Forecast Orders
Select Mode: Shelf Purchase Order / Stock Adjustment Order
Order Method: Forecast Order
Forecast orders calculate the order quantities based on the number of parts sold during specified periods from the most recent three years, thus allowing better-selling parts to be ordered at higher quantities. The 'Sales' tab displays when 'Forecast Order' is selected from the 'Order Method' drop-down.
Optionally click the 'Criteria' tab to select or edit the Line Codes purchased under the 'Supplier' and/or set up the filters used to narrow the parts that will be considered for the order.
Optionally click the 'Options' tab to enable/disable the predefined conditions to further refine and filter the parts that will be considered for the order:
Available Default/Override (left-side) filters are:
- 'Fill Policy'
- 'Delivery Days'
- 'PO Part Cost Level'
- 'Use Buy Qty Rule'
- 'Min Cost Threshold'
- 'Min Units Threshold'
- 'Min Packs Threshold'
- 'Min Weight Threshold'
- 'Min Volume Threshold'
- 'Cost Exchange Rate'
- 'Include Core in Min Cost'
- 'Create Order Below Min'
- 'Multistore PO Type'
- 'PO + or – Percent'
- 'Percent Les than Min Cost'
Additional (right-side) filters are:
- 'Use Order Protection'
- 'Treat Negative Stock As 0'
- 'Order Only If No Stock'
- 'Ignore On Order Values'
- 'Include Reserve Quantity'
- 'Ignore Vendor Backorder'
- 'Ignore Inbound'
- 'Include Customer Backorders'
- 'Exclude Nonstocked Parts'
- 'Increase Order Quantity to Per Car'
- 'Increase Order to Minimum Cost'
- 'Include Lost Sales'
- 'Use Lost Sales Only'
- 'Best Price'
Optionally click the 'Stores' tab and select the stores for multi-store orders.
From the 'Sales' tab, identify the periods to use:
Enter the number of days that the purchase order is to cover. For example, enter 30 to order stock sufficient for 30 days.
Click the 'Select Periods' button to launch a 'SELECT HISTORY PERIODS' pop-up listing time periods based on when month-end closes. Check one or more periods:
- 'USE CURRENT PERIOD' (current period to date)
- 'USE CURRENT YEAR'
- 'USE 1ST PRIOR YEAR'
- 'USE 2ND PRIOR YEAR'
Then, check each close period to use the histories from those periods as needed.
Click 'OK' when done and the 'Sales' tab grid populates based on the time periods selected.
- 'Period' - The number of the period selected.
- 'Year' - Year of the period selected.
- 'Start/End' - Start/end dates of the period selected.
- 'Actual' - Number of days in the period.
- 'Holidays' - Number of holidays in the period.
- 'Weekend' - Number of weekend days in the period.
- 'Sell Days' - (Editable) Number of sell days in the period.
- 'Weight' - Importance given to a period. The default is 100%. Increase a period weight for additional emphasis, and decrease for less importance.
Click to clear all periods to re-select if needed.
When ready, optionally click the 'Preview' or 'Print' button to output a report with all parts that will be on the order, or click the 'Order' button to generate the order.
The system calculates the number of parts that are sold per day on average in the specified history periods, and multiplies that by the number of days the order is to cover, then subtracts any already on order or in stock quantities to determine the quantity to order.
Forecast Orders examine product sales based on selected time periods. These can be contiguous or non-contiguous dates. The system calculates an "average sales per day" and depending on how many days will be covered by the order, will set order quantities to cover those days.