Table of Contents

Summary

To forecast sales and hence the required stock (and expected shortages) using:

1. Sales - Recent Sales History
2. Excluding "fire sales" quantities
3. Seasonality - Expected uplift based on previous years sales
4. By Warehouse - or across warehouses
5. By Supplier and Supplier Factory

And to plan purchasing based on the sales forecast.

Step one - review recent sales data

The idea here is to review recent sales data to see if there are any changes you would like to make before the system calculates a forecast.  The adjustment will be to the "Adjusted" column in the grid.

Why make adjustments to sales?

1. You may have had a large one-off order you do not expect to have repeat and want to exclude from sales data (and did not flag as do not include on sales order)
   1. you can right click in the grid - review where the data comes from - open the offending order and flag as "Do not include" 
   2. then Re-calc sales data.
2. You may have had some fire sale of stock you do not want to include (and did not flag as do not include on sales order)
3. If for some reason sales were down or up (competitor fire, or CBD shutdown) you may want to adjust the figures up.

What are the fields on the Raw Sales Data screen?

1. Warehouse choice
   1. If you choose no warehouse - the system lists all warehouse as below
   2. If you choose all warehouses - you will get a summary view company wide (no warehouses)
   3. Or you can choose an individual warehouse
2. Supplier is optional - but useful if planning for a purchase order.  Supplier factory limits products to those shipped from that factory (See settings at bottom).
3. Category is product category - useful for planning across suppliers for a single category
4. Date Range is the period that will be shown
5. Display order is the Grouping of the results - you have different options to see the information in different ways.
   1. 
6. Recalculate Sales Data.  
   1. The sales data will recalculate every Sunday night.  However if you make some changes to sales orders or other changes and you then want the sales history data used by forecasting updated - use this button.
7. Minimum Lead Days - forecasting will not consider any stock item that has a lead time below this value (on the SKU or if none there then on the supplier) as this will be managed through the daily purchase order screen

SKU's being replaced 

When a product is no longer to be purchased but still has stock (so cannot yet be made inactive) AND there is a clear replacement item that will be purchased as an alternative.

1. Update the item being replaced to status RUNOUT
2. Set the Replacement item
3. The replacement item stock level and sell rate will include the items that it is replacing.

View the SKU to see the relationship

 Raw Sales Data - can update expected sell rates

Step two - view expected carton sales

Using the recent sales history to calculate average sales

• Weeks to Average Sales
  • Decide over how many weeks the system looks back to create the averages.  
  • This is a "rolling average"  where the average of each week is the average of the previous 4 weeks.
  • Example - on week 20 of the year using "Weeks to Average Sales" = 4.
    • Week 20 average = average of weeks 16 to 20
    • Week 19 average = average of Weeks 15 to 19
    • %uplift will be the % change from Week 19 Average to Week 20 Average
  • The same calculation applies for 1 year ago and 2 years ago uplift calculations - it uses the value "Weeks to Average Sales"
    • Hence the calculations between years are directly applicable based on week of the year.

Step 3 - view expected stock levels and planning purchasing

Toggle to "Expected Stock Levels" view to review if stock will be wasted (run out of expiry) or stock will run out and you will miss sales.

Move orders - inbound to a warehouse expected stock - ETA date for move order is calculated as:

1. The date of the Purchase Order expected date 
2. plus the default number of days to move stock from the PO receiving warehouse to the Move Order receiving warehouse
3. plus 1 (to provide the morning the stock will be available to pick)

Interwarehouse standard times are defined on the warehouse definition screen

Stock expected into a warehouse on a move order will be coloured dark green

Expected stock levels - can adjust expected uplift by product category

Ask the system to propose a purchase order

At this stage the system has proposed a purchase order - but not yet created it. 

Can also create a move order - or add to existing move orders

Note - can also add to existing move orders - any move order to this warehouse that is not already in transit will be available.

Once the Purchase order has been created it will show in the grid (any existing Purchase Orders always show in the grid)

 PO Number shows in the grid with ETA once created

If you then plan a purchase for the same supplier for a different warehouse - it can be added to the existing purchase order

Add this will add a new distribution warehouse to the existing purchase order - and update the total Purchase order Quantities

The ETA to the move order warehouse will be based on the PO date plus interwarehouse shipment defaults.

Sales Details Tab - shows the list of orders that make up a figure in the report

Right click on a cell in the other tabs to see the orders that make up a figure

Stock Exceptions Tab - Expiring Stock and Low Stock Report

These reports show

1. Stock that is not expected to be sold before it expires - consider doing some specials or contacting a company that takes short expiry stock
2. Stock that will run out based on current expected orders and current planned purchases.  Probably worth contacting the supplier to expedite or considering cross sell alternative lines

On Stock Exceptions Short Supply Notes column. If there is an ETA this will show:

• Purchase Order number if the stock is expected on a PO.
• PO number and warehouse code in parentheses if the stock is expected on a PO to another warehouse. In this case the ETA will be the PO date plus the inter warehouse days plus one.
• Move Order number if the stock is expected on a MO.
• Context menu for lines with an ETA include the option to open the PO or MO
• status override - if the warehouse has a status over-ride for the stock article

Note that you can send a stock exceptions out to the sales team so they are aware of out of stock conditions 

Writing off Short Dated Stock that might be claimable

Right click on the short dated stock report

Enter the required details.  Note that if the write off can be claimed from a supplier then enter the % of the value you expect to be able to claim.

See Supplier Claims based on supplier funded promotions, Customer Returns, Stock Write offs for details of supplier claims.

Report Examples - sent attached to email

Low Stock Report Example as sent to a head office employee.  

On Stock Exceptions Short Supply Notes column. If there is an ETA this will show:

• Purchase Order number if the stock is expected on a PO.
• PO number and warehouse code in parentheses if the stock is expected on a PO to another warehouse. In this case the ETA will be the PO date plus the inter warehouse days plus one.
• Move Order number if the stock is expected on a MO.
• Context menu for lines with an ETA include the option to open the PO or MO
• status override

How to find the report later - employee correspondence history

Who will get the Stock Exception emails ?

Reports are filtered by users branch

The system uses settings on the employee to determine who gets this email and what they can see

Employees are linked to a Branch

The head office branch is flagged as Head Office on the host company

Reports are filtered by users Role

Configurations required

Supplier Order Cycle Weeks

Setup on the supplier and used to estimate the next PO date ETA

To estimate the date for the next Purchase order - the system looks back at the date of the last "Confirmed" or greater purchase order and then adds the number of weeks.

To calculate how much to order the system uses the order cycle weeks.

Expected Stock Expiry and minimum stock levels

To calculate the expiry in the future of stock that has not yet been received.

First the system looks at the Article details - in case this article is not the same as the default from the supplier

If there is no value at the Article level the system looks at the supplier 

Supplier Factory

A supplier with multiple factories may want a separate purchase order for each factory.  Each article is then flagged with the Factory it comes from.

How to setup a factory on a supplier

How to set the factory on the Article

• Page:
  Article
• Page:
  Go Live: Importing Open Purchase Orders
• Page:
  Price Lists - Printing
• Page:
  Article Cache

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