Stock Reorder Sheet for Pakistani Online Sellers: When to Reorder and How Much, Before 11.11 and Black Friday (With a Rs Example)

Why a stock reorder sheet matters this month

A stock reorder sheet tells you, for every product, two things: when to place the next order with your supplier, and how many pieces to order. Most Pakistani online sellers decide this by looking at the shelf and guessing. That works in a quiet month. It breaks in November, when 11.11 falls on Wednesday 11 November and Black Friday on Friday 27 November, ads get more expensive, and the product that is selling best is exactly the one that runs out first.

Running out is costly for a COD seller in a way it is not for others. You keep paying for ads that send people to a sold-out page, or worse, you keep taking orders and then call customers to cancel, which hurts trust and your page reviews. Ordering too much is just as bad: your cash sits in cartons while the courier still holds last week's COD money.

Below is a sheet you can build in Google Sheets in 15 minutes, the four formulas behind it, a worked Rs example for three products, and a weekly routine. Shopify's own inventory numbers feed it, so you do not need an extra app to start.

What numbers do you need for each product?

You need six numbers per product (per variant if sizes or colours sell differently). Five come from your store and your supplier; one is your own choice.

1. On hand: pieces physically in your stock room today. In Shopify this is the available quantity at the location that fulfils online orders. Shopify's help centre notes that if you have more than one location, stock sitting at a location that does not fulfil online orders does not count for online sales.
2. Coming back: parcels already marked as returning by the courier that you expect to put back on the shelf. Count only those you expect to be sellable; a damaged return is not stock.
3. On order: pieces you have already paid for or confirmed with the supplier but not yet received.
4. Daily sales: confirmed orders for this product in the last 28 days, divided by 28. Use confirmed or dispatched orders, not every order placed. Fake and cancelled orders inflate your sales speed and make you over-order.
5. Lead time (days): from the day you place the supplier order to the day stock is on your shelf and can be shipped. For a Shah Alam or Jodia Bazaar supplier this may be a few days; for an import it may be weeks. Use your own past orders, not the supplier's promise.
6. Safety days: extra days of stock you keep in case the supplier is late or sales jump. This is your choice. A common way to set it is half your lead time for steady products and more for products you are about to push in a sale.

The four formulas behind the sheet

Stock position is what you can count on: On hand + Coming back + On order.

Days left is how long your stock position lasts at today's speed: Stock position divided by Daily sales. Shopify calls a similar number days of inventory remaining: stock at the end of a period divided by average units sold per day in that period. You can see it as a tile on the Products page in Shopify admin.

Reorder point is the stock level at which you must place the next order: Daily sales x (Lead time + Safety days). When Stock position falls to or below this number, you order today.

Order quantity is how many pieces to order so you are covered until the next order arrives: Daily sales x (Lead time + Cover days + Safety days) minus Stock position. Cover days is how long you want this order to last; 30 days is a sensible start for most small stores because it matches a monthly supplier visit.

Multiply Order quantity by your cost per piece to get Cash needed. This last column is the one most sellers forget, and it is where COD businesses get stuck.

The copy-paste sheet layout

Make one row per product or variant and these columns. The letters show where each formula goes if you start in column A.

Add conditional formatting on column L so YES turns red. Sort by column J (Days left) from smallest to largest, and the products that need attention sit at the top every time you open the sheet.

Example: three winter products, worked in Rs

Example (made-up numbers to show the method). A Lahore store sells a hoodie, a shawl and a kids' jacket. It wants 30 cover days on each order.

How the hoodie row works: reorder point = 3 x (7 + 4) = 33. Stock position is 29, which is below 33, so the sheet says reorder today. Order quantity = 3 x (7 + 30 + 4) = 123, minus 29 already in hand or coming = 94 pieces. At Rs 1,800 each, that is Rs 169,200.

The kids' jacket looks fine on the shelf with 16 days left, but its lead time is 14 days and safety is 5, so it is already under its reorder point of 10. This is the classic trap: slow products with long lead times run out even though they never look urgent.

The shawl has 40 days left and a reorder point of 23. No order needed this week. At 1.5 a day it reaches 23 in about 25 days ((60 - 23) / 1.5), so that cash stays free for the hoodie order instead of sitting on a shelf.

How to adjust for 11.11 and Black Friday

The sheet uses the last 28 days, so it does not know a sale is coming. Handle the sale as a separate line, not by guessing a bigger daily sales number for the whole month.

1. Pick the products you will actually push in the sale. Only these get extra stock.
2. Use your own history. If last year's 11.11 or your last big sale sold 2x a normal day for that product, use 2x for the sale days only. If you have no history, do not invent a big multiplier; add a modest buffer and watch daily.
3. Add the extra pieces for the sale days on top of the normal order quantity, and order them early enough that lead time plus safety days ends before the sale starts.
4. Check the Cash needed column against the COD money you actually expect in the next two weeks, not your sales total. If the cash is not there, cut C-grade products first.

Shopify's product analytics groups products into A, B and C grades by revenue: A products bring about 80% of revenue, B about 15% and C about 5%. A simple rule for a cash-tight month is: never let an A product run out, order B products normally, and order C products only when they hit zero.

Should you keep selling when stock runs out?

Shopify has a setting called Continue selling when out of stock in the Inventory section of each product. It only works when inventory tracking is on. Shopify lists uses like preorders and stock that is arriving soon.

For COD in Pakistan, turn it on only when the next batch is already on order and will arrive within a few days. A customer who orders today and gets the parcel ten days later is more likely to refuse it at the door, and every refused parcel costs you delivery and return charges. If you do turn it on, say the expected dispatch date clearly on the product page and in your confirmation message.

A 20-minute weekly routine

1. Monday morning: export or copy available quantities from Shopify into column B.
2. Update Coming back from your courier portal's return list, counting only sellable items.
3. Update confirmed orders for the last 28 days in column E.
4. Sort by Days left. Every YES row gets a supplier order today, sized by column N.
5. Add the total of column P and compare it with the COD payments due this week.
6. Once a month, check lead times against what actually happened and update column G.

Returns change the Coming back column more than most sellers expect. If you use RabbitROI, its return rates by product and by courier show which products come back most, so you can tell which items need a bigger Coming back estimate and which need a bigger safety buffer.

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