If you used Stocky to keep tabs on your suppliers and you are now working from Shopify alone, you still need a way to judge which suppliers are worth reordering from and which ones cause you trouble. This article gives you a manual spreadsheet supplier scorecard you can build by hand, one row per supplier, using the supplier, purchase order, and receiving information already in your Shopify admin. It is aimed at merchants and small operations teams with a small to medium supplier list who want a repeatable monthly review rather than a one-off audit. The fields below are deliberately qualitative: you write down what you observed, not a score.
Why a supplier scorecard helps after Stocky
Once your purchasing workflow runs on Shopify’s built-in purchase orders, the raw signals you need to judge a supplier are already there: who you ordered from, what you ordered, what arrived, and what came in damaged or short. What is missing is the review layer that turns that activity into a per-supplier view you can read in a minute.
Shopify’s own supplier management guidance describes comparing suppliers on factors such as reliability, product quality, delivery times, and cost, and keeping notes and documentation on each supplier relationship. A scorecard is one practical way to do that, and it fits inside the broader job of tracking supplier performance after Stocky. It is not a native Shopify feature, and it is not a Stocky replacement. It is a spreadsheet you keep next to Shopify and update on a regular schedule.
The point of keeping it qualitative is to avoid false precision. You do not need a formula to know that a supplier who shipped three short orders in a row is a problem. Writing down what you saw, in plain language, is enough to drive the next conversation with that supplier. If you are still planning the move off Stocky, the Stocky migration checklist covers the steps that come before you start a review like this.
How to use this template
This is a manual spreadsheet. You build it yourself in whatever tool you already use, you fill it in by hand, and you update it on a regular cadence (monthly works well for most small teams). Shopify does not calculate, generate, score, or maintain this scorecard for you. It is a review layer you put on top of the data Shopify already records.
Use one row per supplier. The columns are the fields described in the sections below, grouped by what they track: who the supplier is, what purchase order activity has happened, how receiving has gone, what the cost and payment terms look like, and what you want to follow up on this month. The fields are named in plain language so they read the same in a spreadsheet as they do in the supplier review meeting.
The sections that follow list each field with a one-line note on what to record and where it comes from in Shopify.
Supplier identity fields
These fields anchor the row. They tell you who the supplier is and what you currently buy from them. Suppliers are created in the Shopify admin while you create a purchase order, so a supplier record already exists alongside the orders placed with that supplier.
- Supplier name. The supplier as it appears on your Shopify purchase orders. Use the same spelling every time so the row matches the purchase orders you filter for later.
- Contact owner. The person on your team who handles this relationship. Not a Shopify field; record it here so the monthly review has a clear owner.
- Active products. A short list of the products you currently buy from this supplier. Pull this from the line items on recent purchase orders.
If you are still rebuilding or tidying supplier records as part of leaving Stocky, the Stocky CSV migration guide covers how to bring that data across in a usable shape.
Purchase order activity fields
These fields summarise what is actually moving with this supplier. A Shopify purchase order records the products ordered from a supplier, along with their quantities, prices, payment terms, and an estimated arrival date. Shopify lists purchase orders with statuses including Draft, Ordered, Partial, Received, and Closed, and you can view all purchase orders or filter the list by these statuses.
- Recent purchase orders. The purchase orders you placed with this supplier since your last review. Use the purchase orders list, filtered to this supplier, to compile it.
- Open or delayed purchase orders. Purchase orders still in Ordered or Partial status, especially those past the estimated arrival date you set when creating them. Filtering the list by status shows which orders are still Ordered or Partial versus Received or Closed.
The split matters: Received and Closed orders are settled and tell you what happened, while Ordered and Partial orders are still in flight and tell you what to chase.
Receiving and quality fields
When you receive a purchase order in Shopify, you record the quantities that actually arrived as accepted or rejected. Available inventory increases by the accepted quantities, rejected quantities are removed from incoming inventory, and damaged or missing items can be marked as rejected. Those receiving outcomes are concrete, factual signals of how a supplier performed, so they belong in the scorecard. For how to capture them accurately at the receiving screen, see the purchase order receiving quality checks guide.
