How to plan around tariff changes

Separate the cost question from the stock question

Tariffs change what you pay per unit. They do not change how fast an item sells. Keep those two decisions separate: your reorder point and order quantity should still be driven by daily sales, lead time and safety days. Your cost per unit, margin and retail price are a separate calculation you do with your supplier invoices and pricing sheet.

Order ahead of known tariff dates

If a tariff increase has an announced effective date, the practical move is to place and receive your order before that date, if your cash flow and storage space allow it. This means treating the tariff date like a tighter deadline: count backward from it using your supplier's lead time, and place the order early enough that stock lands in time.

Expect longer or less predictable lead times

Tariff changes often come with customs delays, supplier repricing pauses, or carriers rerouting shipments. Add extra safety days to any supplier affected by tariff uncertainty, even if the unit cost itself is not changing yet. Treat the lead time as a range and plan for the longer end until you have a few orders of real experience with the new conditions.

Keep cost changes out of your inventory records manually

If a supplier changes pricing because of a tariff, update your cost records and pricing wherever you track margin. This is manual bookkeeping work, separate from reordering, and it needs to happen whenever a new cost takes effect.

Step by step

1. List every supplier who ships from a country facing a tariff change and note the effective date.
2. For each affected SKU, count backward from the tariff date using the supplier's current lead time to find the last safe order date.
3. If possible, place and pay for that order before the tariff takes effect, sized to cover extra months of demand if storage and cash allow.
4. Add extra safety days to the supplier's lead time for the next few orders to absorb possible customs delays.
5. Update your unit cost and margin records as soon as you get the new pricing from the supplier.
6. Watch the first post-tariff shipment closely and adjust lead time and safety days based on what actually happened.
7. Repeat this check whenever a new tariff announcement affects one of your suppliers.

Worked example

A store buys a SKU from a supplier in a country facing a tariff increase effective in 60 days. The supplier's normal lead time is 21 days and safety days are 7, so the store would normally order every 28 days of cover. To beat the tariff, the store instead orders now for 90 days of cover: daily sales are 4 units, so order qty = 4 x 90 - (on hand 40 + on order 0) = 320 units. This uses more cash and storage upfront but avoids the higher cost on that batch.

How SteadyShelf helps

SteadyShelf does not track landed cost, tariffs or supplier pricing changes, so you need to handle cost updates and pricing decisions manually. It can help with the stock side: it will keep using your lead time and safety days to flag the order-by date, so you can manually stretch the order size or move the date earlier to get ahead of a known tariff change.

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

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