The freight mode toggles, and what turning one off does

Restocio plans every order around the routes you have switched on. Switching one off is not a display preference, it changes which route your orders are built for.

Marcus VolstedCo-founder, Restocio Published 22 September 202610 min read

What the switches actually do

A freight mode you switch off drops out of Restocio's planning completely: its card disappears from your settings, its delivery time and freight rate stop being read, and no order is ever built on it again. The page says as much in the line under that card's heading. “Turn off the ones you don't use. The system ignores disabled methods in all calculations.”

What that line leaves out is which route inherits the work. Restocio builds the order plan around the slowest route you still have switched on, and marks that route on screen with a “Leads your plan” flag. Turn it off and the flag moves to whatever is now slowest. That is why switching sea off on a store that buys by the boatload is a bigger change than one switch looks like, and it is the mistake this page exists to prevent.

Why you would send part of an order one way and the rest another is a separate question, worked through in air or sea freight, and how to work out the split. If importing itself is new, importing for Shopify is the map. Neither is repeated here. This page covers the switches and the numbers behind them, nothing else.

Where the switches are

Open Settings, then the Inventory tab. The first block under the heading “Step 1 · Your routes” is called “Which shipping do you use?” and holds four switches in a fixed order: Boat, Train, Plane, Truck. Which of them are already on is whatever you answered during setup, where the same question appears as “How do goods usually reach you?” and nothing is ticked for you.

The vocabulary shifts between screens, which is worth knowing before you go hunting. Onboarding asks the same question using Sea, Rail, Air and Truck. Settings shows the same four routes as Boat, Train, Plane and Truck. The search box at the top of the Settings page accepts either word, so typing sea and typing boat both land on “Boat: days from supplier to shelf” and “Shipping cost per kilo · Boat”, each labelled with the tab it lives on.

The fields behind each route

Every switched-on route gets its own card further down the Inventory page. The fields split across two tabs, and the split is not intuitive, so here it is in one table.

What you are changing	Where it lives	What it decides
The route switch	Settings, Inventory, under “Which shipping do you use?”	Whether the route exists in your plan at all
“Boat: days from supplier to shelf”, and the same field for train, plane and truck	Settings, Inventory, on that route's own card	How long the route takes, from goods ready at the supplier to goods on your shelf
“Shipping cost per kilo” for plane, train and boat	Settings, Freight & Margin	What a kilo costs you on that route
“Shipping cost per kilo, truck”	Settings, Inventory, on the truck card	The same thing for road freight
“Rates are in”	Settings, Freight & Margin	One currency for all four rates at once, converted into your store's own money

Delivery time has exactly one home. Freight & Margin shows each route's days as well, but in a dashed box you cannot type into, with a “Change on Inventory” link next to it. Freight rates are the mirror image: three of them are typed on Freight & Margin and only the truck's is typed on Inventory, beside the truck's delivery time. That is a rough edge rather than a design, so the truck rate is the one worth remembering.

One number sits on neither tab. Each supplier's production time is typed on the Suppliers page and added on top of whatever the route takes, so a route's days are transport only. The Inventory page states that under the route cards, and it counts the suppliers with nothing typed out loud rather than quietly planning as though the factory ships the day you order.

What changes the moment you switch one off

Six things change, and most of them are nowhere near the switch you just moved.

The route's card disappears from the Inventory page and takes its delivery time field with it. Nothing is deleted. The number is hidden along with the card.
The “Leads your plan” flag moves. Take a store with a 70 day boat, a 25 day truck and a 5 day plane, all switched on. The boat carries the flag. Switch the boat off and the truck takes it, and the figures under “Your plan” lower down the page shift to match the shorter trip.
Freight & Margin keeps the block, greyed out. The route stays on that tab with the word (disabled) after its name and its fields locked. Your typed rate is still sitting inside it.
The truck reminder vanishes. Freight & Margin carries a one-line note of your truck rate and where it is typed, and that line only appears while truck is switched on.
“Your main shipping method” moves itself. The dropdown only offers routes that are on. If the one you just switched off was selected there, Restocio reassigns it to a route that is still on rather than leaving you pointed at a route you retired.
The test calculation at the foot does not follow. It keeps a margin card for plane, train and boat whatever the switches say, and it can still tag a switched-off boat as Recommended. Read that panel as a rate comparison, not as your plan.

Two more rules apply to the switches themselves. You cannot turn the last one off, and the app refuses with “At least one shipping method must be active” rather than silently ignoring the click. And a switch is an edit like any other, so nothing takes effect until you press Save in the bar at the foot of the page.

Turning one back on

One click on the same switch, then Save. The delivery time and the per-kilo rate you typed before are still there, because switching a route off only ever writes the switch. There is no archive to restore and nothing to retype.

