Demand planning helps you identify, based on your sales and existing supplier orders, which products should be reordered soon and in what quantity. You’ll find it under Purchasing → Demand Planning.
The order suggestion is calculated as follows:
Bestellvorschlag = Meldebestand - Bestand - im Zulauf + Reserviert
If a maximum stock is set on the product, this is used as the fill target for the order suggestion – the reorder point then acts as a fallback.
How is it calculated?
In general, you can carry out your demand planning based on reference sales in a specific period or based on the reorder point. You’ll find all the setting options on the right via the gear icon. Using the filter icon, you can additionally filter the displayed data by various criteria.
Calculation based on sales in a reference period
This variant applies if you haven’t set any reorder points or if they are very low. In this case, the order suggestion is calculated as follows:
Bestellvorschlag = Voraussichtlicher Bedarf - Bestand + Reserviert (optional)
You can include or exclude reserved stock by enabling or disabling the option Consider open customer orders for order suggestion in the calculation settings.
Calculation based on the reorder point
If you have set reorder points or if they are high enough, the calculation is as follows:
Bestellvorschlag = Meldebestand - Bestand + Reserviert (optional)
You can include or exclude reserved stock by enabling or disabling the option Consider open customer orders for order suggestion in the calculation settings.
If you don’t want to include any expected sales in the demand planning at all, enter the value 0 in the Expected demand for field in the calculation.
Further explanations of the key figures
Reorder point – The reorder point can be set in the product properties. Optionally, a daily reorder point notification can be configured under Settings → Extensions → Pickware ERP.
Maximum stock – The maximum stock is the preferred fill target for the order suggestion. If it’s set on the product, the order suggestion fills the stock up to this value; if no maximum stock is set, the reorder point is used as the fill target. You set the maximum stock in the product properties. Note: Products where the maximum stock is above the reorder point can now receive an order suggestion where previously no suggestion was calculated.
Sales – Here you see all units of a product sold in the reference period you’ve defined. The decisive factor is the quantity sold from the orders in the reference period: Cancelled orders are not counted as sales, but returns are not deducted from the sold quantity either. So if a product was sold 100 times and returned 10 times in the reference period, 100 units are still included as sales in the demand planning.
Incoming – This value corresponds to the order quantity minus the delivered quantity, i.e. the quantity of a product from all supplier orders that are not in the status Delivered, Completed, or Cancelled.
Reserved – This value corresponds to the order quantity from open customer orders and can be included or excluded from the calculation via the option Consider open customer orders for order suggestion.
Growth factor
In the calculation settings, you can set a growth factor that scales the calculated demand. The default value is 1.00 – the order suggestion is not changed by this. A value greater than 1 increases the expected demand proportionally, while a value less than 1 (but greater than 0) reduces it. This allows you to factor in expected growth or seasonal fluctuations directly in the demand planning, without having to adjust the reference sales.
The growth factor only affects the sales-based calculation (reference period) and must be greater than 0.
What’s next?
From the demand planning, you can add products to the purchase list. You can find out more about this here.
To find out how you can check whether your purchase list reaches your supplier’s minimum order value, see here.