How to plan inventory when you dropship some products

Separate the two inventory models

Products you stock need the usual forecasting: daily sales rate, lead time, safety days, reorder point. Products you dropship do not sit in your warehouse, so none of that applies to them in the same way. Trying to run one forecasting process across both will give you noise, because dropship items often show as "unlimited stock" or are not tracked as inventory at all in your store admin.

The main risk with dropship items is not running out, it is your dropship supplier running out or being slow, and you not knowing it until a customer complains. So your planning effort there should go into checking supplier stock and response times, not into calculating reorder quantities.

What to track for stocked items

For anything you hold in your own stock, keep forecasting as normal: daily sales rate over a recent window, lead time from your supplier, safety days for delays, and a reorder point per SKU. Order quantities should cover your lead time plus a cushion of extra days, minus what you already have on hand or on order.

Treat these SKUs the same whether or not you also dropship other products. Mixing a dropship product's sales history into a stocked product's forecast (or vice versa) will skew your numbers, so keep them as separate SKUs with separate histories.

What to do for dropship items instead

Check your dropship supplier's stated stock levels and lead times on a regular schedule, weekly or biweekly depending on how fast they move. If a dropship supplier does not expose live stock, ask them directly before running a promotion on that product, since a sudden spike in orders can expose stockouts you cannot see.

Keep a simple list of your dropship SKUs and their suppliers' average fulfillment time. If fulfillment time creeps up, that is often the first sign of a supply problem, even before they tell you they are out of stock.

Watch for mixed orders

If a single customer order contains both a stocked item and a dropship item, you may ship in two shipments with two timelines. Make sure your customer-facing shipping expectations account for the slower of the two, not just your own warehouse speed.

Also watch inventory accuracy on any product you sell as both stocked and dropshipped (for example, you stock it normally but overflow to a dropship supplier when you run low). That split needs manual attention since it is not a standard reorder calculation.

Step by step

1. List every SKU and mark it as stocked, dropship, or both.
2. For stocked SKUs, set lead time and safety days per supplier and calculate reorder points as usual.
3. For dropship SKUs, remove them from your own reorder point calculations since you do not hold the stock.
4. Set a recurring check, weekly or biweekly, to confirm your dropship supplier's stock and lead time.
5. Flag any SKU sold as both stocked and dropship for manual review before big promotions.
6. Build a simple fallback plan for dropship items: a backup supplier or a plan to pause sales if your primary supplier goes dark.
7. Keep shipping time estimates honest for orders that mix stocked and dropship items.

Worked example

Say you stock Product A yourself and dropship Product B through a supplier. For Product A, daily sales are 5 units, lead time is 7 days, safety days are 3, so your reorder point is 5 x (7+3) = 50 units. For Product B, there is no reorder point to calculate on your side, instead you check weekly that your dropship supplier shows Product B in stock and still quotes a 2-day handling time. If that handling time stretches to 5 days, you treat it as a warning sign even though your own inventory count for Product B never changes.

How SteadyShelf helps

SteadyShelf forecasts and generates purchase orders for the SKUs you actually stock and receive, which covers Product A type items well. It does not track dropship supplier stock or fulfillment times, since it has no multichannel or dropship integration, so you will need to monitor your dropship supplier directly and keep that process separate.

$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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