Here is a guide to using the Inventory Replenishment tool when determining what to put on your Purchase Orders.
Inventory Replenishment is the process of ordering stock from suppliers in time to meet demand and avoid stockouts without amassing surplus inventory. Inventory replenishment can also refer to the process of moving inventory from secondary storage in multiple warehouses to primary locations.
The best practice is for the sales team to inform these Purchase Order (P/O) requirements - essentially making sure there's always enough product. This will determine how much is ordered in P/Os. However, all businesses are different and have different policies and procedures around this.
Tip: Before using Inventory Replenishment, it may be prudent to set minimum stock levels for items in your catalog.
In ERP in the left-hand sidebar, go to Inventory > Inventory Replenishment.
Set your date range to see the history of orders and replenishment suggestions from within that period. Use the sort and filter tools to further refine your search to your specifications. Make sure you set your Default Lead Time (the amount of time in days from when you place your purchase order to when you receive your product) and your Estimated D.O.H. (the estimated number of days remaining before running out of stock after receiving the new purchase order). You can set this based on your specific business needs. Click Apply.
To look by SKU, expand the substyle by clicking the small arrow. If you take a look at the DASQ (Daily Average Sold Quantity) column, this will show you how many units of this item are sold daily (on average). This report also shows you how many days into the future you will likely be able to sell this item before it needs to be replenished, represented in the DOH (essentially, available to sell days) column. The DOH column is the best one to use to determine when items need to be reordered (factoring in the time it will take between ordering and receiving the items).
When you enter an amount in the Reorder Qty column next to the Substyle, the system will use the breakdown of the Sold Ratio of all SKUs to determine how to split that total amount across the SKUs. Once you enter the reorder total, either hit Tab or click outside of the field.
The percentages in the SSR (Sold Ratio) will help the system calculate how much to reorder of each SKU.
The system will throw out suggestions in the Suggestion column and have them pre-filled in the Reorder column. Once you've looked through and determined what you want to order, select the lines by checking off the box on the left-hand side. You can see mostly selected lines with suggested reorders, but there is a line (indicated with an arrow below) in which a manual amount was typed in. When you're done selecting, click Add to P/O Suggestion.
Coming to the P/O Suggestion tab will show you what you've added so far. You can make adjustments here or delete rows by clicking the trashcan icon. When you're ready, click Create P/O Proposal.
This opens the P/O Proposal Management screen. Here you have an opportunity to enter the Vendor # for each SKU you are ordering. Click the carrot to expand Substyles so you don't miss any. Click Save.
Tip: Skip the step of entering vendor information on this screen and go straight to clicking Save. You can use a shortcut to enter vendor information more quickly and efficiently by using the Assign Vendor button found in this guide: How do I create a Purchase Order from a P/O Proposal?
Click Yes.
Next, you can use that P/O Proposal to create an actual P/O.
The Sales History tab will give you a granular look at the sales history from that period. This includes current in-stock quantity, the number of items on open sales orders, how many items are currently available to sell, the number of items on open purchase orders, the overall projected quantity of these items, as well as the quantity sold, quantity returned, and various other metrics. This is presented by Substyle, but you can click one of the arrows to the left of the row to see all SKUs.
Underperforming SKUs
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