Launching Inventory Planner [Videos]

To start using Inventory Planner and to get the most out of inventory forecasting, we recommend the following steps: Ensure your first sync of data is underway Adjust account settings Set up vendors (Optional) Enter cost prices (Optional) Provide additional product information such as seasonality (Optional) Set lead times and days of stock (Required - most important step for producing an accurate forecast) First Sync of Data Once your sales and product information is connected, the first sync will start. The first sync can take up to few hours depending on the e-commerce platform. When it happens you pull 2 years of sales history, so that you can start using the system right after it's completed. After the first sync all others updates are incremental (when it's possible) and should be much faster. Learn how to connect a second store in our Help Center. Using Inventory Planner The lower right corner is the Chat function. You can start a conversation, chat with friendly IP staff, find all metrics, definitions and formulas, as well as the full Help Center. To learn more about navigating Inventory Planner, selecting the view and data needed, and saving default views to save time, read Inventory Planner 101. Account Settings Go to Account >Settings to customize your Inventory Planner account. Connections You can confirm your current platform connections and add additional connections as needed (see prior section for detail). Warehouses Enable or disable warehouses to view for replenishment and reporting purposes. If you would like to set up combined warehouses, click here for step-by-step instructions and considerations. Users You can add users and customize permissions in Settings >Users. Add additional user emails in this section. To customize permissions, click on Edit and then click Full Access. Then you can select which sections of Inventory Planner that user can view. Forecast Click on the Forecast tab in Settings to customize account-wide settings affecting the sales forecast and related analytics. Forecast settings can set based on multiple forecast methodologies: Recent Sales and Trends Last Sales Seasonal Top Down Top Down Seasonal Click here to learn more about each forecast method. By default, Inventory Planner accounts take out of stock information into consideration. This means that if a product is out of stock, the forecast will exclude that time so that the sales velocity is not understated. If your store allows overselling (continued selling even when an item is out of stock), then you should uncheck the box for "Use Stockouts History". Click here to learn more about stockouts and how they affect the forecast. Trends months indicates an effect on the forecast. The default forecast in Inventory Planner uses sales velocity and considers recent trends. Adjust the number of months to create a trend in settings. Default replenishment can be set for products that may not have a sales history. For example, if an item is recommended to replenish 0 units because it does not have any sales so far, the default replenishment set at 5 will create a recommendation of 5 units for the purchase order. ABC Class or “A” Class, “B” Class, “C” Class Classes are categories of your inventory. By default, “A” Class includes SKUs comprising the top 80% of revenue, “B” Class is the next 15%, and “C” Class is the final 5%. Alerts Customize settings for low-stock alerts including who receives these alerts, how often they are send and if you only want to be alerted when an item is newly low-stock (called the Delta Alert). Purchase Order Connect to Xero or Quickbooks Online to push purchase orders to your accounting software. Set the starting number in your purchase order sequence in this section. If you would like to remove images or cost prices from your purchase order, you can also do that here. Vendor Information Maintaining accurate and up-to-date vendor information for products is important for accurate purchase orders and metrics. Inventory Planner downloads vendor information and variant vendor details when possible (from inventory management system like Tradegecko or Ordoro). For e-commerce system that does not have cost prices defined, there are several options: Upload vendor catalog for single vendor or for multiple vendors Create and edit vendors directly in Vendors When you create or edit a purchase order, you have an option to update cost price, vendor reference and other vendor data for variants and use it in subsequent purchase orders. To learn more, read our article about uploading vendor catalogs. Vendor list Vendor list shows currently available vendors with some basic information. You can access vendor details by clicking on vendor title. Use this screen to create new vendor. Vendor details Edit cost prices and other information to be presented in purchase orders. If you have more than one warehouse enabled, set lead time and days of stock for the vendor to each location. Vendor variants Add or remove variants associated to the vendor, edit variant information for this vendor: cost price, vendor reference (supplier SKU) and more. Learn more about setting cost prices. Vendor brands Here you can add/remove brands for the vendor. Adding a brand automatically adds current and future products for this brand. To do this go to the Vendor Name >Settings page and scroll to the bottom of the page. Cost Prices Maintaining accurate cost prices will help you get the most out of Inventory Planner by viewing accurate analytics and easily creating Purchase Orders for your vendors. Inventory Planner will automatically pull this information from your integration when it is available. If you do not have costs loaded in your connected platform, you will need to enter this information into Inventory Planner. Learn how to load cost prices into Inventory Planner. You can upload a file with SKU (or other unique identifier like barcode or ID) and cost prices. This will quickly update cost prices for all vendors and variants. If you have different cost prices for a single item from different vendors, you can specify which costs are tied to which vendors in the import. You can also enter this information manually in the Replenishment report. Product Information Additional product information can help increase the accuracy of the inventory forecast. Discontinued Items To remove discontinued items from your forecast, go to the Replenishment report and select items you wish to remove. Then click Bulk Actions >Set As Non-Replenishable. The default view of your Replenishment report shows replenishable items. If you wish to view items that are non-replenishable, remove the Replenishable filter. Lead Time and Days of Stock Before using replenishment recommendations product lead times and days of stock should be configured. The lead time is the amount of time that elapses between placing a purchase order and receiving products. This can include manufacturing and shipping time. Days of stock is a period of time for which you would like to have enough stock, or in other words, the stock cover. The days of stock is also your purchasing frequency. For this example Inventory Planner recommends that you purchase 55 units of the Mango dress that will arrive in 14 days if you place your purchase order today. After arrival, this order will cover the following 30 days. The lead time usually depends on suppliers and it's easy to estimate. When in doubt add additional days in the lead time period. To learn more about how to set your lead time and days of stock, read our full article.

Still puzzling over something?

Inventory Planner Public API

Attaching documents to Purchase Orders

Changing platforms connected to Inventory Planner

IP Warehouse

Receiving inventory and pushing inventory to your store