If you run purchasing through Stocky, you have a deadline. Shopify has announced that Stocky retires on 31 August 2026. After that date the app is gone, and with it the purchase orders, supplier records and stocktake workflows that a lot of Shopify stores quietly depend on.
This guide covers what actually stops working, what you need from a replacement, the options on the table, and a realistic timeline for moving without losing your records.
What is actually going away
Stocky is where many merchants keep four things: supplier records (contacts, lead times, account numbers), purchase orders (open ones in flight and years of completed history), stocktakes, and low-stock forecasting. When the app shuts, that data does not migrate itself anywhere. Anything you have not exported is gone.
The first action is simple and worth doing this week regardless of what you move to: export your Stocky data as CSVs. Suppliers and purchase orders both export. Put the files somewhere safe. Everything else in this guide can happen on your schedule; the export has a hard deadline.
What you need from a replacement
Write down what your team actually does in Stocky before you evaluate anything. For most stores it comes down to five jobs:
- Knowing what to reorder, before it sells out
- Raising purchase orders against suppliers, and receiving them in when the delivery arrives
- Keeping supplier details and lead times in one place
- Counting stock periodically and correcting the numbers
- Getting orders picked and packed without mistakes
The trap is replacing one app with three. A purchasing app, a barcode app and a picking app can each be fine on their own and still leave you re-keying data between them, with three subscriptions and three support inboxes when something breaks.
Your options
Broadly, there are three routes. You can assemble apps: pick a purchasing app and a stocktake app from an app store and wire them together. It works, but you own the glue, and the monthly cost adds up fast.
You can move up to a dedicated inventory platform. These are genuinely powerful, and genuinely priced for operations teams. For most independent merchants it is more system than the job needs.
Or you can run your store on a platform where operations are part of the platform itself. That is the route Orbit takes. The Enterprise plan includes an Operations suite: reorder points and safety stock per item per location, purchase orders with suppliers and receiving, bin locations with consolidated pick lists, cycle counts with a variance report, and a batch fulfilment workbench with scan-to-verify packing. Same dashboard as your orders and stock, nothing extra to install.
How the Stocky import works on Orbit
Orbit ships a Stocky import wizard, built for exactly this shutdown. You upload the CSVs you exported (up to 20MB per file) and the wizard walks you through matching columns, shows you sample rows, and then imports your suppliers and purchase orders.
Two details matter. Open purchase orders become draft POs in Orbit, so orders that are mid-flight with a supplier carry on: you mark them ordered and receive them in when the stock lands. Completed purchase orders become closed, display-only history, so your records survive for reference and reporting. And the import never touches your stock numbers. History is history; your live counts stay exactly as they are.
A realistic timeline
Working back from 31 August 2026:
- Now: export suppliers and purchase orders from Stocky. Keep the CSVs safe. Re-export closer to the deadline for the freshest copy.
- Two months out: choose the destination and trial it in parallel. Import a copy of your Stocky data and let whoever does your purchasing raise one real PO end to end.
- One month out: move purchasing for real. New POs go in the new system only; open Stocky POs get received in the new system as deliveries arrive.
- Deadline week: one final export from Stocky for the archive, and you are done before the shutters come down.
The checklist
- Suppliers exported, with lead times and account details
- Purchase orders exported, open and completed
- Replacement chosen and trialled with a real PO
- Open POs recreated or imported as drafts
- Team knows where new POs are raised from a fixed date
- Final archive export before 31 August 2026
If you are weighing up the platform route, the Operations suite page shows the whole toolkit, including the import wizard. And if you are considering a bigger move, our guide to moving from Shopify without breaking it covers the rest of the store: products, customers, orders and redirects. The operating model that makes all of this stick is in inventory and fulfilment without the chaos.