Order Proposals

In this article

we will discuss how the order proposals are generated, how you can fine-tune the recommendations with different parameters and what you can do next. 

Order Proposals

Shelf Planner generates Order Proposals for all your products, based on your customer demand, actual sales and external factors. 

The main table on the Order Proposals page shows all products that can be reordered and have a Order Proposal generated for them.

The table is automatically filtered on items that need to be replenished. The table is filtered descending from the Weeks to Stock Out column. 

There are a number of parameters and measures that determine the final order proposal

Ideal Stock

The Ideal Stock is calculated by the Shelf Planner engine and is based on: 

• your sales forecast
• incoming stock
• current stock

Every night, your sales forecast is updated. This ensures you always have the latest picture of each product's performance and trends. 

Current Stock

The current is the Stock you have in your store. The live two-way sync ensures you always have the same stock levels picture in my.shelfplanner and your store. 

Inbound Stock

The Inbound refers to the stock that is incoming or in transit. When you place purchase orders, we will track the expected delivery date for all items.

Order Proposal based on Ideal Stock

The Shelf Planner engine uses your sales forecast for the coming weeks to understand whether you are understocked, or overstocked.

You do not necessarily want to replenish all the items in your store. You can select a single item or place multiple orders for the same item over time. 

In the example below, the Order Proposal for the selected product is 416 units (4). This number is based on:

• Ideal Stock (1) for the product (based on product parameters and sales forecast)
• Current Stock (2) - your current inventory, synced with your store)
• Inbound Stock (3) - any incoming orders that you placed

Order Proposal based on Minimum Stock

For some of your products, it can be difficult to create an accurate forecast. Examples could be newly launched products, items with random sales, or items with extreme seasonality.

Our machine learning algorithms will pick up this behaviour and highlight these items in that case. For some of these products, it might be better to set a Minimum Stock threshold instead of using the Ideal Stock for the Order Recommendations. 

Set Minimum Stock

To set a minimum stock, open the products settings:

In this example, we set the Minimum Stock to 750 units. Instead of using the Weeks of Stock and the Lead Time to define the order proposals, the Min Stock is used to determine the Order Proposal:

As shown in the example above, the current stock (1) is 514 units. There is no incoming Stock (2). Becuase the minimum is set to 750 units, the Order Proposal is 750 - 514 = 236 units. 

The Weeks of Stock (4) is in this example ignored. 

When we set the Minimum Stock back to 100, the Order Proposal is recalculated:

The Min Stock is now set to 100 and the Ideal Stock is using the Weeks of Stock and Lead Time (1). With a Lead Time of 2 and a Weeks of Stock setting of 6 weeks, the Ideal Stock uses 6 weeks of Sales to calculate the Ideal Stock, in this case 426 units:

As you can see in the example below, the Forecast for the next 8 weeks is 593 units, hence the Weeks to Stock out is 7 weeks and technically, this item is 'overstocked':

Weeks To Stock Out

The Weeks to Stock out is calculated using the sales forecast for the product and the current stock level.