Set your Operations parameters (lead time, safety buffer, inbound estimate)
Quick Reference
Inputs
Default Lead Time (Weeks) - typical weeks from purchase order to sellable stock, 0 to 52. Safety Buffer (Weeks) - the cushion added on top of lead time, 0 to 5. Inbound handling estimate - the share of your outbound / fulfillment bill to model as inbound handling, 0 to 100, pre-filled at 15%. Fulfillment Time (days) - days from order to shipment, 1 to 30. Connected inventory, so on-hand quantities exist to measure cover against.
Outputs
The weeks-of-cover line below which a SKU is graded as at risk of stocking out. Avg Weeks of Cover and Revenue at Stockout Risk on the Command Center. The stock status shown against each SKU in Catalog Profit. An inventory alert on your fastest-moving SKUs naming the weeks remaining and the weeks needed. A modeled inbound handling cost added to landed cost wherever no receiving document exists. A data-quality alert on every SKU whose inbound handling was estimated rather than measured.
Outcomes
Stock alerts fire against your real restock time instead of a generic four-week assumption. One long-lead supplier no longer drags every other SKU into a false alert, because a recorded SKU lead time overrides the store-wide default. Landed cost includes receiving work you were never invoiced for, so margins are conservative rather than optimistic. You can tell at a glance which SKUs carry an estimated inbound cost and which carry a measured one.
Operations is the part of your Business Profile where you tell MarginOS how long a restock takes and how much receiving cost to assume when nobody has billed you for it. Two of its fields do the heavy lifting: Default Lead Time and Safety Buffer add together to set the weeks of cover below which a SKU is treated as heading for a stockout. A third, the inbound handling estimate, adds a modelled receiving cost on top of your fulfillment bill so landed cost is not quietly understated. You will find all of them under Settings → Account Setup → Business Profile → Operations.
What the Operations settings are
These are store-wide fallbacks, not per-SKU facts. MarginOS always prefers something it can evidence for a particular SKU — a lead time recorded against that SKU, a receiving document you forwarded — and falls back to the numbers on this card only where that evidence is missing. Setting them deliberately is what stops a blank field from quietly becoming a generic assumption.
The card carries four fields. Three of them change what you see on your dashboards. The questions below say so plainly rather than leaving you to guess.
Before you start
- You need admin access. Account Setup shows an Access Restricted notice to non-admin users and asks you to contact your tenant administrator.
- Have a realistic restock time in mind — the weeks between placing a purchase order and the stock being sellable, not the number your supplier quotes on a good day.
- Inventory needs to be connected for the stock-cover work to mean anything. Without on-hand quantities, the cover tiles read N/A rather than a guess.
How to set your Operations parameters
- Open Settings from the sidebar. The page is titled Account Setup.
- Select the Business Profile tab, then Operations in the section list.
- Enter Default Lead Time (Weeks) — your typical time from purchase order to sellable stock. Anything from 0 to 52 is accepted.
- Enter Safety Buffer (Weeks) — the cushion you want on top of that lead time. Also 0 to 52.
- Check the Inbound handling estimate. It arrives pre-filled at 15% of your outbound bill and accepts 0 to 100.
- Set Fulfillment Time (days) if you want it on record. It accepts 1 to 30.
- Save. A change to the inbound percentage rebuilds your landed costs before the save returns, so expect that one to take a moment longer than the others.
What each field does
| Field | What you enter | Accepted range | If you leave it alone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fulfillment Time (days) | Days from order to shipment | 1 to 30 | Pre-filled with 3 |
| Inbound handling estimate (%) | The share of your outbound / fulfillment bill to model as inbound handling | 0 to 100 | 15% |
| Default Lead Time (Weeks) | Typical weeks from purchase order to sellable stock | 0 to 52 | Blank, and MarginOS uses 4 weeks |
| Safety Buffer (Weeks) | Cushion added on top of lead time | 0 to 52 | Blank, and MarginOS uses 2 weeks |
How MarginOS uses these settings
Lead time plus buffer is your stockout line
MarginOS adds the two together to get the cover you want on hand. The on-screen wording is exact: a 4-week lead time plus a 2-week buffer means you want at least 6 weeks of cover. A SKU whose weeks of cover falls below that line is graded as at risk of stocking out.
Per-SKU evidence wins. Where a lead time has been recorded against a particular SKU — read off a purchase document you forwarded, or set as an override — that number is used instead of your store-wide default, and the buffer is added to it. The Default Lead Time only fills the gap.
