync and restock inventory across platforms like Shopify, Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and Etsy.
The platform also makes managing product bundles easy by automatically updating inventory based on bundle components.
3. Assisty
Assisty is yet another inventory management and planning tool that allows you to keep your inventory in line with actual demand. It delivers precise reorder suggestions based on factors like sales data, vendor lead times, inventory thresholds, and seasonal trends.
The tool offers customizable settings for you to adjust inventory management workflows to your specific needs, from setting reorder points to forecasting demand.
4. BrightStock
BrightStock is a dedicated inventory restocking software that allows you to schedule automatic restocks.
You can search through your SKUs, select the products, and choose restock frequency, whether it's once, every few days, weeks, months, or even years. You can also set the restock quantity as a fixed amount or automatically adjust based on existing stock.
5. Qoblex
Lastly, we have Qoblex, an inventory management software that allows you to connect multiple sales channels to one master inventory, which automatically adjusts according to sales.
The platform alerts you when products fall below reorder points, helping prevent stockouts. With reorder and stock-on-hand reports, you can better plan future purchases and backorders. Qoblex also makes it easy to track and manage bundles and their components.
Step-by-Step Process to Automating Inventory Restocking in Shopify
Follow the below four steps to automate your Shopify inventory restocking processes.
- Setting up inventory tracking in Shopify
The first step in automating inventory restocking is setting up proper inventory tracking. This begins with enabling tracking features in your Shopify settings and accurately establishing your initial inventory counts for all your SKUs
Here’s how:
- Go to your Shopify Admin, click on Settings, then select Inventory
- For each product, enable the Track Quantity option
- Assign stock quantities to each product to reflect what you currently have in your store/ warehouse
If you're managing multiple warehouses or stores, you'll need to set up different locations.
- Choosing the right app for your store’s needs
Your next major decision is selecting an inventory restocking app that integrates with Shopify and supports automation. The app should match the complexity of your store, such as whether you sell across multiple channels or have complex product bundles.
For instance, if you sell on Shopify and Amazon, pick an app like Prediko that can sync and restock inventory on both platforms, so you don’t oversell or undersell on either site.
Create a checklist of features you need. Focus on both your current needs and growth trajectory and see how the app can scale with you. Most apps offer free trials to help you test before committing.
Check out our overview of the top five inventory restocking tools above, including Prediko, BrightStock, and others available in the Shopify App Store.
- Integrating the app and configuring automation rules
When you're ready to implement your chosen inventory solution:
1. Install directly from the Shopify App Store, which ensures compatibility and secure data exchange with your store.
2. Follow the app's setup wizard for initial configuration:
- Connect your sales channels
- Import existing inventory data
- Set up supplier information
- Configure warehouse locations
3. Set up your automation rules
- Define reorder points based on product type and sales velocity
- Input supplier details, including lead times and minimum order quantities (MOQs)
- Configure notification preferences
- Set up custom alerts and reports
Fast-moving items might need automatic restocking at 30% of the remaining stock, while slow-moving items could wait until 15%. For instance, if you're selling 10 units weekly and your supplier takes two weeks to deliver, you might want to set your low stock alert at 25-30 units to maintain a safe buffer.
For seasonal items, set up rules based on historical and future demand patterns.
For small-to-medium businesses looking to scale efficiently, these integrations provide enterprise-level inventory management capabilities without the associated overhead. The key is choosing a solution that can grow with your business while maintaining seamless communication with your existing Shopify setup.
Note: Carefully document all your settings and rules for future reference
4. Testing and monitoring the system for smooth operations
After setting everything up, it’s important to test the tool to ensure it’s working correctly. Run mock scenarios and monitor the system for any issues, like missed restocks/alerts or inaccurate inventory counts.
You may also start with a pilot program using 5–10 products and run it for a few weeks while closely monitoring the results. As you gradually expand to more products, maintain regular audits. Even with automation, human supervision remains important, so establish clear cues for intervention.
Remember that successful automation is a gradual process. Starting small and scaling up methodically is far more effective than trying to automate everything at once.
3 Important Tips for Optimizing Inventory Management
If you’re in eCommerce and want to operate smoothly without many bumps, here are three important things to keep in mind.
- Combine restocking automation with demand forecasting
Go from reactive inventory management to predictive by combining restocking automation with demand forecasting. Choose a tool that has both restocking and forecasting features or offers integrations.
