How to restock shelves from the backroom in a Shopify POS store

Every shop with a backroom has the same small, constant problem. Something sells at the counter, the shelf gets a little emptier, and someone has to notice before it is empty. On a quiet Tuesday that happens by itself. On a Saturday it doesn’t, and the first sign is a customer asking whether you have any more.

This is a routine for keeping shelves full from the backroom. It works on paper, and nothing in it needs an app.

First, what Shopify POS knows and what it doesn’t

Shopify keeps one stock figure per location. If your shop floor and your backroom are the same location — which is how most small shops are set up — Shopify can tell you that you have 14 of something. It cannot tell you whether those 14 are on the shelf or in a box in the back.

That is why “we have plenty in stock” and “the shelf is empty” can both be true at the same time, and why stock levels alone won’t tell staff what to bring out.

Some shops split the floor and the backroom into two Shopify locations to get around this. It works, but every trip to the backroom then has to be recorded as a stock move between locations, or the numbers drift. For most small shops that is more bookkeeping than the problem is worth.

1. Give every shelf a minimum

Decide, for each product, the fewest units you are happy to see on the shelf. When it drops to that number, it needs refilling.

Set it by how long a gap you can live with, not by how fast the product sells. A slow seller you never want to be out of can carry a higher minimum than a fast one you top up twice a day.

Write down two more numbers while you are there: how many to fill back up to, and how many the shelf physically holds. The second one stops anyone being sent to fit thirty units into space for twenty-four.

2. Give every product a bin

Most of the time spent restocking goes on finding things, not carrying them. A bin code on the backroom shelf, and the same code next to the product on your list, removes most of that.

Keep codes short and consistent — aisle, shelf, position — and print them rather than writing them by hand. If you use a barcode scanner, check each code scans cleanly before you label a whole room: a code that reads fine to a person can still trip a scanner. The bin label generator checks each code and prints a sheet.

3. Walk the backroom once, in order

Put the list in the order your stockroom is laid out — the order you would actually walk it — and do it in one loop. Crossing the room four times for four products is the biggest avoidable cost in the whole routine.

If two people restock at the same time, split the list between them. Two people filling the same shelf is how a shop ends up with twenty of something on display and none in the back.

4. Write down what you brought, not just a tick

“Filled it” and “brought the last three” are very different, and a tick hides the difference. A number on the list tells you tomorrow that the backroom is running low, before the shelf does.

The same goes for anything you couldn’t find. Write down where you looked. A product that goes missing twice is an inventory problem, not a bad day.

5. Count one bin properly each week

Pick one bin — start with your fastest sellers — and count it properly once a week. Small, regular counts catch drift while it is still small enough to explain.

6. Look at what ran out

At the end of the day, note anything that emptied completely. If the same product keeps running out, its minimum is set too low. Raising it fixes more empty shelves than any amount of rushing.

Doing it without the paper

These steps are also a printable shelf restock checklist, and the replenishment calculator works out how often a shelf needs refilling from your own sales figures.

If you would rather not keep the list by hand, ShelfSprint does the noticing. It watches your Shopify POS sales, and when a shelf drops below the minimum you set, the product goes onto a refill list on the POS device, with the bin and how many to bring. Staff walk it in your bin order and confirm what they placed. It does not create purchase orders, so it sits alongside whatever you use to reorder from suppliers.

It is on the Shopify App Store, with a 30-day free trial.