Install and first sync

You install Shelfcast from the Shopify App Store and approve the access it asks for. The first time it opens, it starts reading your store from Shopify. You don’t need to press anything — the sync starts on its own and runs in the background, even before you’ve chosen a plan.

Choosing a plan

Most of Shelfcast needs a plan. Until you choose one, Home opens as normal (with your setup guide), and every other page takes you to Choose a plan, which opens Shopify’s plan page. If that page doesn’t open by itself, press Open plans.

Once you’ve picked a plan, Shopify sends you back to Shelfcast and you’ll see “Your plan is active.” → Plans and pricing

What Shelfcast reads from Shopify

• Your store’s details: its name, email address, currency and timezone.
• Your locations: names and addresses, and whether each is active. Up to 50 locations are read.
• Every product and variant: title, vendor, product type, status, image, SKU, barcode, price, cost, and whether Shopify tracks its inventory.
• Stock at each active location: available, on hand, committed and incoming.
• Your recent orders, as daily totals: how many of each variant sold on each day. Shelfcast keeps only those daily totals — never the orders themselves or anything about your customers.

When it adds up sales, Shelfcast leaves out test orders and cancelled orders, takes refunds and order edits into account, and skips custom items that aren’t products in your catalog. Sales from every channel count — your online store, Shopify POS and any others. Days run midnight to midnight in your store’s timezone.

Shopify shares the last 60 days of orders

Shopify gives Shelfcast the last 60 days of your orders, not your full history. The same note appears under Settings → Data.

Your history builds up from there: Shelfcast keeps every day it has read, and adds each new day as it comes. A few months after you install, it has a few months more to work with. Forecasts that compare this year with last year need over a year of that history, so they get better the longer Shelfcast runs. → How forecasting works

How long it takes

A few minutes for most stores. Large catalogs take longer, and if Shopify asks Shelfcast to slow down, it waits and carries on rather than stopping. Your sales history is read alongside your catalog and can finish a little later.

What you see while it runs

• Home shows a banner starting “Syncing your catalog from Shopify.” and refreshes itself every few seconds until the sync is done. The first step of your setup guide reads “Syncing your catalog…”.
• Products shows “Your products are on their way” with a spinner. Products appear as soon as they’re in.
• Reorder shows “Reading your sales history” until forecasts have been worked out.

When both are finished, the bottom of Home shows Catalog synced and Sales history synced with how long ago each ran. Forecasts are worked out as each sync finishes, and the Reorder page fills in.

If Home still says it’s syncing after an hour or so, email support@portsidelabs.io.

How Shelfcast stays up to date

As things change in Shopify, Shopify tells Shelfcast straight away when:

• a product is created, edited or deleted;
• the available quantity of a product changes at any location — a sale, a return, an edit in the admin, a POS adjustment or another app.

Locations aren’t sent this way. A new or renamed location appears after the nightly sync, or when you press Sync now.

Every night (times are UTC, which is evening in the US):

When	What runs
1:00 UTC	A full re-read of your products, locations and stock, to catch anything missed during the day. Forecasts are then refreshed.
2:00 UTC	The last 30 days of orders are read again, so late refunds and edits are reflected. Forecasts are then refreshed.

Every hour, Shelfcast records each product’s available stock for the day. The last reading of the day is the one kept. That’s how forecasting knows which days a product was out of stock.

When forecasts refresh

Forecasts are worked out again:

• after each nightly sync;
• when you change Default lead time (days), Order enough for (days) or Safety stock (days) in Settings → Planning;
• when you link a product to a supplier, change its terms, or remove it;
• when an import of supplier products or purchase orders finishes;
• when you press Sync now or Read again in Settings → Data;
• for a single product, as soon as you save its planning settings.

They are not worked out again when you mark a purchase order as ordered, receive it, cancel it or close it, or when stock changes. So after you order something, the Reorder page catches up overnight — or sooner if you press Sync now and let it finish.

Syncing by hand

Both buttons are in Settings → Data:

• Sync now re-reads your products, locations and stock, then refreshes forecasts.
• Read again asks Shopify for your sales history again, then refreshes forecasts.

Either one shows “Sync started”. You rarely need them, since Shelfcast checks everything each night.

What a sync never changes

• Your planning settings. Reorder points, reorder quantities and forecast methods belong to you. A sync never overwrites them, and a product that’s deleted in Shopify and comes back keeps them.
• Your history. When a product is deleted in Shopify, Shelfcast keeps it marked Deleted in Shopify, so purchase orders, counts and history that mention it still make sense.

Next: your setup checklist.