The sundowning of Stocky in August feels like a nightmare right now. My business doesn’t distinguish between vendors and suppliers when purchasing so going to Shopify’s native purchase order interface also means creating supplier profiles for all the vendors even though all of my products are already associated with the correct vendors.
Has anyone made an app that does EXACTLY what stocky does? I’m desperate for a budget option that can generate POs from specific vendors and utilize filters during generation.
Exactly, no. That would flirt with trademark/copyright infringement. However, FyreTrail is likely something you need to look into simply because it handles the Purchase Order flow really well. The key difference between Stocky and FyreTrail is that Stocky (as I see it) handled Shopify’s product catalog for retailers whereas FyreTrail handles retailers and removes the concern about Shopify’s catalog from retailers.
FyreTrail approaches the process for retailers who need to order products from their Suppliers. It recognizes a “Vendor” really is a Supplier (who sells the item to you) and a Brand (what sells to a Supplier or you) and doesn’t do the silly things that Stocky does with making you choose a Supplier or a Vendor when creating a PO.
On top of that, it also recognizes that your Products shouldn’t have to be recreated 15 times to get them into Shopify. Do it once - on the PO and doesn’t force you to enter the things you don’t need to know to get a product ordered. Worry about that when it gets here and when you’re ready to sell it, not when you want to order it.
So, FyreTrail is process oriented… to YOUR process… with a little help along the way. Give it a look then reach out if you have any questions.
Hey there @MurphysBootShop
Several merchants share that the best way around this is to abandon Stocky’s vendor system and use vendor tags or metafields to organize the product information, and then place the orders through a third party system that uses filtering logic.
Solutions like Cin7 Core, Sumtracker, or Katana are usually the best alternatives to Stocky’s PO creation and vendor-specific filtering. They provide you the ability to group products dynamically and generate POs without having to recreate supplier records as you must on the Shopify native app.
And if you really want to keep it light, using tagged products with bulk export apps like Matrixify (formerly Excelify) can also simulate the basics of a PO workflow.
What type of business do you run and what volumes you process ?
Depending on your business specificities, some apps will be better than others, or sometimes, no apps at all are needed as jobs can be done in the background using logic and syncs between your systems.
Tell us a bit more about your business and workflow,
I run a small shoe store which means that frequently I am ordering 2-12 pairs at a time. Currently when using Stocky: I will select a vendor, under “forecast type” I use “target stock level” and set it to 1, apply a filter to only add items with a relevant tag, and then create the PO. Being able to limit my PO’s reach by tags is crucial as my store’s inventory contains dozens of styles and odd sizes I normally have no intention of ordering.
I’m certainly biased but the best solution for the Stocky sunset is SKUSavvy. Stocky has a lot of logic based components and SKUSavvy is designed to mimic nearly exactly what stocky does. This includes automated purchase orders with min/max levels, automated allocation of stock across your locations, check-in barcode scanning and printing, complete inventory management with 3D bin mapping and bin-to-bin replenishment, as well as guided pick routing, fulfillment and shipping automation.
Additionally, SKUSavvy is perfectly integrated with Shopify providing a dual way sync across all key data types and for all Shopify versions and POS.
While this is not a perfect replacement, if you are looking for the de facto replacement for Stocky, this will certainly do it. This is not free, so its hard to complete there, but at $179/month for a full WMS, this is also not break the bank type of system.
Yeah, I’m not even gonna remotely consider a solution that costs more than $100 per month. We pay so much for shopify already, I can’t justify more than $1000 to our yearly operating costs for a piece of functionality that used to be free on this POS and our previous system.
that makes sense. It sounds like the biggest hurdle isn’t learning a new purchasing workflow it’s having to recreate operational relationships that already existed.
If your replenishment process already knows which products belong to which vendor, having to manually assign suppliers across the catalog before you can even generate a PO creates a lot of upfront work before you see any benefit.
It seems like preserving those supplier relationships during the transition is almost as important as the PO functionality itself.
That’s a tough spot, and I probably wouldn’t start over by manually rebuilding everything either.
If I were evaluating replacements today, I’d focus less on feature checklists and more on migration effort.
A few questions I’d ask are:
• Can it preserve or import existing supplier relationships?
• Can it generate POs using the workflow I’m already familiar with?
• Does it support receiving and inventory updates without adding extra manual work?
• How much catalog setup is required before I can create my first PO?
If a solution requires weeks of rebuilding master data before it delivers value, that migration cost becomes part of the decision too.
Out of curiosity, roughly how many SKUs are you managing today?
I’m going to tack on to @kthoppae 's evaluation, but I really think any valid solution needs to give you an easy way to transition from Stocky. The caveat to you not wanting to spend money on an app for features that used to be free with Pro is that many inexpensive solutions don’t offer an easy transition system. And, if they do, the functionality you need is lacking. I’m not calling any single app out at all (I’m not even thinking of any), but the reality just boils down to how much money an app needs to make simply to be viable.
Ok, so it’s a tradeoff… you want an easy transition? Might be hard to find an app that gives you this and gives you the features you NEED for the cost that you’re willing to digest.
I’m not trying to get you to come to FyreTrail… I’m really not. I would love to have you, but if FyreTrail is not something you’re even wanting to look at because it costs money then I get it - your priority is then budget and that’s completely fair and understandable. But… what it does do is save you time both in the migration (we have one) and the day to day uses that it will very likely pay for itself many times over. Ultimately it’s totally your choice to either take that risk after the 14 day free trial or recognize it during the trial and take advantage of it afterwards.
So what if it’s not FyreTrail? Evaluate, weigh your options, weigh the amount of work you do now and in the future, then decide, “Is this worth my money given what it does for me?” Then choose the app or direction that meets those needs best. You’re first, your store is first, not some app (yes, even my app) that can’t meet those needs.
@MurphysBootShop just wanted to add a comment here that’s hopefully helpful - and isn’t a paid solution.
With Stocky going away, and our own users asking us for a robust way to handle POs and light inventory management / reordering with Shopify; we decided to build our own solution, but for free.
We think Shopify merchants deserve a robust, stable and long term way to handle Purchase Orders (and the re-ordering/receiving processes that come with them) in a way that fits their business, and not at an additional cost. We’d love to hear any feedback as we continue to build more features to make this a helpful home for Shopify store merchants coming from Stocky!