Take a look at the latest from our team.
How Shopify merchants forecast demand, cut stockouts, and stop pulling numbers by hand — plus what we're building.
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When a Report Needs a Chart, and When the Table Is the Point
Look up a value, use a table. Show a change, use a chart. A buyer works from one kind of report and a meeting reads the other.
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The Report That Only Arrives When Something Is Wrong
Turn off send-when-empty on an exception report and the email showing up becomes the alert.
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The Purchase List Is Where a Buy Plan Waits for a Second Look
Some buying decisions are finished the moment you make them. Most aren’t. The Purchase List is where the unfinished ones wait while you review the rest of the plan.
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Guides
Moving a SKU to a New Supplier Without a Gap in the Middle
Switching suppliers changes lead time, minimums and cost at once. Size the last order from the old source so it lasts until the new one is sellable.
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Guides
Last Year’s Week Isn’t This Year’s Week
A year-over-year number only means something if both periods hold the same kinds of selling days. Here’s how to line them up, and how to tell a calendar artifact from a real change in demand.
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Guides
Stock It or Dropship It: A Decision You Make Per SKU
Dropship versus stock isn’t a choice you make once for the whole business. You make it for each product, using numbers you already have.
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Guides
Nobody Has Updated That Cost Field in Two Years
A unit cost entered at launch never throws an error. It just keeps telling your reports what a product cost the last time anyone checked.
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Guides
Plan the factory shutdown before it plans you
A supplier's Lunar New Year or August closure isn't a demand spike. It's a temporary lead time that has to cover the closure and the backlog after it, ordered before the slowdown in front of it.
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Onboarding a New Buyer: Let Them Ask the App Instead of You
A new buyer's first week is mostly small lookups — store questions answered from live data, how-to questions answered from the knowledge base — so judgment calls are the only ones that reach the owner.
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Your First Answer Is Rarely the Report You Want
Start with a small question you can check, add one measure, window or limit per turn, and save the report once it answers the question you started with.
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For a Dropship Order, the Tracking Number Is the Fulfillment
When you hold no stock, nothing arrives to receive. The supplier's shipment is the last physical event, and entering its tracking number is what fulfills the Shopify order.
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Your SKU Isn't Your Supplier's SKU
Two names for one product. Store the supplier's code and terms next to yours, so the link lives in one place, not in someone's head.
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Introducing Assisty Stock Alerts
A low-stock alert fires on a number you picked. This one compares days of stock against the supplier's lead time.
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The column your team needs that no PO template has
The side spreadsheet exists because the purchase order has nowhere to put what your team actually tracks.
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Guides
Was Last Month's Forecast Any Good? Bias and Error Need Different Fixes
Score last month's forecast against what actually sold. A one-sided miss is bias — change an input. A noisy miss around the right center — change the buffer.
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Guides
Lead time ends when the stock is sellable, not when the truck arrives
Define lead time as PO issued to first unit sellable, measure it from your own receipts, and store the whole span on the supplier.
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Guides
Sizing the last order you'll ever place for a SKU
A final buy is sized to hit zero on a date, not to cover demand forever — forecast to the end date, subtract what's already on its way, and decide where the leftovers go before you order.
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Guides
One order, two warehouses: deciding where the stock lands
A reorder hides two decisions — how much in total, and which location receives it. Plan the quantity pooled, then choose the destination last.
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Introducing Assisty Dropship POs: one purchase order per supplier, from every paid order
A new, free app for merchants who hold no stock: each paid order becomes one purchase order per supplier with the customer's ship-to, and the supplier's tracking number fulfills the order in Shopify. With a screencast.
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Guides
The Week You Ran a Sale Is Still in Your Average
A discount week inflates recorded demand, then hides inside your 90-day average. Four checks to run before it sizes your next order — and when to plan off it anyway.
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Guides
Your Inventory Budget Is a Calendar, Not a Number
A monthly spending ceiling hides the week the cash actually runs out — plan the buy against dated commitments, supplier terms, and sell-through instead.
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Ask it, save it, or schedule it: three homes for one question
Where a question should live has almost nothing to do with how hard it is — and almost everything to do with how often the answer is needed, and by whom.
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A bigger order won't save a SKU that runs out in six days
When days of cover run shorter than the lead time, the shortfall is denominated in days — and quantity is the wrong lever.
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When a scheduled report stops answering the question it was built for
A schedule captures a report's definition the day you save it — so when the catalog, locations, and vendors move, the file keeps arriving on time and quietly stops answering the question.
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Prove the Rule Before You Let It Draft Orders
Before a reorder rule can spend money, put it through three proofs: ask what next Monday's run would include, let the first PO land untouched, and compare it with the list you'd have built by hand.
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Guides
Trend or Noise? Telling a Real Demand Shift From a Good Week
One strong week is usually noise. Three checks — across variants, across weeks, across the store — tell you when demand actually moved before you resize a buy.
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Guides
Your Marketplace and Your Store Are Drawing From the Same Shelf
When a marketplace and your own store draw on the same units, plan on the combined pull — and aim the buffer at the channel you can least afford to fail.
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Guides
Gross Units Sold Is Not How Many You Need to Buy
Gross units counts every shipment, including the ones the customer always meant to send back. Net units counts the ones that never came back as stock. Replacement is the number in between.
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Guides
New Products Have No Sales History. You Still Have to Buy Them.
A new SKU has no history to forecast from. Size the first order off a comparable product and a short cover period, then let the real forecast take over.
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Guides
How to Spot-Check a Reorder Suggestion in Thirty Seconds
A reorder suggestion is four lines and a total. Read velocity, cover period, incoming, and on hand in order, check each against something you already know, and fix the input — never the total — when one disagrees.
