Spot low inventory and draft supplier purchase orders

Small retailers, ecommerce brands, and operations teams often discover an item is running out only when stock hits zero or a customer order cannot be fulfilled. Checking reorder points across hundreds of SKUs, factoring in supplier lead times and minimum order quantities, and writing purchase orders by hand gets pushed off until it becomes a rush order.

Each morning the agent reads current available inventory, open purchase orders already in transit, recent sales velocity, and your supplier table (lead time in days, unit cost, minimum order quantity, case pack size). It flags SKUs whose days of cover have dropped below the supplier's lead time plus your safety buffer, calculates a suggested reorder quantity rounded to case packs and MOQs, and groups items by supplier. It then creates a draft purchase order in your inventory or accounting tool (or a review sheet) and drafts the supplier email for a buyer to check and send.

1. Build a clean supplier and SKU table: preferred supplier, lead time in days, safety stock days, minimum order quantity, case pack size, and unit cost
2. Connect read-only access to daily inventory levels, recent sales history, and already-open purchase orders so in-transit stock is not ordered twice
3. Have the agent calculate days of stock remaining per SKU and flag items at or below their reorder point
4. Group flagged SKUs by supplier and check whether the combined order meets the supplier's minimum order quantity or free-freight threshold
5. Create draft purchase orders and draft supplier emails in a review queue, noting the sales window and assumptions used
6. Have the buyer or operations owner check seasonal spikes, upcoming promotions, and cash flow before approving and sending any purchase order

• Shopify or WooCommerce
• Cin7
• inFlow Inventory
• NetSuite
• QuickBooks Online
• Make or n8n + an LLM

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A buyer, founder, or operations manager reviews and approves every purchase order and sends every supplier email. The agent never commits company funds or places a supplier order on its own.

One-off bulk orders, viral spikes, or stale inventory counts can trick a formula into over-ordering slow stock, so always show the trailing sales numbers alongside the suggestion and keep a human on approval. Make sure open purchase orders are subtracted from the reorder calculation so the agent does not recommend ordering the same replenishment twice.

Track stockout incidents on core SKUs, rush shipping fees from late orders, and hours spent each week checking stock sheets and typing purchase orders.