Stocky won’t be available after August 31, 2026, so every merchant who runs purchase orders, suppliers, and stocktakes through it has to decide where that work lives next. The honest answer is that there is no single drop-in tool that does everything Stocky did. The realistic path is a combination: start with the Shopify admin and Shopify POS as your native baseline, use a spreadsheet for the gaps and for transition planning, and add a targeted app only where one specific workflow needs more than the admin gives you. This article turns that into a decision framework rather than a ranking. It maps each Stocky job to where it can live after the shutdown, so you can choose deliberately before the cutoff instead of scrambling once the app goes dark.
What changes when Stocky goes away
The first thing to settle is the timeline, because it sets every deadline that follows. Stocky was removed from the Shopify App Store on February 2, 2026, and merchants can’t reinstall it. The app keeps running for merchants who already have it until August 31, 2026, after which Stocky won’t be available, and any Stocky APIs stop working on the same date. From that point, you manage inventory in the Shopify admin and Shopify POS instead of Stocky.
Two facts shape the whole transition. First, historical Stocky data, including old purchase orders and stocktakes, won’t automatically move into Shopify after the shutdown, so anything you want to keep has to be exported while Stocky still runs. Second, Shopify states that some Stocky-specific features might work differently or might not yet be available in Shopify, so a clean feature-for-feature swap is not a safe assumption. For the full calendar of dates, see the Stocky shutdown timeline, and for what to pull before the lights go out, see the data export guide.
The framework below sorts your options into three layers: the native baseline, spreadsheets, and targeted apps. Most merchants will use some of all three, not just one.
Option 1: Shopify admin and POS as the native baseline
Start here, because it is the option you already pay for. Shopify’s transition guidance places several Stocky-style tasks directly in the Shopify admin: transfers between locations, purchase orders, inventory quantity adjustments, and historical inventory reporting. Counting work on the floor moves to Shopify POS. For a deeper side-by-side of what carries over, see Stocky vs the Shopify admin.
Purchase orders
In Shopify, a purchase order records the products, their costs, and the quantities ordered from a supplier. It also tracks incoming inventory quantities, costs, payment terms, and an estimated arrival date, and it moves through statuses including Draft, Ordered, Partial, Received, and Closed. You can download a purchase order as a PDF from the admin, but you can’t email it to a supplier directly from the admin, so sending it stays a manual step. Purchase order APIs aren’t currently available in Shopify and are under consideration, which matters if you automate PO creation today. For a fuller breakdown of what native Shopify purchase orders cover after Stocky and where the gaps are, see Shopify purchase orders after Stocky.
Suppliers
On the Shopify side, suppliers are created in the admin when you create a purchase order, rather than being a standalone list you build in advance. Payment terms and supplier currencies are specific to each purchase order and aren’t saved as defaults on a supplier profile. One detail to plan around: suppliers can’t be exported from Stocky, so there is no clean file to carry across, and you recreate that list yourself.
Inventory counts and CSVs
Shopify inventory CSV files can export current quantities and update quantities for products in each location. The All states export includes separate rows for each location and provides overwrite protection on import, while the Available export is simpler and doesn’t offer the same protection. The On hand column is what you use to set the units physically present at a location, which is the native equivalent of a stocktake adjustment.
For a smaller catalog, a standard purchase-order lifecycle, and stock counts handled at the POS, this baseline often covers what you did in Stocky on its own.
Option 2: spreadsheets for transition planning and audit trails
A spreadsheet is the cheapest tool you have, and it does two jobs the admin does not. The first is the migration plan itself: a sheet that lists every Stocky workflow you rely on, marks whether the admin covers it, and tracks what you have already moved. The Stocky migration checklist gives you the sequence of decisions to put into that sheet.
