Inventory Problems, Solved
Every Shopify merchant faces the same inventory challenges. Dead stock, stockouts, spreadsheet chaos, China lead times. Here is how to fix each one.
What inventory problems does Canopy solve?
Every Shopify merchant faces the same inventory challenges. Here is how to fix them. Whether it is dead stock eating your cash, stockouts ruining customer relationships, China lead times catching you out, or spreadsheets breaking under the weight of your SKU count — each of these problems has a repeatable solution. Some you can fix manually today. Others require a proper inventory system. This page covers both.
Stocky is shutting down
Shopify is permanently retiring the Stocky app on 31 August 2026. If Stocky is your purchase order and demand forecasting tool, you need a replacement before that date.
Find a Stocky replacementDead stock is eating your cash
Slow-moving and unsellable inventory locks up working capital, takes up warehouse space, and shows up on your balance sheet as an asset that cannot be realised. Most brands have more dead stock than they realise.
How to identify and eliminate dead stockNo idea when to reorder
Reordering too early wastes cash. Reordering too late causes stockouts. Without a calculated reorder point that accounts for your sales velocity and supplier lead times, you are guessing — and eventually getting it wrong.
Calculate your reorder pointsSpreadsheets cannot keep up
A spreadsheet can track inventory for ten SKUs. At 200+ SKUs, it breaks down: formulas get out of sync, people overwrite each other's data, and you lose confidence in the numbers. It is not a systems problem — it is a scale problem.
Move to a proper stock control systemChina lead times cause stockouts
Sea freight from China takes 4–8 weeks. If you place orders reactively — after stock gets low — you will run out before the next shipment arrives. Managing China lead times requires forward planning, not reactive ordering.
China importing stock management guideManual goods-in takes hours
Reconciling a delivery line by line against a purchase order, then manually updating Shopify stock levels, can take a whole day for a large shipment. Barcode scanning cuts this to minutes.
How to set up barcode scanning on ShopifyCan't see true profit margins
Most Shopify merchants know their product cost, but not their landed cost. Add freight, duty, port charges, and currency conversion and your actual cost per unit is often 20–40% higher than your supplier invoice. Without landed cost, your P&L is wrong.
Calculate your true profit marginsOverselling on Shopify
When stock levels are inaccurate — because your inventory system and Shopify are not properly synced — you will take orders you cannot fulfil. Overselling destroys customer trust and creates costly manual refund and apology processes.
Fix your Shopify inventory managementThe pattern behind every inventory problem
Almost every inventory problem on this page has the same root cause: decisions being made without accurate, real-time data. You cannot prevent a stockout you did not see coming. You cannot eliminate dead stock you did not know existed. You cannot improve your margins without knowing your true landed cost per unit.
The fix is not always software. Some of these problems can be solved with a better spreadsheet structure, a clearer reorder process, or a frank conversation with your supplier about lead time variability. We will tell you which approach is appropriate for your stage of growth.
But at some point — typically around 300 SKUs, 3 staff, or £500k in revenue — the manual approach breaks. You spend more time maintaining your inventory system than using it. That is the point at which Canopy becomes the right investment.
Inventory questions answered
The most common inventory management questions from Shopify merchants.
The most common problem is not knowing how many weeks of stock you have left — specifically at the SKU level. Most merchants know their total unit count, but not how long that stock will last at current sales rates. This single blind spot leads to both stockouts (ordering too late) and dead stock (ordering too much of slow sellers). The weeks cover metric solves this, and you can calculate it today using our free inventory calculator.
Spreadsheets fail for three reasons at scale: they are static (not connected to live Shopify data), they are error-prone (manual entry and formula maintenance create mistakes), and they are single-user (multiple people cannot update the same sheet simultaneously without conflicts). Beyond about 200 SKUs and 3 staff, the maintenance overhead of a spreadsheet-based inventory system starts to cost more than a proper inventory tool.
Preventing stockouts with long lead times requires calculating your reorder point correctly. Your reorder point should be: (average daily sales × supplier lead time in days) + safety stock. For a product selling 10 units per day with a 60-day sea freight lead time, your reorder point is 600 units plus safety stock. Most brands calculate this too conservatively — they use average lead time rather than maximum lead time, which means a delayed shipment immediately causes a stockout.
Based on our analysis of Shopify brand inventories, the average brand has between 8% and 15% of their active SKUs in a dead or near-dead stock state (over 52 weeks of cover at current sales rates). The most common causes are over-ordered sizes in apparel, seasonal stock that did not sell through, and discontinued variants that were not cleared. Identifying dead stock is the first step — the second is having a clearance strategy that recovers cash without destroying your brand perception.
Your reorder point is the stock level at which you place a replenishment order — calculated based on your sales rate and supplier lead time. Safety stock is the buffer quantity you hold above your reorder point to absorb unexpected demand spikes or supplier delays. You need both: the reorder point tells you when to order, safety stock tells you how much extra to hold. Many brands set a reorder point without any safety stock calculation, which works fine in normal conditions but fails the moment there is any variability in demand or lead time.
Stop firefighting inventory problems
Canopy gives Shopify brands real-time stock clarity, automated reorder suggestions, and a supplier portal that eliminates email chaos. Get early access.
Fix your inventory operations
How Canopy solves every problem on this page — automatically.
Deep-dive guides on each inventory challenge.
How Canopy compares to Linnworks, OrderWise, Brightpearl and more.
Seed at £59/mo, Grow at £129/mo, Scale at £199/mo.
Find out how much stock you actually have, right now.
Calculate when to reorder every product based on real lead times.