July 3, 2026 · 6 min read

Low stock forecasting without Stocky: sales velocity explained

One of the most-used parts of Stocky was its low-stock forecasting — the nudge that told you what to reorder before it sold out. With Stocky going away on August 31, 2026, here’s how that forecasting actually works, so you can reproduce it in a spreadsheet or a new tool.

The core idea: sales velocity

Forecasting low stock isn’t magic. It comes down to one number: sales velocity — how fast a product sells, usually units per day averaged over the last 30 days.

Once you know velocity, the reorder logic is simple:

• Days of stock left = current stock ÷ daily sales rate.
• If days of stock left is less than your supplier lead time (plus a safety buffer), reorder now — otherwise you’ll stock out before the new order arrives.

Example: you sell 4 units/day, have 40 in stock, and your supplier takes 14 days. That’s 10 days of stock against a 14-day lead time — you’re already too late to avoid a gap. Time to reorder.

Doing it by hand

You can rebuild this in a spreadsheet: pull 30 days of sales per variant, divide by 30 for a daily rate, divide current stock by that rate, and flag anything below lead time. It works — but it’s manual, goes stale the moment sales change, and gets painful past a few dozen SKUs.

Doing it automatically

This is exactly what Reorda automates. It computes a 30-day sales velocity per product variant, compares it to current stock and your per-product threshold, and surfaces a low-stock list with a sales-based forecast — so you see what’s running out before it costs you sales, without maintaining a spreadsheet. No AI black box: the logic is the transparent velocity math above.

Pairing this with clean supplier data makes reordering fast — and Reorda rebuilds that supplier data from your Stocky PO history automatically.