A route that is switched on but never used

Switching a route on is permission, not a promise. When a route is both slower and dearer than another route you have switched on, Restocio takes it out of the running and tells you, in a box directly under the switches: “Your train is slower than your plane and costs more, so we never use it. Is the rate right?” A line underneath names both routes with their days and their rates, so the comparison it made is on screen rather than implied.

The question mark is doing real work. Most of the time this is a typo in a rate field, not a genuine situation. When it is genuine, and you have volume committed to that carrier, “Use it anyway” puts the route back into the plan and leaves a note saying it is kept there on your instruction, with “Stop using it” to undo. While a route is out of the running its own card carries the label “Not used: another route beats it on time and price”.

This never happens against the example rates the app ships with. Both routes need a rate you typed yourself before Restocio will drop either of them.

Type your own rates, or the money stays blank

Restocio ships with example per-kilo rates so the timing side works from day one, and it deliberately refuses to turn those examples into money. Until at least one of the rate fields carries a number of your own, figures built on a freight rate are withheld instead of guessed. On the Replenishment page that shows up as a sentence where an amount should be: “Enter your freight rates in Settings, Freight & Margin, to see what the fast leg costs.”

Editing the truck rate over on Inventory counts too, since all four rates are saved together as one set. Setting an exchange rate does not count, because choosing a currency says nothing about whether the per-kilo numbers are yours.

What the rates do not touch

One other setting decides whether these rates reach your money figures at all. “What your cost prices mean”, further down Freight & Margin, tells Restocio whether your cost per item is goods only or already has freight folded into it. Choose Landed price and Restocio adds no freight anywhere, so the rates you typed stop moving any margin or landed cost figure, even though they carry on deciding which route an order travels. Getting that one right first is worth an afternoon, and it has its own page: supplier price or landed price, and how to pick it right.

What the switches will not do for you

Restocio never quotes a freight rate. Both the per-kilo number and the delivery time have to come from your forwarder, and a figure from a blog post, ours included, is not a quote. Whether a sea shipment should share a container or book one outright is not a switch either. That is a volume question, and it is worked through in FCL vs LCL, and the CBM where it flips.

Then the honest one. Switch off the only route fast enough to reach you in time and nothing on the page says so. The plan rebuilds around what is left, the “Leads your plan” flag moves, and the longer trip simply sits there waiting to be noticed. No warning is built for that case today, so the check is manual. After you change a switch, look at the route now carrying the flag and decide whether its days from supplier to shelf are days you can live with. There is one narrow edge worth knowing if you run on road freight alone: “Your main shipping method” only ever lists plane, train and boat, so on a truck-only store that box can end up showing nothing at all.

Common questions

What happens if I turn off sea freight in Restocio?

The boat leaves your plan entirely. Its card disappears from Settings, Inventory, no order is built on it, and the "Leads your plan" flag moves to the slowest route you still have switched on, which is usually much faster. The timing figures further down the Inventory page shift with it. Your typed sea rate and sea delivery time are kept, not deleted, so switching sea back on restores both.

Can I turn all the freight modes off?

No. Restocio refuses the last one with the message "At least one shipping method must be active". It needs one delivery time and one freight price to plan anything at all, so the final switch will not move until you turn another route on first.

Where do I change the delivery time for a route?

On Settings, Inventory, on that route's own card, in the field called something like "Boat: days from supplier to shelf". Freight & Margin shows the same number, but read only, in a dashed box with a "Change on Inventory" link beside it. There is one place to edit it on purpose, so the two tabs can never disagree. Note that those days are transport only. Each supplier's production time is typed on the Suppliers page and added on top.

Why is the truck freight rate on a different tab from the other three?

Honestly, because that is how the two tabs grew, not because road freight works any differently. Plane, train and boat rates are typed on Freight & Margin, and truck's rate is typed on the Inventory tab beside its delivery time. All four share one currency and are saved together, so the split is where you type the number, not how it is used.

Why does Restocio say it never uses a route I switched on?

Because another route you have switched on beats it on both time and price, so using it would cost you days and money at once. The message names both routes with their days and rates and ends in a question, since most of the time the cause is a typo in a rate field. If the numbers are right and you have volume committed to that carrier, press "Use it anyway" and the route goes back into the plan until you press "Stop using it".

Do I need to press Save after flipping a switch?

Yes. A freight mode switch is an edit like any other setting, so the page marks itself as having unsaved changes and nothing reaches your order plan until you press Save in the bar at the foot of the Inventory tab.

Marcus Volsted

Co-founder, Restocio

Marcus co-founded Restocio and works on it daily with a Swedish importer who plans their purchasing in it every working day. Restocio is built in Sweden by two founders, one Swedish and one Danish, and Marcus is the Danish one. Why we are building it.