From Reorder Recommendation to Shopify Purchase Order — Without Retyping
Knowing what to reorder is half the job; getting it onto a purchase order is the other half. How Stockful exports a CSV in Shopify's purchase-order format so you import onto a native PO instead of retyping it.
There are two halves to restocking. The first is working out what to order: which SKUs, how many, and when. The second is getting that decision onto an actual purchase order your supplier can act on. Most tools help with the first half and leave you to do the second by hand — reading numbers off one screen and retyping them into another.
That retyping is where mistakes creep in: a transposed quantity, a wrong unit cost, a SKU matched to the wrong variant. It’s also just slow, especially on a big order.
Shopify has native purchase orders now
As Shopify absorbs Stocky’s operational features into the admin, purchase orders now live natively in Shopify. That’s a good place for them — supplier records, tax, and receiving all sit where the rest of your operation already runs.
What Shopify’s purchase orders don’t do is tell you what to put on them. The quantities, the unit costs, the decision about which items even need reordering this week — that still has to come from somewhere. For most merchants, “somewhere” is a spreadsheet and a gut feeling.
Closing the gap
Stockful’s job is the first half, done properly: it works out what to reorder from your sales history, out-of-stock-aware velocity and lead times, so the order starts from real numbers rather than a hunch. The new part is how it hands that off to the second half.
On the reorder recommendations page you pick what to order — a single item, or bulk-select a batch. You review a preview of each line: product, SKU, quantity, unit cost and total. Then you export a CSV in Shopify’s purchase-order format and import it onto a new purchase order in the Shopify admin.
On import, the quantities and unit costs arrive pre-filled, and each line is matched to the right product and variant by SKU or barcode — so nothing lands on the wrong item. Supplier and tax are set on the purchase order in Shopify, exactly as you’d set them on any Shopify PO. No numbers get retyped, and nothing is guessed twice.
Why export-and-import, not another PO tool
It’s a fair question: why not sync purchase orders automatically over the API? Because that would mean running purchase orders inside Stockful, and then you’re maintaining a second system that has to stay in step with Shopify.
Keeping it to export-then-import is deliberate. Purchase orders are created and managed in Shopify; Stockful feeds them and gets out of the way. That’s lighter than bolting on a standalone PO or inventory-planning app — no separate place to check, no double entry, no drift between two copies of the same order. You get the recommendation and the pre-filled CSV; Shopify keeps being the system of record.
The point of a recommendation
A reorder recommendation is only worth anything if acting on it is easy. If turning it into a real order means half an hour of careful retyping, the good numbers get watered down by manual error — or the order gets put off. Handing a pre-filled, SKU-matched CSV straight to Shopify’s native purchase orders keeps the decision and the action a single, quick step.
You can see the full flow on the Shopify purchase orders page, and it’s included on every plan — the same reorder recommendations and export are there whether you’re on Starter or Pro.
Get started free at stockful.app with a 14-day free trial. Stockful works out what to reorder and exports it straight into Shopify’s native purchase orders.
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