Dead stock after Stocky is inventory that has stopped selling fast enough to justify the cash and space it holds, and the reason to review it before you reorder is to keep from buying more of what is already sitting still. After you leave Stocky, no separate tool flags these items for you, so the review you may have leaned on Stocky for becomes a habit you run yourself from the data the Shopify admin already holds. The mistake to avoid is treating every low count or familiar product as a buy signal, because a slow seller with a low number reads as urgent when it is really stock you should stop feeding. Stocky will not be available after August 31, 2026, and from that date you manage inventory in the Shopify admin and Shopify POS, so this check moves into your own routine. Here is how to look at dead-stock risk before you build a buy list or open a purchase order.
What dead stock after Stocky means in practice
Dead stock is inventory that has effectively stopped selling, the slow movers that keep their cash and shelf space without earning either back. Leaving Stocky does not change what dead stock is, but it changes where you look, since the counts, sales history, and order records that tell you an item has gone quiet now live in the Shopify admin rather than a separate planning app. That makes dead stock after Stocky less a report you open and more a review you run, scanning for products that have drifted from slow to stuck before they sit on a buy list. An item earns the label when its stock is high relative to how fast it sells, the same pattern that makes inventory cash tied up in stock worth a look before any order goes out. Read this way, the question shifts from what is running low to where stock has stopped moving, and that second question is the one this review keeps in front of you.
Start with inventory that is not moving
Dead stock hides in the products that have gone quiet, so the review starts from movement rather than from a count. Shopify’s inventory reports summarize past sales and current stock to help you decide which products to prioritize when restocking, and they are not automatic reorder recommendations and do not calculate reorder quantities, which points you at slow movers without making the call. Two reports carry most of the weight here. The products by sell-through rate report shows what percentage of the stock you held actually sold over a period you choose, so a low sell-through across a fair window marks an item whose stock is barely turning. ABC product analysis grades each variant by its share of revenue, with A-grade variants together accounting for the bulk of sales and C-grade variants the smallest slice, which flags the products where extra stock would add little. Catching a product while it is still only slow-moving inventory, before it stops selling outright, is easier than clearing it later, and the week-to-week view of what is getting low is the job of inventory replenishment after Stocky.
Check recent sales before buying more
A count alone cannot tell you whether stock is dead; only the gap between stock and recent sales can. Read the current on-hand figure straight from the admin, since Shopify inventory CSV files can export current inventory quantities and update quantities for products in each location, and counts done in Shopify POS feed the same numbers. Hold that figure against the pace the item has actually sold at over a recent, comparable window. Steady sales beside a high count is healthy stock at work; weak sales beside a high count is the dead-stock pattern, and it is the mismatch, not the number on its own, that should decide the next move. The same logic flips for a thin count on a fast seller, which is a low-stock timing problem rather than a dead one. Writing the on-hand figure and the recent pace next to each other for every slow mover turns a vague sense of overstock into two plain numbers you can act on.
Separate dead stock from low-stock urgency
The trap after Stocky is that dead stock and a genuine low-stock shortage can show the same small number on one line, yet they call for opposite responses. A low count on a steady seller is a timing problem worth restocking; the same low count on a product nobody is buying is a slow seller you should stop feeding. Plenty of items sit in between, so the safe move is to label each one before acting rather than refill on the number alone. Making that call in depth is the job of dead stock vs low stock, and weighing the cost of running out against the cost of buying too much on every order is the overstock vs stockout tradeoff. The label, not the count, is what should decide whether an item moves toward a buy list or onto a watch-and-clear note.
Use days of cover before adding items to a buy list
Days of cover turns a bare count into a timing you can act on. Days of inventory remaining is an estimate of how long your inventory will last based on average sales rates, calculated as the ending quantity divided by the average quantity sold per day. Against that estimate, a low number splits into two questions: how long the stock will last and how fast it is leaving. A short figure on a steady seller is the real low-stock case that can justify a buy; a long figure, or one the report cannot calculate because there have been no recent sales to divide by, is the dead-stock case where ordering more rarely helps. The second pattern is the one to watch, since an item with no recent movement gives the estimate nothing to work from, and that blank is the answer rather than a reason to refill. The deeper walkthrough of the estimate and its edge cases lives in days of inventory remaining after Stocky.
Decide whether to buy, transfer, hold, discount, or review further
Once each item has a label, more than two responses open up, the ones that get missed when every low number triggers an order. Buy when an item is selling and its cover is short, the clear low-stock case where a Shopify purchase order records the products, their costs, and the quantities ordered from a supplier. Transfer when only one location is short and another holds a surplus, since moving stock you already own beats buying more of it, the call drawn in reorder versus transfer inventory after Stocky. Hold when an item is low but not selling, where the count is a reason to stop ordering rather than restock. Discount or clear when the stock is genuinely stuck and the point is to turn it back into cash you can use. Look closer when a figure looks wrong, reconciling the count before acting on it. These calls get recorded on a buy list before any order exists, the subject of the buy list after Stocky guide, and running that list on a fixed cadence is the idea behind the weekly reorder list.
Check supplier lead time before repeating a buy
Supplier lead time sets how much stock a single buy commits and for how long, so it belongs in the review before you reorder. A long lead time or a large minimum order can push you to buy far more than the recent pace justifies, which is how a steady seller quietly turns into dead stock on the shelf, while a short, reliable lead time lets you order less, more often. The records that hold this history sit in the admin, where suppliers are created in the Shopify admin when you create a purchase order, so the vendor and the order stay together for review. Weighing those constraints against how fast each item sells is part of reorder planning after Stocky. The question to settle here is plain: does the order size match how fast the item sells, or are you funding months of stock just to clear one supplier minimum.
Dead stock after Stocky checklist
A short, repeatable review keeps the call deliberate, so run each item the same way before it becomes an order. Read the on-hand count from the admin export rather than memory, then set it against how the item has actually sold lately. Add days of cover to see whether a moving item is close to running out or simply overstocked, and check the sell-through and revenue picture so a slow seller is caught before you refill it. Pick a response from the item’s real situation, buy, transfer, hold, discount, or look closer, rather than from its count, and factor in supplier lead time and any minimum, since both change the timing and the amount. Write a one-line reason for each call so it is defensible later. One timing note frames the whole habit: historical Stocky data, including old purchase orders and stocktakes, will not move into Shopify automatically after the shutdown, so export the counts and order history you plan from before the cutoff. The Stocky migration checklist covers that sequence, and what to use after Stocky frames the wider tooling choice.
Limitations
Reviewing dead stock after Stocky is a review habit, not a Shopify feature, and this guide does not cover every workflow Stocky used to support. It does not create Shopify purchase orders; those stay native to the Shopify admin, and this review only feeds the decision behind them. None of it is demand forecasting, and the labels you put on each item are judgement calls a person reviews, not numbers to follow blindly. It is not accounting, tax, or financial advice, and it does not value your inventory for your books. It does not replace your own review of each product, and it does not promise that you recover cash, avoid every stockout, or clear every piece of dead stock. Shopify purchase orders, suppliers, inventory records, and inventory reports still need source-backed checks against your own store. For the one slice where supplier reliability is the heart of the decision, the existing kijun app is one option, scoped honestly: it builds 0-100 supplier scorecards from purchase orders recorded in kijun, on supported supplier and vendor records, and it does not forecast demand or reorder for you. See how supplier scorecards work after Stocky.
This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against cited sources through kijun’s editorial workflow. Last updated: 2026-06-30.
Stocky and Shopify are trademarks of Shopify Inc. kijun is not affiliated with or endorsed by Shopify.