Inventory how-to

How to manage inventory for made to order products

Made to order products do not need stock forecasting the same way regular SKUs do, because you make the item after the order comes in.

Short answer: Made to order products do not need stock forecasting the same way regular SKUs do, because you make the item after the order comes in. Your real job is tracking raw materials and components, and setting honest lead times for customers. Treat finished goods as unlimited and manage the inputs instead.

Separate the two inventories

Made to order items have two layers: the finished product, which you never hold stock of, and the raw materials or components, which you do hold stock of. Most problems come from mixing these up and trying to forecast the finished product like a normal SKU.

Set customer-facing lead time, not stock

Instead of a quantity available, the number that matters is how many days it takes you to make and ship the item. This should be based on your current workload and material availability, not guesswork. If you batch production, build that batching cycle into the stated lead time.

Track components as regular SKUs

If you buy raw materials, packaging, or sub-components from suppliers, those items behave like normal stock. They have a lead time from supplier, a reorder point, and a safety stock level. Forecast and reorder these based on how many finished units you expect to sell, not on the finished product's own sales history.

Watch for mixed catalogs

If your store sells both stocked items and made to order items, keep them clearly separated in how you manage them. Applying stock rules to made to order items will give you false reorder signals, and applying made-to-order thinking to stocked items will cause stockouts.

Step by step

  1. List every made to order SKU and confirm it never needs a stock count, only a production lead time.
  2. Identify every raw material, component, or packaging item that goes into those products.
  3. For each material, set a supplier lead time and a safety stock buffer in days.
  4. Estimate daily or weekly usage of each material based on expected finished unit sales, not past material sales.
  5. Calculate each material's reorder point as usage rate times (lead time plus safety days).
  6. Review your stated customer lead time regularly, especially if supplier delays push material arrival out.
  7. Keep made to order SKUs tagged or separated from stocked SKUs so reporting and reordering logic never mixes them.

Worked example

A furniture shop sells a made to order chair. They do not stock finished chairs, but each chair uses 4 meters of fabric. They sell about 10 chairs a week, so fabric usage is 40 meters a week. The fabric supplier has a 14-day lead time and the shop uses a 5-day safety buffer, so the reorder point is 40/7 x (14+5) = roughly 108 meters. When fabric on hand drops to that level, they reorder fabric, not chairs.

How SteadyShelf helps

SteadyShelf forecasts and reorders physical SKUs you hold stock of, so it will not track a made to order finished product since there is no stock level for it. It can still help if your raw materials or components are set up as their own SKUs with supplier lead times, letting you forecast and reorder those the normal way. It does not do manufacturing or BOM tracking, so it cannot automatically translate finished-unit sales into material usage, you need to set that usage rate yourself.

$29/month flat, unlimited products and suppliers, 30-day free trial. Run the numbers now with the free reorder point calculator.

SteadyShelf is launching on the Shopify App Store. Join early access to get the install link first.

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FAQ

Can SteadyShelf track how many finished made to order units I have promised to customers?

No. It tracks stock on hand and on order for physical SKUs, not open production commitments or order backlogs for made to order items. You would need to manage promised quantities and production queue outside the app.

Should I set up my made to order product as a SKU in SteadyShelf at all?

Only if you want it excluded from forecasting. Since it has no real stock level, leave it out of reorder tracking and instead add its raw materials or components as SKUs so you can forecast and reorder those based on expected sales volume.

Let SteadyShelf do this math for every SKU

Order-by dates per supplier, seasonal forecasts and draft POs for your Shopify store. $29/month after a 30-day free trial.

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