Stocky alternative: receiving stock after Stocky shut down

Short version: Stocky stopped working after 31 August 2026. Shopify admin now has native purchase orders, suppliers and transfers, which cover ordering and receiving quantities. The gaps are forecasting and reorder suggestions, receiving paperwork, and keeping cost per item current from what suppliers actually invoice. Pick a replacement based on which of those you actually used Stocky for.

What happened to Stocky

Stocky was Shopify's own inventory app for purchase orders, receiving, stocktakes and basic forecasting, mostly used by shops on Shopify POS. Shopify removed it from the App Store in early 2026 and its help center states that the Stocky app will no longer be available after August 31st, 2026. Shopify's advice was to move to the inventory features built into Shopify admin.

If you're reading this after the shutdown, you have probably already found that the work Stocky did didn't disappear. Deliveries still arrive, suppliers still send invoices, and someone still has to get quantities and costs into the store.

What Shopify admin now does natively

Through 2025 and 2026 Shopify moved most of Stocky's core receiving workflow into the admin:

Purchase orders under Products › Purchase orders, with suppliers, payment terms, supplier currency, a reference number and notes. You can add lines by search, barcode scan or CSV import, and costs pre-fill from the last purchase order or from the variant's cost per item.
Transfers linked to purchase orders. Once a purchase order is marked Ordered, you create a transfer from it and receive stock on that transfer, in admin or in Shopify POS. Shopify's June 2026 changelog added partial deliveries tracked as separate shipments.
Accept, reject or cancel per line when receiving, with notes, so a short or damaged delivery is recorded rather than silently absorbed.
Adjustment history and reports showing who changed which quantity, when and why.

For a shop that only used Stocky to raise a purchase order and tick off the delivery, that may be enough. Our step-by-step purchase order guide walks through it.

What's still missing

Merchants and app developers in the Shopify Community have listed the gaps between Stocky and native purchase orders in detail. The ones that come up most:

Forecasting and reorder suggestions. Native purchase orders don't suggest what to reorder from sales history, and don't store supplier lead times or minimum order quantities.
Receiving paperwork. There's no separate receiver document or label printing tied to what actually arrived.
Costs from the invoice. A purchase order records what you expected to pay. The supplier's invoice records what you did pay, including price changes, case pricing and freight. Shopify's help articles on receiving describe quantities and shipment cost adjustments, but not updating each product's Cost per item from the invoice. Check this in your own store, but plan for keeping costs current yourself.
Getting the supplier's document in. Shopify can import purchase order lines from a CSV you prepare. It can't read the PDF, scan or photo the supplier sends.

The five kinds of Stocky replacement

Type	Good for	Watch out for
Native purchase orders only	Small catalogues, few suppliers, POS shops	Costs and invoice lines are still typed by hand
Purchase order and receiving apps	Shops that want Stocky-style receiving, labels and receiver sheets	Most still start from a purchase order you build, not the supplier's invoice
Forecasting and planning tools	Shops that relied on Stocky's reorder suggestions	Higher prices; more setup than receiving needs
Invoice and price list import apps	Shops whose pain is retyping supplier documents and keeping costs right	Check how they handle scans, languages, pack sizes and mistakes
Full inventory or ERP systems	Multi-channel, wholesale or manufacturing businesses	Cost, migration effort, and Shopify becomes a sales channel rather than the system of record

How to choose: four questions

What did you actually use Stocky for? Look at the last three months. If it was mainly receiving deliveries and updating costs, you don't need a forecasting system.
What do your suppliers send? A tidy CSV from every supplier is easy with native tools. PDFs, scans, phone photos and invoices in other languages are where most of the time goes.
Do your costs matter to you? If you use Shopify's profit reports or watch margins, cost per item has to be updated every time a supplier changes a price. See why profit reports depend on it.
How many locations receive stock? Make sure the tool lets you choose the location per delivery. Our multi-location guide covers the details.

A simple post-Stocky receiving workflow

For most small and mid-sized shops, this covers what Stocky did for receiving without a heavy system:

Raise a native purchase order when you order, if you want a record of what's expected. (Optional: many shops ordering by email skip it.)
When the delivery and invoice arrive, count the boxes against the invoice, not against the purchase order. Short or damaged lines get noted.
Receive the quantities at the right location, using the purchase order's transfer or an adjustment with the reason Received.
Update Cost per item for every line whose price changed, converting case prices to unit costs.
Check the margin impact of any price rise and reprice if needed.

Steps 3 to 5 are where the hours go, because they mean reading the supplier's document line by line.

Where Box to Shelf fits

Box to Shelf is an invoice import app, the fourth row in the table above. It doesn't create purchase orders or forecast demand. It takes the supplier's own document (PDF, scan, photo, CSV or Excel, in seven languages, uploaded or emailed to your store's private address), matches each line to your products by SKU, barcode or name, checks the totals, converts pack sizes, and shows quantity and cost changes with their margin impact. Nothing changes until you approve it, and you can undo the last apply. It works alongside Shopify's native purchase orders or on its own.

Questions

When did Stocky shut down?

Shopify removed Stocky from the App Store in February 2026, and the app stopped working after 31 August 2026.

Does Shopify have purchase orders without Stocky?

Yes. Shopify admin has native purchase orders under Products > Purchase orders. Stock is received through a transfer linked to the purchase order.

Do I need a full inventory system to replace Stocky?

Only if you used Stocky for forecasting or replenishment. If you mainly used it to receive deliveries and update costs, Shopify's purchase orders plus an invoice import tool usually cover it.

Sources

Shopify changes its admin often. Steps were checked against the Shopify Help Center in November 2026; if a menu has moved, the help center links above have the current version.