Lightspeed vs Shopify Purchase Orders: Plans, Imports, Cost

For purchase orders, Lightspeed Retail is the stronger system out of the box and Shopify is the lighter one. Lightspeed builds purchase orders into every plan, generates them from reorder points, imports hundreds of lines from a spreadsheet and syncs brand orders from NuORDER. Shopify now has native purchase orders in the admin, which took over after Stocky shut down on August 31, 2026, but its import only adds lines for products you already carry. Neither reads a supplier PDF on every account, so stores that get emailed confirmations still need a capture step.

Most Lightspeed vs Shopify comparisons were written for a store choosing between a POS and an online store builder. They spend a paragraph on inventory and often still say Shopify has no purchase orders at all, which stopped being true in 2023 and matters more now that Stocky is gone. This comparison looks only at the purchasing side: how an order to a supplier gets created, how its lines get in, how stock is received, and what each platform costs a store that uses purchase orders every week. Every product claim comes from the Shopify and Lightspeed help centers or their pricing pages.

Lightspeed vs Shopify purchase orders at a glance

Does Shopify have purchase orders?

Yes. Shopify added native purchase orders to the admin in 2023, and they now live under Products, then Purchase orders. A purchase order records the supplier, the destination location, products and quantities, payment terms and a cost summary. It starts as a Draft, moves to Ordered once the supplier confirms, and is received by creating an inventory transfer from it, which is also where freight and other cost adjustments go.

Before you can create one, Shopify needs the supplier set up, a location to receive the stock and inventory tracking switched on for each product. Lines go in by search, by a barcode scanner in keyboard mode, or by CSV. Shopify remembers supplier SKU, cost and tax from previous orders with the same supplier and fills them in, which helps on repeat orders. You can export a purchase order as a PDF to send to the supplier. Shopify's help center lists search, scanner and CSV as the ways to add products and says nothing about generating lines from reorder points, so stores that want suggested quantities add a forecasting or replenishment app.

What happened to Stocky, and why it matters for this choice

Stocky was the Shopify POS inventory app most physical stores used for purchase orders. Shopify removed it from the App Store on February 2, 2026 and ended access on August 31, 2026, when its APIs stopped working too. Merchants keep read-only access for at least 90 days to export reports, but historical purchase orders, statuses and received quantities do not move into the Shopify admin. Shopify is explicit that the native CSV upload only adds product line items to a new draft purchase order.

That makes this a live decision for many stores. A Shopify retailer who relied on Stocky is now rebuilding the purchasing process either in the Shopify admin, in a third-party inventory app, or on a different POS. Lightspeed is the usual comparison because its purchasing tools have been part of the core product for years.

Does Lightspeed have purchase orders?

Yes, and on both of its retail platforms. R-Series fills a purchase order four ways: searching items one at a time, generating lines from reorder points and reorder levels, adding special order items, or importing a spreadsheet of up to 500 items per file, one vendor per file. The R-Series import matches rows on System ID, Vendor ID, UPC, EAN, Custom SKU or Manufacturer SKU and creates a new item when nothing matches, so new season product can be ordered and created in one step.

X-Series works from Inventory, then Stock control, then Order stock. Products go in by search or barcode scan, from reorder recommendations, from the catalog or from a CSV with SKU and Quantity as the required columns. Unlike R-Series, the X-Series CSV does not create products. X-Series also has Import from document, which builds a purchase order from a PDF, JPEG or PNG invoice or packing slip, and the Lightspeed Scanner phone app. Lightspeed labels both as beta and says they may not be available in your account. The column-level detail is on our Lightspeed purchase order import page.

Is Lightspeed better than Shopify for inventory?

For a store where most revenue comes through the door and purchasing is a weekly job, yes. Lightspeed ships reorder points, vendor catalogs through NuORDER, landed cost tracking and supplier records in the base product, while Shopify covers purchase orders and receiving natively and leaves forecasting and reorder suggestions to apps. For an ecommerce-first brand that sells some stock in person, Shopify is usually the better overall platform, and its native purchase orders are enough when order volume is modest.

The honest dividing line is how many lines you order and from whom. A bike or outdoor shop placing preseason orders of 300 lines with a dozen brands will feel Shopify's gaps quickly. A direct-to-consumer brand with one manufacturer and a handful of SKUs will not.

How much do Lightspeed and Shopify cost for a store that uses purchase orders?

Lightspeed's US Retail pricing page shows Basic from $89, Core from $149 and Plus from $289 a month, and lists purchase orders through PO Sync and Lightspeed Wholesale, plus Landed Costs, on all three plans. So the purchasing features come with the cheapest plan.

On Shopify, purchase orders sit in the admin of your Shopify plan. For in-person selling, Shopify lists completing purchase orders, inventory counts and low stock alerts among the POS Pro features, and POS Pro is published at $89 per location per month on top of the Shopify plan. A two-location store on POS Pro therefore pays $178 a month before its Shopify subscription and before any replenishment app. Compare the whole stack rather than the headline plan price, and price it at your real location count.

Which one handles supplier PDFs better?

Lightspeed X-Series, if your account has Import from document switched on, because it reads a PDF, JPEG or PNG invoice or packing slip into a purchase order and asks you to confirm each product match. Lightspeed R-Series and Shopify have no native way to read an incoming supplier document. On those, someone either keys the lines or turns the PDF into a spreadsheet for the import.

That spreadsheet step is where PurchaseOrders fits on either platform. It reads the supplier confirmation, invoice or packing slip and returns every line as CSV or Excel: supplier item code, UPC or EAN where printed, description, quantity and unit cost. On Shopify you match on barcode or add your SKU column and use the Import button on the draft order, which is covered step by step in Shopify purchase orders import. On Lightspeed you load the same file through the purchase order import. PurchaseOrders does not connect to either system and does not create or receive orders; it removes the typing in front of the import. It costs $49 a month on Starter or $149 a month on Plus, or $24 and $74 a month billed yearly.

Can you use Lightspeed and Shopify together?

Yes. Lightspeed sells its own ecommerce, but many stores run Lightspeed for the shop floor and purchasing and Shopify for the website, connected through an integration that syncs products and stock. In that setup, purchase orders belong in Lightspeed, because it is the system that receives the stock. Keeping purchase orders in both places is the fastest way to double-count incoming inventory.

Shopify-first stores that run paid campaigns often want the other direction too: sales by product lined up against ad spend. That is a reporting question rather than a purchasing one, and a marketing dashboard that pulls your store and ad channels into one view answers it better than either POS report.

Which should you choose for purchasing?

If you have already chosen and the remaining pain is retyping supplier documents, start with the platform page: Shopify purchase orders import or Lightspeed purchase order import. If you are on Lightspeed and weighing add-ons such as Inventory Planner, Cin7 Core or Finale, purchase order software for Lightspeed Retail compares them. For the retail workflow in general, see purchase order extraction for retail, and when the same invoices also need to reach the books, importing purchase orders into QuickBooks covers the accounting side.