| Posto | A reorder spreadsheet ;; Price | Free, $19, or $39 a month | Free ;; Keeps itself up to date | Daily, from your Shopify sales | When you update it ;; Leaves out days you were sold out | Yes | Only if you build it in ;; Uses real supplier delivery times | Yes, once 3 orders have arrived | Only if you track them ;; Black Friday and holiday peak | Built in | Your own formulas ;; Sends the order | Emails a PO with a PDF | You write and send it ;; Landed cost per unit | Spread for you | Your own formulas ;; Flexibility | Rules per supplier and product | Anything you can build
The short version
Keep the spreadsheet if you have a short product list, one or two suppliers, and steady sales. Switch when updating it takes longer than the decisions it helps you make, or when you've run out of something the sheet said you had covered.
What a spreadsheet does well
- It's free, and you already know how to use it.
- It's flexible. You can add any column, note, or formula you like.
- It's yours. Nothing to install, and nothing to cancel.
Where it starts to cost you
- The numbers go stale. Sales and stock change every day, but the sheet only knows what you pasted in last time.
- Stockouts hide demand. Days you had nothing to sell look like days nobody wanted it, so the next order comes out too small. Leaving those days out by hand is fiddly.
- Orders on the way get forgotten. If the sheet doesn't know what's already on order, you can end up ordering twice.
- One flat average misses the peaks. Black Friday and the holidays need more stock than an average month suggests.
- Supplier rules are easy to miss. Rounding to minimums and case packs by hand is where many order mistakes start.
- The order still has to be written. Once you know the quantities, you copy them into an email or a purchase order and track the delivery somewhere else.
- Only one person understands it. When they're away, reordering waits.
What Posto does differently
- Same math, kept current. Posto uses standard reorder point math, the kind you'd put in a spreadsheet, and runs it for every product from live Shopify data.
- Shows its working. Every number has a breakdown, so you can check it the way you'd check a formula.
- Handles the fiddly parts. Stockout days left out, stock on order counted, Black Friday and the holiday peak built in, and orders rounded to each supplier's rules.
- Uses real delivery times. Once 3 orders from a supplier have arrived, Posto times your orders by how long they actually took, not the lead time you were quoted.
- Sends the order. One purchase order per supplier, emailed with a PDF, with partial deliveries tracked until they're done.
- Works out true cost. Freight, duty, and fees spread into a landed cost per unit, and if you turn it on, Shopify's cost per item is updated when stock arrives.
Moving over is easy
Posto imports suppliers, product costs, and past purchase orders from a spreadsheet, and previews every row before it saves anything. And your data stays yours: you can export everything Posto stores, as spreadsheets, at any time.
Try it on a small piece first
Posto's free plan covers one supplier and up to 50 products, so you can run it beside your spreadsheet for one supplier and compare the numbers before you decide.