Once you have a consolidated view of your data, look for patterns across restocks and sales, not just obvious seasonal trends, but also correlations with events, promotions, etc.
For example, if you notice that sales of certain products spike during rainy seasons or after payday weekends, adjust your restock triggers accordingly. Your tool should automatically forecast such seasonal and growth trends by collecting past data.
Pro tip: Review and adjust your reorder points bi-annually or based on trend lengths.
- Tracking supplier performance to avoid delays
Tracking supplier performance is super important because even the best inventory tools can't help if your suppliers aren't reliable.
Monitor key supplier metrics regularly including lead times, order accuracy, stock quality, and responsiveness. Create a simple scorecard for each supplier that tracks metrics like the percentage of on-time deliveries, complete orders, and average delay time.
This data helps you identify which suppliers need closer management or replacement. For instance, if you notice a supplier usually delivers 5-7 days late, adjust their lead time in your restocking tool to account for this delay.
- Using analytics to refine stock levels over time
Stock levels rarely remain consistent over time. Establish clear metrics for inventory tracking, such as safety stock days, days of cover, MOQs, days until next delivery, etc.A restocking tool typically provides an analytics dashboard to track these metrics at category and individual SKU levels. Use this data to adjust stock levels for each product.
For example, if analytics show that a product consistently sells out despite regular reordering, consider increasing its reorder point or quantity.
Make it a practice to review your analytics dashboard weekly for quick adjustments and conduct deeper quarterly reviews to identify longer-term trends.
Why Automation is a Necessity for Scaling Businesses?
Automation, not just in restocking but across all aspects of your business, can help scale operations with minimal disruptions. Here’s how:
Reducing operational overhead
As order volumes rise, the time spent on purchase orders, supplier communications, and stock tracking grows exponentially. The need for more staff, frequent stock checks, and manual reordering increases operational overhead.
This impacts your profitability through high labor costs and the opportunity cost of time that could be better spent on other high-impact tasks. Automation eliminates repetitive tasks, allowing businesses to scale their operations without proportionally increasing their workforce.
For instance, a business that previously spent 15 hours weekly on manual inventory management can redirect that time to customer service, marketing, or business development with automation.
Improving customer satisfaction and retention
Maintaining stock and fulfilling orders on time becomes a task with high order volume. Manual restocking often leads to delays and subsequent stockouts, leading to customer frustration and unfulfilled orders.
Automated restocking allows customers to find the products they need when they want them helping you maintain quality service. This results in improved customer satisfaction, higher repeat purchase rates, and brand stickiness.
Managing increased inventory volumes and multi-channel sales
While expanding, businesses often venture into new product lines and sell across multiple platforms (website, marketplaces, physical stores). Manually juggling inventory across different stores/channels can lead to costly mistakes such as immediate store transfers, missed orders, and inaccurate stock planning.
Automated restocking tools integrate with multiple sales channels, enabling real-time inventory visibility, coordinated restocking across all platforms, and timely order fulfillment.
How ‘We Are Jolies’ reduced stockouts by 60%?
We Are Jolies (WAJ), a French underwear brand, faced major inventory challenges as it expanded into new product categories.
They struggled with overstocking, recurrent stockouts, and resource allocation. Plus, manual tracking errors and coordinating inventory across multiple warehouses made things worse.
To address this, WAJ began searching for inventory management apps in the Shopify App Store and found Prediko. By using the tool, WAJ gained real-time visibility into sales, revenue, and inventory across all channels and warehouses.
With Prediko’s forecasting capabilities, they were able to predict demand more accurately. The Buying Table feature highlighted products that needed reordering and the automated nudges alerted the team whenever a particular product or SKU was running low, making it easier to take action quickly.
WAJ also set up inventory reorder alerts that automatically notified their suppliers when stock levels were low, expediting the restocking process. All of this enabled them to accurately predict demand, increase their revenue, and restock on time, reducing stockouts by a whopping 60%.
Read the full case study here.
Restock on time, every time with Prediko
Automating inventory restocking in Shopify can help you keep repetitive tasks at bay while reducing stockouts, excess inventory, and order fulfillment times. With the right tools, processes, and best practices, you can ensure that your products are always available for customers.
If you managed to reach the end of this article, you’re all set to take the next step now. Explore the best inventory management apps for Shopify and start automating today. Start with Prediko’s 14-day free trial,
