What are stockouts? How do stockouts affect the forecast?

When we calculate your forecasted sales, settings can be enabled to adjust your forecast based on stockouts during a specific period of time. Stockouts = the number of days when a product is out of stock. Inventory Planner automatically detects when a product is out of stock starting from the moment you connect your store to Inventory Planner. This data helps to estimate the demand correctly. By default, your account is set to take into account stockouts. If your store allows overselling (continuing to sell an item even when it is out of stock), then you should change this setting to disregard out-of-stock information. Inventory Planner cannot import stock history from your platform, so stock-related information starts with the account start date. Past Stockouts can be imported using the steps below. You can enable or disable "Use Stockouts History" for all items in your account under Account >Settings >Forecast - then check the box for Use Stockouts History. You can also set adjust this on the SKU level instead of the store level if needed under custom forecast settings by selecting 'Details' for any item, or by selecting items and using Bulk Actions >Set Forecast Settings. HOW DO PAST STOCKOUTS IMPACT THE FORECAST? In the below example, Nov 2019 - Feb 2020 is configures as the Sales Period for Reference. In January, sold units were restricted to 1,000 units since 15 days were out-of-stock. In this case, 15 days are removed from the denominator when calculating the adjusted sales velocity. So for January, the real demand was 67/day (vs. 33/day). Without taking stockouts into account, the forecasted demand would be too low. Note: if an item was out-of-stock for more than 27 days in a given month, that month is ignored when calculating the adjusted sales velocity using a non-seasonal forecasting method. If a seasonal method is used, average sales from surrounding months will be used in its place. ADJUST PAST STOCKOUTS DATA Past stockout data can be adjusted for a single item at a time, or for multiple items at once using a CSV import. To adjust past stockouts for a single item, select the "i" icon under the 'Details' column for a specific item: >Replenishment & Forecast >Toggle to 'Past Sales' in the 'Edit Forecast' table at the bottom. IMPORT PAST STOCKOUTS If you have stockout history or stock level history available, you can export the information then import past stockout into your new Inventory Planner account. This can help to improve the accuracy of your forecasts. * Note: importing stockout or stock level history does not adjust the stored stock history, only the number of stockouts. Option 1: Importing Stockout History Create a spreadsheet with the following information in 3 total columns and including a column title for each: SKU or other identifier such as Title, ID (used by your sales platform), Inventory Planner ID, Vendor Reference, or Barcode. Month when stockouts occurred using 'mm/yyyy' format, for example 1/2019. Number of stockouts during that month. Each day when the item was out of stock will count as a stockout. Go to Replenishment >Import >Stockouts. Click Select File and then select the spreadsheet you've created with stockout history. In the import dialog, be sure to select the correct identifier. SKU will be the identifier used by default. When all fields are matched to the corresponding field in Inventory Planner, select Upload. Option #2: Importing Stock Level History Create a spreadsheet with the following information in 3 total columns and including a column title for each: SKU or other identifier such as Title, ID (used by your sales platform), Inventory Planner ID, Vendor Reference, or Barcode. Date using 'dd/mm/yyyy' format, for example 31/1/2019. Stock level for the corresponding date. Go to Replenishment >Import >Stockouts. Click Select File and then select the spreadsheet you've created with stock level history. In the import dialog, be sure to select the correct identifier. SKU will be the identifier used by default. When all fields are matched to the corresponding field in Inventory Planner, select Upload.

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