Busy store? The reorder report reads 5,000 orders per velocity window
Restock Ops reads up to 5,000 orders when it works out sales velocity. What the truncation banner means, how to size the window, and when to shorten it.
Stores that process a few hundred orders a month never see this. Stores that process a few hundred orders a day do, usually in the first week after installing, and usually as a quiet blue banner above the reorder report: only the first 5,000 orders of the window were read, velocities may be low. It is not an error. It is the report telling you that the sales history it was asked to summarise is bigger than it is willing to read in one go, and that the numbers below are built on part of it.
This post explains where the limit comes from, what it does to the figures, and how to set the velocity window in Restock Ops so a high-volume store gets velocities it can trust.
How the report measures velocity
Every time you open the reorder report, Restock Ops asks Shopify for the orders created in the last N days, where N is the velocity window in Settings. The default is 30 days and the field accepts anything from 7 to 365. Cancelled orders are left out. For every line item on every order it adds the current quantity, which is the quantity net of refunds and removed items, to a running total per inventory item. Dividing that total by N gives units per day, and that is the velocity the rest of the report uses for days of cover, reorder points and suggested quantities. The what counts as a sale post goes through the inclusions and exclusions in detail.
Shopify hands orders back in pages of up to 250, and the report reads at most 20 pages. That is the 5,000. Once it has read 20 pages it stops, marks the result as truncated, and carries on with whatever it has.
What truncation does to the numbers
The totals are still divided by the full window. If the window is 30 days and 5,000 orders cover only 18 of them, every product's units sold are missing roughly 12 days of sales while still being divided by 30. The velocity comes out low, by about the fraction of the window that was not read. Days of cover come out high, suggested quantities come out small, and some products that should be on the report fall below their reorder point and are not flagged at all.
That is the direction of the error, and it is the useful thing to know. A truncated report never tells you to order too much. It tells you to order too little, or not at all, and it does so evenly across the catalogue, because the orders that were skipped belong to a stretch of days, not to particular products.
| Window | Orders in window | Orders read | Velocity reported |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 days | 2,100 | 2,100 | Correct |
| 14 days | 4,200 | 4,200 | Correct |
| 30 days | 9,000 | 5,000 | About 55% of the real figure |
Work out your ceiling
Take your average daily order count and divide 5,000 by it. That is the longest window the report can read in full. A store at 100 orders a day can run a 50 day window; at 250 a day the ceiling is 20 days; at 700 a day it is a week. The Orders page in Shopify, filtered to the last 30 days, gives you the order count to start from, and the analytics overview gives the daily average directly.
Seasonality matters here more than the yearly average does. A store that does 80 orders a day in June and 400 in December clears a 30 day window for most of the year and gets truncated in the one month where the reorder decisions cost the most. If your peak is far above your normal, size the window for the peak, or change it when the peak arrives and change it back afterwards. It is one field in Settings and it takes effect the next time the report runs.
Short windows are not a compromise
The instinct is that more history makes a better average, and for a slow-moving product it does. For a store that is busy enough to hit the limit, it does not. At 300 orders a day, a 14 day window already contains over 4,000 orders, and the sales figure for any product that sells even once a day has a sample large enough that another two weeks changes very little. What the longer window adds is lag: it keeps three-week-old demand in the average long after the trend has moved on.
Fast stores also tend to have fast trends. A product that doubled last week should be reordered on this week's rate, not on an average that is half last month. The post-Black Friday velocity post makes the opposite argument for a spike you want to dilute; both are reasons to pick the window deliberately rather than leave the default.
For the slow movers in a busy store, the ones that sell twice a week, a short window is noisy. Give those products a reorder point in their rule instead of relying on days of cover, so the trigger is a stock level rather than a velocity. The reorder point versus days of cover post covers when each one fits.
When the banner appears anyway
If you see the truncation banner and cannot shorten the window, read the report knowing the velocities are understated by roughly the unread fraction, and treat the suggested quantities as a floor. Products already on the report need at least what it says. Products you expected to see and do not are the ones to check by hand, starting with your top sellers, because those are the ones most likely to have slipped under their reorder point on an understated rate.
The banner is per run. Shorten the window, reopen the report, and if it is gone, the velocities are built on every order in the window.
Other reasons velocity can look wrong
Truncation is not the only way the velocity column ends up low, and it is worth separating it from the others before changing settings. If the app does not have permission to read orders, velocity is unavailable rather than low, and the report says so. If a product was out of stock for part of the window, its velocity is depressed because it could not sell, and the fix is a shorter window or a manual adjustment rather than anything to do with the limit. If draft orders, POS orders or wholesale orders are a large part of your volume, they count if they are orders in Shopify, and they count against the 5,000 too.
Finally, remember that the limit is on orders, not on units or line items. A store that ships 5,000 single-item orders and a store that ships 1,000 five-item orders sell the same units, but only the first one is near the limit. If your average order has many lines, your ceiling in days is higher than the order count alone suggests, because what matters is how many orders fall into the window.
Checklist for a high-volume store
Find your average orders per day for the busiest month you expect. Divide 5,000 by it and set the velocity window below that number, rounding down to a week boundary so the window always contains whole weekly cycles. Put a reorder point on slow movers so they do not depend on a short window. Open the reorder report and confirm the truncation banner is not there. Put a note in the calendar to revisit the window before the next peak.
FAQ
What does "only the first 5,000 orders of the window were read" mean in Restock Ops?
The reorder report reads orders in pages of 250 and stops after 20 pages. If the velocity window contains more than 5,000 orders, the rest are not read, and the banner warns you that the sales totals, and therefore the velocities, are built on part of the window. Shorten the window in Settings until the banner disappears.
Does truncation make the report suggest too much or too little?
Too little. The unread orders are missing from the sales totals but the totals are still divided by the full window length, so velocity is understated by roughly the unread fraction. Days of cover look longer than they are, suggested quantities are smaller, and some products may not be flagged at all.
What velocity window should a store with 300 orders a day use?
At most 16 days, since 5,000 divided by 300 is about 16.7. A 14 day window keeps whole weeks and still holds over 4,000 orders, which is plenty for any product that sells daily. Give slow movers a reorder point in their rule so they do not depend on the short window.
Does the limit count units or orders?
Orders. A 20-line wholesale order counts once, the same as a single-item order. Stores with large baskets can therefore run a longer window than their unit volume suggests, because the ceiling depends only on how many orders fall into the window.
Try it on your store. Restock Ops adds purchase orders with partial receiving, supplier notes, cost history, barcode labels, scanner stocktakes and a reorder report on top of Shopify inventory. From $19/month, 14-day free trial.