Support

Getting started

1. Install from the Shopify App Store. Approve the requested permissions — all three are read-only.
2. Wait for the first sync. levelin pulls your catalogue, inventory levels and 60 days of order history — 60 because that is what Shopify grants until it approves deeper access, which we have asked for and do not have. On a large catalogue this takes several minutes; you can close the tab and come back.
3. Wait for the first forecast. Forecasts run nightly. Until the first run finishes, the reorder list is empty — that is expected on day one, not a fault.
4. Add your suppliers. This is the step that turns generic reorder points into ones matched to your actual lead times.

Setting up suppliers

Until a SKU has a supplier, its reorder point is calculated from a default 7-day lead time and is labelled default lead time wherever it appears. That label is a warning, not decoration: the number is built on an assumption about your supply chain, not on your supply chain.

For each supplier you provide:

• Lead time — days between placing an order and it arriving.
• Worst-case lead time — the longest you have actually waited. Optional, but it is what lets levelin size the buffer for a supplier who is sometimes late. Leave it blank and levelin assumes the lead time never varies, which under-buffers exactly the unreliable suppliers that need it most.
• Review period — how often you place orders with them. Ordering fortnightly means stock has to cover the lead time plus the wait until your next order, and levelin includes that.
• Minimum order quantity — applied per line when purchase orders are built, so a draft is never one your supplier would reject.

Assign in bulk. You can assign a supplier to an entire product type, to everything matching a search, or to everything currently unassigned. Nobody assigns 2,000 SKUs one at a time, and an app that requires it never produces a useful number.

Reading the reorder list

• Reorder point — the stock level at which you should place an order. It covers expected demand over the lead time plus the review period, plus a safety buffer sized to your service level.
• Days of cover — how long current stock lasts at the forecast rate. The fastest way to sort by urgency.
• Suggested quantity — how much to order to get back above the reorder point, net of stock already on order.
• Forecast — how much evidence stands behind the row, from backtesting the chosen method on your own sales history. Beats baseline means it did better than assuming this period matches the last one. Below baseline means it did worse, and the suggested quantity is a starting point rather than an answer. Unreliable means more than twice that error. Unproven means there was not enough history to check it at all — the number comes from the default method for that demand pattern, with nothing measured behind it.

Why does this SKU have no suggested quantity?

Three possible reasons, and each means something different:

• It is marked for review. The SKU's demand is LUMPY — rare and wildly variable. levelin will not invent a quantity for these; see below.
• It has enough stock. On-hand plus on-order is above the reorder point.
• It is unclassifiable. Fewer than two sales in the whole history window. There is nothing to forecast from, and a confident number would be fiction.

Why is the reorder point higher than I expected?

Usually variability. A SKU selling six a week every week needs a much smaller buffer than one averaging six a week that once sold twenty-five. The second is the one that stocks out. Raising the service level, a long lead time, a long review period, or a wide gap between typical and worst-case lead time will all push it up — and all four are things you set.

Demand patterns

Every SKU is classified by how often it sells and how much the quantity varies. The classification determines which forecasting method is used.

Pattern	Means
SMOOTH	Sells regularly in consistent amounts. The straightforward case.
INTERMITTENT	Long gaps between sales, consistent sizes when it does sell. Averaging across the gaps understates what it needs.
ERRATIC	Sells often, in very different quantities. The size variation drives the buffer.
LUMPY	Rare and wildly variable. No method forecasts these honestly.
UNCLASSIFIABLE	Fewer than two sales in the window. Not enough to say anything.

Why won't it suggest a quantity for LUMPY items?

Because any number it produced would be driven by one outlier. Consider a SKU selling about three units a week whose single largest order was forty-five: the arithmetic produces a thirty-unit safety stock for an item that already has ten weeks of cover on the shelf. That is not caution, it is a purchase order for cash you cannot get back.

These SKUs are listed separately, with their history, for you to decide. You know the pending wholesale enquiry; the statistics do not.

Purchase orders

Drafts are grouped by supplier, because that is the unit you actually send. Minimum order quantities are applied and the uplift is shown per line — so when you are buying fifty of something you needed twelve of, you can see it and drop the line instead.

levelin never sends anything to a supplier. Creating a draft saves it in the app; you export it as CSV and send it yourself. A status implying otherwise would let you believe stock is on its way when no email has left the building.

Three kinds of SKU are deliberately kept out of drafts, and reported instead:

• Items marked for review, which have no automatic quantity.
• Items still on a default lead time, because ordering against a guessed lead time spends money on an assumption.
• Items with no supplier assigned, since there is nobody to send the order to.

Dead stock

Which SKUs have stopped selling, and how much cash is sitting in them — ranked by the size of the mistake rather than alphabetically, because with two hundred dead SKUs you will act on the top five.

Items with no unit cost set in Shopify are listed but excluded from the cash total, and the count of those exclusions is shown. A missing cost is treated as unknown, never as zero, so the total is never quietly wrong.

Settings

There is no settings screen yet. Service level, forecast frequency and the dead-stock threshold are fixed in code — service level at 95%, forecasting weekly, dead stock at 90 days without a sale. They are stored per shop and will become settable; when they do, they will be documented here and this paragraph will say when.

They are listed here rather than omitted because they change every number on the reorder list, and you are entitled to know what they are set to even while you cannot change them.

Billing

levelin is $29 a month after a 14-day free trial, billed by Shopify and shown on your Shopify invoice. We never see your card details.

Cancelling: uninstall the app, or cancel the charge from your Shopify admin. Either stops the billing.

The trial runs once per store. Reinstalling does not start a new one. See pricing.

Troubleshooting

The reorder list is empty

On a new install, the first forecast has not run yet — it runs nightly. After that, an empty list most often means every SKU is above its reorder point, which is the outcome you want.

A product is missing

Variants with no SKU are excluded from forecasting: SKU is how sales history is matched to stock, and without one the two cannot be connected. Set a SKU in Shopify and it appears after the next sync.

Numbers look stale

Catalogue and inventory changes arrive by webhook within seconds; forecasts are recomputed nightly. A price or stock change made this afternoon will not move a reorder point until tonight's run.

Everything says "default lead time"

No suppliers assigned yet. See setting up suppliers — this is the single change that most improves the numbers.

Getting help

Email meruappsdev@gmail.com. Include your store's myshopify.com domain and, if it is about a specific number, the SKU — it is much faster than describing the screen.

We answer within one business day. If levelin is telling you something you believe is wrong, that is the most useful email you can send us: an incorrect reorder point is a bug, and we would rather hear about it than have you work around it.