That grading drives the inventory numbers you actually look at: Avg Weeks of Cover and Revenue at Stockout Risk on the Command Center, and the stock status shown against each SKU in Catalog Profit. On your fastest-moving SKUs it also raises an inventory alert that spells the arithmetic out: how many weeks of stock remain, and how many weeks you said you needed.
The inbound estimate fills a gap, it does not move money around
Your 3PL bills you for outbound work — pick, pack and ship. Receiving and put-away are usually invoiced separately, or buried in paperwork that never reaches us. Where MarginOS has a fulfillment bill for a SKU but no receiving document, it models inbound handling as your chosen percentage of that outbound bill and adds it to landed cost.
The word that matters is adds. Your fulfillment line still shows the raw amount your 3PL billed; the estimate never carves a slice out of it. Total modelled logistics cost therefore comes out higher than the single invoice, which is the conservative direction to be wrong in.
When this happens the SKU carries a data-quality alert saying so in as many words: MarginOS could not find real inbound handling costs, so it is adding an estimated inbound cost of a stated percentage of your outbound bill as a separate landed-cost line. The fix is to forward your receiving documents to your MarginOS inbox, because real numbers displace the estimate. The Defensible Profit Model covers what an estimated input does to a SKU rating.
Example
Suppose your supplier takes six weeks and you want two weeks of slack. You set Default Lead Time to 6 and Safety Buffer to 2, so MarginOS expects 8 weeks of cover on any SKU that has no lead time of its own. A SKU selling 100 units a week with 500 on hand has 5 weeks of cover, which is under the line, so it is graded at risk and its recent revenue counts toward Revenue at Stockout Risk. A different SKU carrying a recorded 12-week lead time is judged against 14 weeks rather than 8, and can be flagged while sitting on far more stock.
On the inbound side: your 3PL bills $4,000 of outbound work in a month covering SKUs you never sent receiving paperwork for. At the default 15%, MarginOS adds $600 of modelled inbound handling into landed cost across those units. The fulfillment line still reads $4,000. These figures are illustrative.
Common questions
What does Fulfillment Time change?
Nothing, today. It is stored with your business profile and read back into this form, but no metric, tile or alert uses it. Lead time and safety buffer are the fields that drive stock cover, so set those first and treat Fulfillment Time as a record of how you operate rather than a lever.
What happens if I leave Lead Time or Safety Buffer blank?
MarginOS falls back to 4 weeks of lead time and a 2-week buffer, so a blank card still grades your stock against 6 weeks of cover. That is a sane default and a poor fit for anyone importing on a long ocean lead time. Blank is a decision, not an unfinished field.
What if my lead times vary by supplier?
Then the store-wide number should be your commonest case, not your worst. A lead time recorded against an individual SKU always overrides the default, so the accurate way to handle one long-lead supplier is to get that lead time onto its SKUs, rather than inflating the store-wide fallback and dragging every other SKU with it.
My weeks of cover looks healthy but I still got a stockout alert. Why?
Almost always because that SKU carries its own lead time, longer than your default. The alert names both numbers, the weeks of stock remaining and the weeks you need, so read the gap it quotes rather than comparing against your store-wide setting.
Does a bigger safety buffer make my margins look worse?
No. The buffer only changes when a SKU is called at risk of running out. It touches no cost, no revenue and no margin. What it does change is how many SKUs raise a stockout alert, so an over-generous buffer costs you attention rather than accuracy.
Why did my landed costs change right after I saved?
Because you changed the inbound percentage. That one field rebuilds landed cost for the SKUs the estimate applies to, and MarginOS finishes the rebuild before the save returns rather than letting you read stale numbers. Lead time, safety buffer and fulfillment time need no rebuild.
Should I set the inbound estimate to zero?
Only if you genuinely pay nothing to receive stock, which is rare. Setting it to zero does not make receiving free, it makes it invisible, and every margin built on that landed cost becomes optimistic by exactly the amount you chose not to count. If the 15% default feels wrong for you, the better move is to forward a receiving invoice so MarginOS can use the real figure.
Related
About the author
Founder of MarginOS, a Profit & Inventory OS for Shopify DTC brands who live and die by margin. Previously 11 years at Google across Ads and Global Business Operations, building large-scale systems. Now focused on giving DTC operators true profit by product, channel, and customer after COGS, 3PL, shipping, returns, and fees, and on showing exactly how much to trust every number behind those decisions.
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