- Partial receipts. Purchase orders that landed in Partial status because only some of the ordered quantity arrived. Note which products were short.
- Damaged or rejected items. Quantities you marked as rejected on receiving because the goods arrived damaged or unusable. Pull this from the receiving record on the relevant purchase orders.
- Missing items. Quantities that did not arrive at all and were marked as rejected when you received the order. Note the product and the purchase order.
Keep these descriptions qualitative. Write down which products and which purchase orders were affected rather than inventing rates or ratios. The pattern you are looking for is repetition: the same supplier short on the same product across several orders is the signal worth acting on.
Cost and payment term fields
Cost is one of the factors Shopify’s supplier management guidance lists for comparing suppliers, and it shows up in the purchase order itself. Payment terms and supplier currencies are set on each individual Shopify purchase order rather than saved as defaults on the supplier profile, so you check them on each purchase order rather than assuming a saved default.
- Payment terms. The payment terms applied to recent purchase orders with this supplier. Read them from each purchase order, since they are set per order.
- Currency. The currency on recent purchase orders with this supplier. Also set per order, so confirm it order by order rather than relying on a stored default.
- Cost changes noticed. Any movement in unit prices on this supplier’s purchase orders over the last few orders. Compare the prices recorded on the line items.
The practical implication is that if a supplier suddenly changes payment terms, currency, or unit prices, you catch it on the next purchase order you create rather than after the goods arrive. The scorecard is the place to write down what you noticed.
Monthly review fields
These two fields close the loop. Shopify’s supplier management guidance describes keeping notes and documentation on each supplier relationship, and the purchase orders list can be filtered by status to find what still needs attention. The monthly pass is where you turn that activity into a short written record.
- Supplier follow-up needed. What you want to raise with this supplier before the next review: a missing shipment to chase, a damaged batch to discuss, a price change to question, a delivery date to reconfirm.
- Next review date. The date you plan to look at this supplier’s row again. Setting it explicitly is what makes the cadence work.
Run the pass once a month. Open the purchase orders list, filter to each supplier, update the row, write down what you noticed in the follow-up field, and set the next review date. Over a few months, the rows start to show patterns you would not spot from a single purchase order. For the wider monthly routine this scorecard slots into, see the monthly supplier reporting guide.
When a spreadsheet works, and when to move beyond it
For a small supplier list, a spreadsheet built from these fields is enough. You can update it in an hour a month, and the qualitative notes are usually more useful than any score would be. The fields map directly to what Shopify already records on the supplier, the purchase order, and the receiving screen, so there is no separate system to keep in sync.
As the number of suppliers and purchase orders grows, the manual part gets harder. Filtering the purchase orders list, opening each order to read off accepted and rejected quantities, and copying the result into a spreadsheet row takes longer when you have more suppliers and more orders per supplier. At some point, a dedicated supplier-scorecard tool can take over the repetitive part of turning purchase order and receiving activity into a per-supplier view, leaving you to read the result and decide what to do.
Moving beyond a spreadsheet is an option, not a requirement. Plenty of merchants run the monthly review from a spreadsheet for a long time. The right moment to switch is when the spreadsheet stops being current, because that is when the review stops being useful.
Limitations
Kijun is not a full Stocky replacement. It does not replace Shopify POS stocktakes, inventory counts, demand forecasting, automatic reordering, or Shopify’s native purchase order and receiving workflows.
Use kijun’s built-in Stocky migration guide to import supported supplier and vendor records, then turn purchase orders recorded in kijun into supplier scorecards. Move beyond manual supplier scorecards.
This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against cited sources through kijun’s editorial workflow. Last updated: 2026-05-26.
Stocky and Shopify are trademarks of Shopify Inc. kijun is not affiliated with or endorsed by Shopify.