Why is SoStocked Telling Me to Order This Amount?

Overview

This is an advanced forecasting tutorial. Be sure to watch the other beginner Forecasting tutorials here. In this video, we go over the formula SoStocked is using to come up with your suggested Order Amount and how to diagnose why exactly it is the number given so you can better understand and control your orders and forecasting.

What Affects Your Order Amount?

The main things that affect your order amount are your A djusted Velocity (which is your average number of daily sales) and the settings in the Calculation Variables.

Things to take a look at in your settings:

1. Your Adj. Velocity amount and how that is being averaged out.

2. Do you have an MOQ (minimum order quantity)? This minimum order quantity will be taken into account for your order amount.

3. Do you have an MTQ (minimum transfer quantity)? This minimum will be taken into account for your transfer amount.

4. What is your packaging info? The order amount has to be divisible by the number of units per carton.

5. Check your default lead time. How long it takes for your order to arrive at the warehouse or at Amazon will determine the number of units you need to order.

And lastly, check your min/max buffer stock quantities for your order schedule and transfer schedule. Make sure you understand how the min/max buffer stock works here.

Dive in Deeper by Exporting Your Inventory Timeline.

You can export your Inventory Timeline onto a spreadsheet where you can see your order suggestions, warehouse inventory, FBA inventory, and your minimum/maximum inventory. When analyzing your forecasting, this is a suggested way to see and analyze all of the forecasting data in one easy location.

It's important to note that the buffer stock, in this case, a warehouse maximum buffer stock of 60 is not just one day times 60. But an accumulation of what your sales will be over the next 60 days.

What if you have a seasonal spike coming up next week? Or a lightning deal? SoStocked is factoring in those velocity changes that will occur over the next 60 days or however many days you have in your maximum buffer stock.

There are many things to take into account when SoStocked is giving you a suggestion of how much to order. It comes up with this suggestion based on all of the settings that you tell SoStocked mentioned above. If you think the order amount should be different simply take another look at all of your settings in the Calculation Variables and the order amount will adjust based on these settings to always keep you in stock.