Supply Radar

Low stock alerts for Shopify: every way to set them up

Updated August 2026

Shopify tracks inventory precisely, but out of the box it doesn't tell you when something is running low — there's no native "email me when SKU X drops below 5" setting. Most merchants discover a stockout the bad way: a bestseller quietly hits zero, and the first signal is a drop in sales or an angry customer. Here are your realistic options in 2026.

Option 1: The manual report habit

Shopify admin → Analytics → inventory reports (e.g. "Month-end inventory snapshot" or ABC analysis) shows current quantities, and you can sort ascending and scan for low numbers. Free, but it only works if you actually check it — and daily checking is exactly the habit that breaks during your busiest (highest-risk) weeks. This was also how Stocky's low-stock report worked, which goes away on August 31, 2026.

Option 2: Spreadsheet + export

Export inventory CSVs on a schedule and use spreadsheet conditional formatting to flag rows below a threshold. Works for small catalogs, but it's stale the moment you export it, and nobody keeps this up past week three.

Option 3: An alerting app (what most stores land on)

Inventory apps watch stock levels via Shopify's API and push an alert the moment a SKU crosses its threshold. What to look for:

• Realtime, not daily-batch. If a flash sale drains a SKU at 10am, a midnight digest is too late to stop overselling momentum.
• Per-SKU thresholds with a store-wide default. Setting 500 thresholds by hand is the reason merchants give up; a default + overrides covers 95% of stores.
• Alerts where you already look — email and Slack beat another dashboard you must remember to open.
• A daily digest as a backstop — one morning email listing everything currently below threshold.
• A path from alert to action. The alert is only half the job; the other half is the purchase order it should turn into.

Setting up alerts in Supply Radar (~5 minutes)

1. Install Supply Radar — your products and live inventory sync automatically.
2. Set one store-wide default threshold (e.g. 5 units).
3. Override thresholds for bestsellers — or accept the auto-suggested reorder points computed from your sales velocity and supplier lead time.
4. Pick your channels: instant email, Slack, and/or the daily digest.
5. Test it: drop a test product below its threshold in Shopify admin and watch the alert arrive.

The free plan includes 5 alert rules (enough to cover your riskiest SKUs); unlimited rules with Slack and the daily digest are $9/mo flat, with a 14-day free trial. No per-order fees.

Get low-stock alerts — install Supply Radar

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