Shopify Stocky Discontinued: What to Export Now and How to Replace It

If you ran purchasing or stocktakes through Stocky, the clock has already run out. Shopify pulled Stocky from the App Store on 2 February 2026 and switched it off on 31 August 2026. With Stocky discontinued, nothing has been migrated for you. Your purchase orders, supplier records and stocktake history are sitting in an app that no longer runs, and Shopify's native inventory tools start from a blank page.

Most of the coverage we have read on the Stocky shutdown is written by companies selling a replacement. This is the agency view instead: what to export before the read-only window closes, what Shopify's built-in inventory genuinely covers now, where it still falls short, and a plain decision framework for whether you need a dedicated tool at all.

Where things stand after the Stocky shutdown

Shopify's own transition guide states that Stocky is no longer available as of 31 August 2026, and its APIs stopped on the same date. Existing installs have read-only access for a limited period so merchants can get their data out. Shopify has not published a hard end date for that window, and the third-party guides disagree with each other, so treat the Help Centre as the only source that matters and do the export this week rather than next month.

The warning signs were there well before the final date. Shopify removed inter-location transfers and min/max forecasting from Stocky in July 2025, which is why many stores found the app getting thinner over the past year. The shutdown is the end of a process, not a surprise.

Your Stocky data export checklist

Shopify does not move historical data into the admin automatically. Purchase orders and stocktakes export through Stocky's built-in reports as CSV. Supplier records do not export at all, so those have to be recorded by hand. And even once you have the files, historical purchase orders cannot be imported into Shopify's native purchase orders. The export is for your records, your accountant and your forecasting, not for a one-click restore.

Work through this list and store the files somewhere outside Shopify:

Purchase orders. Export the full history, including received quantities and unit costs. This is your landed cost record and your supplier lead-time evidence.Stocktakes. Export every completed count. Shrinkage patterns across locations only show up when you have the history side by side.Suppliers. Open each supplier record and copy the contact details, payment terms, lead times and the SKUs they supply into a spreadsheet. There is no export for this.Reorder settings. If you still had any min/max or reorder points recorded anywhere, capture them. You will need them to configure whatever replaces Stocky.Open purchase orders. Note anything still in transit. These have to be recreated as live purchase orders in the Shopify admin so you can receive against them.

One practical tip: export the purchase order report twice, once filtered by supplier and once by SKU. The raw CSV is awkward to pivot later, and you want both views for the forecasting conversation that comes next.

Shopify native inventory vs Stocky: what the admin now covers

Shopify has put real work into inventory since 2024, and the admin now handles the operational core that Stocky used to own. Purchase orders live under Products in the admin, with supplier records, expected arrival dates and receiving. Transfers move stock between locations, and since June 2026 a purchase order creates a linked transfer when stock arrives, so receiving is one flow rather than two. Transfers can also be received without an origin, which covers unexpected supplier deliveries. Stock counts can be planned in the admin and run on the shop floor through Shopify POS.

For a single-warehouse brand or a store with one or two retail locations, that is most of the job. If your Stocky use was purchase orders, receiving and the odd stocktake, Shopify native is a genuine replacement, and it removes an app from the stack. We have written before about why fewer apps is usually the right call, and this is a case where the platform has caught up.

Where native Shopify inventory still falls short

The gaps are real, and they are the same gaps that pushed people onto Stocky in the first place.

Forecasting and reorder points. There is no min/max logic and no demand forecast in the admin. Shopify points merchants towards Sidekick for reorder suggestions, and it can draft a purchase order for you, but that is an assistant, not a planning system with a lead-time model.Purchase order history. Nothing from Stocky comes across, so supplier performance reporting starts from zero.Sending purchase orders. Emailing a PO to a supplier with your own template is not native. You export a PDF or use an app.Multi-location planning. Transfers work, but there is no view that tells you which location is about to run out and which is overstocked. That analysis is manual.Bills of materials. If you assemble or manufacture, the admin has no concept of components.

None of these are reasons to panic. They are reasons to be honest about what your business actually needs before paying for a replacement.

A neutral decision framework: native, app, or ERP

Ask three questions. How many locations hold stock? How much of your margin depends on getting reorder quantities right? And does inventory already live somewhere else, such as a warehouse system or accounting package?

Stay native if you have one or two locations, order from a manageable list of suppliers, and your buyer can hold reorder logic in a spreadsheet without it hurting. Set up suppliers and purchase orders in the admin, run counts through POS, and spend the money you saved on the storefront instead.

Add a dedicated inventory app if forecasting is where your margin lives. Seasonal ranges, long supplier lead times from the Far East, or more than three stock-holding locations all qualify. The app market has filled up with Stocky replacements this year, most of them from vendors writing the blog posts mentioned above. Trial two, run them in parallel with the admin for a month, and judge them on forecast accuracy against your exported Stocky history rather than on the feature list.

Go to an ERP or a warehouse system if inventory is already the source of truth somewhere else, or if you are wholesaling alongside DTC. At that point Shopify should be a sales channel reading from one inventory record, not the place where purchasing happens. Our comparison of NetSuite, Business Central and Brightpearl for Shopify and our guide to connecting Shopify to a 3PL or WMS cover the trade-offs in detail.

The replacement decision is not about matching Stocky feature for feature. It is about which inventory mistakes actually cost you money, and buying only the tool that prevents those.

Why this matters more than it looks

Inventory accuracy is a conversion problem wearing an operations costume. IHL Group's 2026 inventory distortion study puts the global cost of out-of-stocks and overstocks at around $1.7 trillion a year, roughly 6% of retail sales. For a Shopify brand, that shows up as a product page that says sold out on your best-selling size, a discount you did not want to run on stock you over-ordered, or a pre-order you cannot fulfil on time. Every one of those lowers conversion on traffic you already paid for.

That is the pattern we see in most of the stores that come to us from Glasgow to Los Angeles: not a traffic problem, a conversion problem, with inventory data quietly undermining the product pages. It is one of the reasons we treat the inventory setup as part of the Conversion Growth Retainer rather than someone else's department.

What to do this week

Export everything from Stocky now, while the read-only window is open. Rebuild your supplier list and open purchase orders in the Shopify admin so receiving keeps working. Then make the native-versus-app decision using the framework above, with your exported history as the test data. If you want a senior developer to handle the rebuild and the app evaluation, that is standard work under our Shopify support and maintenance service, and you can get in touch to talk it through. We are a 12-year-old Glasgow agency with no juniors and no outsourcing, so you will be talking to the person who does the work.