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The SKUs That Should Never Auto-Order
Two tests — can the math see this SKU, and could you unwind a wrong order — decide which items belong in an automation rule's scope.
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Put a Dollar Figure on Last Month's Stockouts
Turn last month's gaps into a SKU-level dollar figure — and schedule it to land before the next buying review.
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Telling the buy plan what your data doesn't know yet
The promo, the influencer post, the supplier date that moved — none of it is in your sales history. Say it in plain English and the buy plan recomputes.
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Never face a blank chat box: let the page suggest the question
The hardest part of asking your data a question is knowing which one to ask — so the page you're on suggests it, and the numbers carry click-to-ask marks.
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The purchase order isn't finished when you send it
Sending the PO is the middle of the job. What actually lands on the dock — and whether the record says so — is what keeps the next suggested quantity honest.
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Guides
Working backward from your seasonal peak to the day you have to order
A dated peak doesn't wait. Count backward through receiving, transit, and supplier lead time to find the last day you can safely commit the pre-season order.
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Guides
Order weekly or monthly? What your reorder cycle really costs
Ordering more often cuts the stock you carry between deliveries; ordering less often cuts freight and paperwork. How to price that trade per supplier.
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Guides
When the Supplier's Minimum Is Bigger Than Your Need
A supplier minimum is a floor on the order, not on the SKU that tripped it. Clear it by pulling forward the items you'd buy soon anyway — not by overbuying one line.
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Guides
Forecast at the Variant, Because That's What You Buy
A product-level forecast averages away the size and color mix that decides your order — and the per-variant supplier rules that shape it.
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Guides
Your Sales History Lies After a Stockout
A day you were out of stock records zero demand, not zero interest — and every average built on that history shrinks your next order.
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One Automation Rule Per Supplier, Not One for the Whole Catalog
A shared reorder schedule fixes one review period for every supplier — set each rule's cadence and scope from that supplier's own lead time instead.
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Where your reports should land: Sheets, Drive, and Shopify Flow
Email, Google Sheets, Google Drive, or a Shopify Flow trigger — pick the destination by what someone does next, not by habit.
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What a Unit Actually Costs: Landed Cost on the PO Line
The quoted supplier price is an input, not your cost — freight, duty, and tax allocated per PO line make the number you receive against real.
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Overstock Is a Stockout in Reverse
A stockout is loud; overstock is silent capital. Days of cover makes it visible — and there's a ladder of things to do with it besides reorder.
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Suggestions Are Only as Real as Your Supplier Setup
Lead time, reorder cycle, min stock cover days — the supplier fields a suggested quantity is actually computed from, and the fastest ways to get them in.
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Guides
The Real Cost of a Stockout for a DTC Brand
The missed order is the one cost that stops the moment stock lands — count the ad spend, the ranking decay, and the customer who bought elsewhere.
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Guides
What Shopify Inventory Planning Looks Like in 2026
Planning has moved from a spreadsheet you rebuild every cycle to a forecast-driven loop that recomputes itself — what changed, and what the new loop looks like.
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Guides
How Long Should You Forecast? Match the Horizon to Your Lead Time
A 30-day forecast can't answer a 60-day buying question. Set the window to the supplier wait plus the gap until your next order.
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One snapshot isn't a trend: tracking inventory month over month
Your live stock number is a balance, not a history. A monthly scheduled report — every run kept with its file — turns it into the series month-end actually needs.
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Case Rounding and Max-Stock Caps: How a Suggested Quantity Becomes Orderable
The math gives you a quantity; your supplier ships cases and your shelf has a ceiling. Inside the step that turns a raw suggestion into an orderable one.
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Ordering to a Budget: Spending on the SKUs With the Most at Stake
When cash won't cover the whole suggestion list, rank the buy plan by money at risk and fund down the list until the budget runs out.
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Splitting a Reorder Across Suppliers, Without the Mess
One buy plan spans several suppliers — group it once and let Atlas split it into a purchase order per supplier, priced and ready to send.
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Guides
Why Lead-Time Variability, Not Average Lead Time, Sizes Your Buffer
Two suppliers can share the same average lead time and still need very different safety stock — because a buffer covers the spread, and the average throws the spread away.
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Guides
Reorder Point vs. Forecast: Which Signal Should Trigger a PO?
A static reorder point drifts out of date. See when a demand forecast is the better trigger for your next purchase order.
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Automate the reorder, keep the approval
Routine purchase orders draft themselves on schedule — and still wait for your sign-off before anything reaches a supplier.
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Stop pulling the same report every Monday
Build the report once. Assisty delivers it on your cadence, where you already work.
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Guides
Safety stock, explained: how much buffer inventory you actually need
The buffer that absorbs demand and lead-time variability — and how to size it so your best sellers stay in stock.
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On hand is only half the number
A reorder suggestion that ignores the stock already on a truck will tell you to buy it twice.
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Use Cases
One dashboard, two stores: how BowWow Pet Tags unified UK and Australia
Two Shopify stores in two regions, and one inventory picture that finally reconciled.
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Use Cases
Ana Hana Flower cut 70% of its manual reporting work
A Singapore florist with no comprehensive reporting now runs on dashboards its whole team can read.
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Use Cases
Glamswag planned a bigger ad budget — and forecast the inventory it would need
Turning up the ad budget turns up demand — so they forecast the inventory it would need first.
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Use Cases
Nashly Nails stopped running out of its best sellers
A gel polish retailer kept selling out of the exact products customers came for.
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Data drill-down: from a number to the reason behind it
Every metric hides the rows that moved it — filter, regroup, and open them.
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