Where suppliers come from, how to assign products, which terms change the forecast, and how the app learns each supplier's real lead time.
A supplier is who you buy a product from. The app groups recommendations and purchase orders by supplier, and uses each supplier's terms to decide when to order and how much.
Where suppliers come from
On install, the app creates one supplier per vendor set on your Shopify products, and assigns each product to its vendor. If you add new vendors in Shopify later, use More actions → Import suppliers from vendors on the Suppliers screen. It never undoes assignments you made by hand.
You can also create a supplier yourself with Create supplier.
Products with no supplier are grouped under No supplier yet. Everything works, but they end up in one recommendation instead of one per supplier. To fix it:
- in Inventory, filter by No supplier, select products and use Assign to supplier; or
- on a supplier's page, use Assign products; or
- on a product's page, use Assign supplier.
Primary and alternate suppliers
Each product is planned against one supplier: its primary. If you assign a product that already has a supplier to a second one, the second becomes an alternate: its price and terms are kept for reference, but the forecast keeps planning against the primary. Alternates show a badge next to the product name on the supplier's page.
The terms that change the forecast
Edit them with Edit supplier:
- Lead time (days) — how long they take to deliver after you place an order. It decides how early you have to order. If you leave it empty, the app uses 14 days.
- Order cycle (days) — how often you plan to order from them. Each order is sized to last until the next one. Default: 30 days.
- Minimum order value — what the whole order must be worth. The dashboard warns you when a recommendation falls short; it does not add units by itself.
- Minimum units per article — the fewest units they sell of any one product. Suggested quantities go up to it.
- Currency — what their orders are written in.
The rest — Our account number, Payment terms, contact details, address — goes on the purchase order PDF. Notes are for you and are never printed.
Some terms can be set per product, with Edit product supplier on the supplier's page:
- Supplier SKU — their own code for the article, printed on orders instead of your SKU.
- Unit cost they charge. If empty, the product's cost in Shopify is used.
- Case pack — quantities are rounded up to a multiple of it.
- Minimum units per article — overrides the supplier's. Leave it empty to use the supplier's; type 0 if this product has no minimum.
Lead time: estimate, confirmed, measured
The lead time is the number that moves your order dates the most, so the app tells you where it comes from:
- Estimate — the supplier is still on the 14-day default. Products show Estimated lead time, and the dashboard says on a 14-day estimate under the order date. The setup checklist asks you to confirm it.
- Set by you — you saved a lead time. Saving the supplier, even with the same 14 days, confirms it. You can confirm several at once from the Suppliers list: select them and use Set lead time.
- Measured — once 3 purchase orders to a supplier have fully arrived, the app measures how long they actually took, from the day you marked each order as sent to the day it arrived. It plans against the typical wait (the median) and also shows a slow but realistic one: 9 deliveries in 10 arrive within it ("at worst").
A lead time you set by hand is never overwritten. The measured value replaces only the 14-day estimate; if you set your own, the supplier's page shows what we measured next to it so you can decide.
For measurements to be accurate, mark orders as sent on the day you actually send them, and record arrivals on the day they arrive. Orders with a wait over 365 days are ignored.
Merging and deleting
- Merge into another supplier moves all its products and purchase orders onto the other supplier. Use it when the same supplier exists twice (for example, two vendor spellings).
- Delete supplier is only possible when it has no purchase orders; otherwise merge it. Its products stay, planned against their alternate supplier if they have one, or under No supplier yet.