Supplier delivery is late: expected date, reorder report and the PO

The purchase order said the pallet would land on the 14th. It is the 21st, the supplier's last email said "end of the week" and did not say which, and the two best-selling sizes are down to a handful each. The question on the floor is simple: do we wait, or do we order from somewhere else? The question behind it is which numbers to trust while deciding.

This post is about a late delivery in Restock Ops: what the expected date on a purchase order actually does, how the reorder report treats stock that is on order but not here, and a way to work through the wait-or-reorder decision without ending up with either an empty shelf or two pallets of the same thing. It assumes a PO already marked ordered; the status post covers how it got there.

What the expected date does, and does not do

When you create a purchase order for a supplier that has a lead time in days, the app fills the expected date as today plus that lead time. You can change it in the PO header while the PO is editable, and it is printed on the PO and in the CSV export. On the purchase orders list it is a column, and on the Receive page the open POs are sorted by it, earliest first, so the delivery that should have arrived longest ago sits at the top.

That is the whole of it. The expected date is planning information for people. It does not change any quantity, in the app or in Shopify. Nothing happens on the day it passes: there is no late-delivery banner and no notification, and a PO three weeks past its expected date looks the same in the list as one due tomorrow, apart from the date itself. The overdue logic the app does have is for the supplier invoice's due date, which is a different field about money, not goods.

We mention this plainly because the obvious assumption, that a missed expected date would flag the PO or lower the report's confidence in the stock, is wrong, and it is better to know that before you need it. Sorting the Receive page by expected date and reading the top rows once a week is the manual version of the alert, and it takes about a minute.

What the reorder report counts while you wait

The reorder report builds each item's position as on hand plus incoming, both read from Shopify for the chosen location, and compares that position to a target based on your sales velocity over the lead time plus the cover days you set. Two things follow for a late delivery.

First, units on an ordered PO are not incoming unless you have switched on the setting that writes ordered units to Shopify's incoming quantity. By default a PO lives in the app and Shopify's incoming stays whatever your transfers make it, so the report's position for a late item is simply what is on the shelf. The report shows the on-order units from the PO as information next to the row, but the suggestion is computed from the position. The projection setting post covers the other mode.

Second, with the default off, the report will start suggesting a reorder for the late item as soon as on hand falls below target, regardless of the PO. That is the report doing its job, since it has no way to know whether the pallet is one day or one month away, and it is also the trap: accepting that suggestion while the original PO is still coming puts two deliveries on the dock. Read the on-order column before you accept a row that already has a PO behind it.

If you do run the projection setting, the picture inverts. The ordered units are counted in position from the moment you marked the PO ordered, so the late item looks covered and the report stays quiet while the shelf empties. A late delivery is the case the setting's Experimental label is warning you about. The practical move is to look at days of cover rather than the suggestion: if days of cover on the shelf alone is lower than the number of days you believe the supplier still needs, the item will run out before the pallet lands whatever the position says.

Working out wait or reorder

1. Open the reorder report filtered to the supplier that is late and note, for each affected item, on hand, velocity per day and the on-order quantity. Divide on hand by velocity to get the days you have left. The report shows days of cover for the current position; with projection off that is the same number, with it on you will need the on-hand figure by itself.
2. Get a date from the supplier, in writing, and compare it to the days left. An item with twelve days on the shelf and a delivery promised in five is fine. An item with four days left and a promise of ten is going to run out whatever you do about the PO, and the question becomes how long the gap is.
3. For items that will run out, decide whether a second supplier can beat the gap. If another supplier carries the item, change the supplier on the row and read the lead time the report now uses; the two suppliers post explains what changes. If the alternative's lead time is longer than the late supplier's new promise, ordering from them does not help and only adds stock later.
4. If you do order a bridge quantity, make it a bridge. Order the gap in days times velocity, rounded up to the alternative's case size or minimum, not the report's full suggestion, which assumes the original PO will never arrive. Create it as a separate PO so the two deliveries, the two invoices and the two cost prices stay apart.
5. Update the expected date on the late PO to the supplier's new promise. It does nothing to the numbers, but the Receive page sorts by it, the PDF and CSV carry it, and the next person to look at the list sees the current truth rather than the 14th.

When the pallet finally arrives

Receive it against the original PO, not the bridge PO, even if the bridge arrived first and the items look identical on the shelf. Each receipt writes an inventory adjustment to Shopify with a reason of received and, if the line carries a cost, updates the variant's cost per item; the cost history post walks through what that does to your margins when two suppliers deliver the same item at different prices in the same fortnight.

If the delivery is short because the supplier split the shipment to make up for the delay, receive what came and leave the PO partial. The remaining units stay on order and keep showing in the on-order column, which is exactly what you want the report to know. The short, over and wrong delivery post covers the other ways a delivery can disagree with its PO.

If the supplier eventually cancels, cancel the PO. With projection on, that unwinds the incoming units in Shopify; with it off, it removes the on-order figure from the report so the item is judged on the shelf alone. Either way the bridge PO becomes the only order, which is the honest state.

Making the next late delivery cheaper

Late deliveries are information about the supplier, and the place to record it is the supplier's lead time. If a supplier's promised 14 days is routinely 21, set 21. The report's horizon is lead time plus cover, so a longer lead time raises the target and flags items earlier, which is the whole point: the next order goes out a week sooner and the pallet arrives on time by the supplier's real calendar. The lead time and MOQ post argues for planning with the slow number rather than the average, and a late delivery is the moment to act on that.

The supplier record also has a notes field. Write down what happened and who sorted it out. Six months from now, when the same supplier is late again and someone new is on the phone, the note that says "ask for Marta, the warehouse line never answers" is worth more than any report.

FAQ