Same product, two suppliers: who the reorder report orders from

A candle shop buys its best-selling jar from the maker directly and, when the maker is slow, from a regional distributor who carries the same brand at a slightly higher price. A bike shop gets inner tubes from two wholesalers depending on who has stock. In Shopify this is invisible: a variant has one vendor field, one cost per item and one barcode, and nothing in the product record says who you actually buy it from. So when a reorder report says "order 48", the question is 48 from whom, at what cost, with what lead time.

This post explains how Restock Ops answers that. The short version is that every item on the reorder report has exactly one supplier at a time, that supplier is chosen for you from the vendor the first time and by you afterwards, and all the supplier-specific numbers (cost, minimum order, case size, lead time, supplier SKU) follow that choice.

Three records, not one

Shopify keeps the product and its inventory. Restock Ops keeps two things around it. A supplier is a company: name, contact, currency, lead time in days, minimum order value, payment terms, notes, and a list of Shopify vendor names it is linked to. A supplier item is one product variant as that supplier sells it: their SKU for it, their cost, their tax rate, their minimum order quantity, their case size, and when you last ordered it from them. One variant can have a supplier item for each supplier that carries it, and the two records can disagree on every field, which is the whole point.

The reorder report sits on top. Each item you add to it gets a reorder rule: reorder point or target days of cover, an optional manual velocity, whether the rule is enabled, and one supplier. The rule is per variant, so a variant appears once on the report, with one supplier against it.

How the first supplier gets picked

When you add variants to the reorder report, the app reads their Shopify vendor and looks for a supplier linked to that vendor name. If it finds one, the rule starts with that supplier filled in. If two suppliers are both linked to the same vendor, the first match is used, which in practice is whichever supplier you created first. If no supplier is linked to the vendor, the rule starts with no supplier, and the row shows an empty Supplier field.

This is only a starting value. It is never recalculated: editing a product's vendor in Shopify later does not change the supplier on its rule, and linking a new supplier to a vendor does not move existing rules over. The supplier setup post covers vendor links in more detail.

Changing the supplier on a row

1. Open the Reorder report and find the item. The Supplier column shows a dropdown of your active suppliers on every row.
2. Pick the supplier you want to order from this time. The change is saved with the other rule edits on the row (reorder point, days of cover, manual velocity).
3. Read the row again. Lead time, unit cost, minimum order quantity and case size now come from that supplier's item record, so the suggested quantity and the days-of-cover maths can change.
4. Repeat for any other items you are moving. Items from the same supplier are grouped when you create the draft purchase order.

What follows the supplier

If the supplier you picked has no item record for the variant, the row still works: lead time comes from the supplier, and cost, MOQ and case size are simply empty until you add them on the supplier's page or they are filled in from a received purchase order.

• Lead time. The report uses the lead time in days from the supplier on the rule. Switching from a maker with a 21-day lead to a distributor with a 3-day lead shortens the horizon the suggestion covers, so the suggested quantity usually drops.
• Cost. The report shows the cost from that supplier's item record for the variant, not Shopify's cost per item, so two suppliers carrying the same jar can show two prices on two rows for two different products, and a single row changes price when you change its supplier.
• MOQ and case size. The suggested quantity is rounded up to the supplier item's minimum order quantity and then to its case size. A distributor who sells by the case of 12 produces a different suggestion from a maker who sells singles.
• Supplier SKU. When the draft purchase order is created, lines carry the supplier's own code, which is what goes on the order you send them. The supplier SKU post explains why that matters at receiving.
• Last ordered. Receiving against a purchase order updates the last-ordered date on that supplier's item, so you can see at a glance which of the two you have been using.

Creating the draft purchase order

Create draft PO takes the rows you ticked and makes one draft purchase order per supplier, with the suggested quantities as lines. Rows without a supplier are skipped and named in the confirmation message, so an item you forgot to assign does not silently vanish from the order; it also does not land on the wrong supplier's order. The draft PO post walks through what happens next, including editing quantities before you mark the order as sent.

Because the rule holds one supplier, splitting one item's quantity across two suppliers in the same run is a two-step job: create the first draft with supplier A, change the row to supplier B, lower the suggested quantity on the second draft by what you already ordered, and create again. Both drafts show the item's incoming quantity once they are marked ordered, so the report does not suggest it a third time.

Patterns that work

• Primary and backup. Keep the maker on the rule and switch to the distributor only when the maker is out or slow. Switch back after the order is created, so the next report uses the normal lead time.
• Split by product, not by quantity. If the distributor is cheaper for the small items and the maker for the large ones, set the supplier per row once and leave it. The report then produces two clean draft orders every time.
• Compare costs on the supplier pages. Each supplier's page lists its items with cost, MOQ and case size, which is the quickest way to see who is cheaper per unit after rounding to a case.
• Use notes for the rule you follow. The supplier's notes field is a good home for "use only when maker lead time is over 3 weeks", so whoever runs the report on a Friday knows why the row was switched.

What this does not do

Restock Ops does not choose the cheaper supplier for you, does not split quantities automatically and does not check either supplier's stock. The reorder report's velocity and rules answer how much; the supplier on the row answers from whom; who is cheaper this month stays a judgement you make with both suppliers' numbers in front of you. That is deliberate for a small store: a rule that silently switched suppliers on price would be a surprise on the receiving dock, and surprises on the dock are what the app exists to remove.

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