The second job is holding the data that won’t survive the cutover. Because historical purchase orders and stocktakes won’t move automatically and suppliers can’t be exported from Stocky, a spreadsheet is where you capture supplier details, payment terms, and past records by hand before August 31, 2026. It is also where cross-supplier and cross-PO views live. A single Shopify purchase order captures its own costs and quantities, but rolling many purchase orders together by supplier across a quarter is not a built-in Shopify report, so a sheet built from exported data fills that gap. Deciding what to reorder, when, and how much lives in that same planning layer rather than in the admin; for a closer look at that decision, see reorder planning after Stocky. Spreadsheets are manual and easy to let drift, so treat them as a deliberate record with an owner, not a scratchpad.
Option 3: targeted apps for specific workflow gaps
After the native baseline and a spreadsheet, you may still have a job you do every week that neither one structures well. That is the only place a third app earns its keep: a specific, recurring gap, not a general wish to replace Stocky.
When you weigh an app, a few honest criteria keep the decision clean. Check that it solves a workflow you actually repeat, not one you ran twice a year. Confirm what data it reads and writes, since an app can’t restore Stocky records that Shopify says can’t be exported. And keep in mind that Shopify does not endorse or recommend any particular third-party app, so judge each one on whether it closes your gap, not on a badge. Ranking named apps against each other is beyond the scope of this guide, because their capabilities and pricing change and can’t be verified from a single source.
Where supplier performance tracking fits after Stocky
The most common gap for merchants who leaned on Stocky is supplier performance. The Shopify admin records purchase orders and the suppliers attached to them, but it doesn’t roll those orders into a performance view that tells you which suppliers ship on time, ship complete, or run late. That is a reporting layer the admin leaves to you.
You have two reasonable ways to close it. A manual spreadsheet scorecard works if your supplier list is short and someone keeps it current from exported purchase-order data. A focused app works if you want that scoring maintained for you and your volume makes manual upkeep tedious. For the metrics worth tracking either way, see how to track supplier performance after Stocky. Whichever route you pick, base it on purchase orders you record after the move, since the historical Stocky data behind older performance won’t carry over on its own.
A decision checklist for choosing what to use after Stocky
Turn the framework into a short list you can work through before the cutoff:
- List every workflow you run in Stocky today, from purchase orders to stocktakes to supplier records.
- Mark each one as covered natively, covered by a spreadsheet, or needing a targeted app.
- Export the historical reports, purchase orders, and stocktakes you want to keep before August 31, 2026.
- Capture your supplier details and payment terms into a spreadsheet, since that list can’t be exported from Stocky.
- Rebuild your active purchase-order process in the Shopify admin and confirm your team knows where each step now lives.
- Decide how stocktakes happen in Shopify POS and who runs them.
- Add an app only for a gap that is both real and recurring, and only after the first five steps are settled.
Work the list top to bottom and the answer to “what should I use” stops being one tool and becomes a small, deliberate stack.
What to do before August 31, 2026
The native baseline, your spreadsheets, and any app you choose all depend on data you can only reach while Stocky still runs. So the order of operations matters: capture and export first, rebuild in the admin second, and add apps last. Put the export and supplier-capture steps on the calendar now rather than near the deadline, because once the app goes dark on August 31, 2026, the window to pull that data is closed. A move treated as a project with its own checklist goes far more smoothly than one that happens by itself on the cutoff date.
Limitations
Kijun does not do what Stocky did across the board, and nothing in this guide is a recommendation to adopt one tool over another. It does not forecast demand, automatically reorder, replace Shopify POS stocktakes, or run full inventory planning, and it does not recover Stocky records that Shopify says can’t be exported. Its role is narrow and optional. For merchants whose main Stocky job was tracking supplier performance, it builds 0-100 supplier scorecards from purchase orders recorded in kijun, working from supported supplier and vendor records. If supplier performance was a small part of how you used Stocky, the native baseline plus a spreadsheet may be all you need.
Kijun is one option for that supplier-performance gap: it builds the scorecards from the purchase orders you record after migrating supported supplier and vendor records, not from data pulled out of Stocky. 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: 2026-05-30.
Stocky and Shopify are trademarks of Shopify Inc. kijun is not affiliated with or endorsed by Shopify.