You have rightly assumed that to view all things Forecast, you would need to navigate to the Forecast screen from the Dashboard.

On the Dashboard, select the “Forecasts” option, which is found on the left pane of the screen.

Once selected, you will be presented with the Forecast screen.

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Here, you see the following panels.

Forecast summary - this panel shows you all the sales history (purple area), the historic 12 month forecast (olive line before the “now” line) and the 12 month future forecast (olive area after the “now” line). If there was a green portion above the olive bar, it would indicate that an adjustment to the forecast had taken place. This information can be viewed by cost price, selling price, margin or units. It’s important to note, that if you are to choose the information by price, that “today’s” price will be applied to all the data in the graph. This is to enable you to make a realistic comparison month-to-month.

Forecast comparison - this panel shows you all the sales history (purple bars) and the 12 month future forecast (olive bar). If there was a green portion above the olive bar, it would indicate that an adjustment to the forecast had taken place. This graph is relevant in getting a quick yearly comparison year-on-year.

Sales exceeds forecast and Forecast exceeds sales - these panels are useful in comparing a period of sales history to the forecast, to gauge where there are large variances and plug those gaps. If the sales of an item exceeds the forecast, the item will potentially stock out due to stock being consumed faster than anticipated. This would negatively impact the fill rate of the item i.e. the stock out would mean you would not be able to fulfill a customer order, thus negatively impacting the fill rate by reducing it. If the forecast of an item exceeds the sales, it means the item is not selling as much as anticipated. This could lead to a higher amount of inventory being held (and/or surplus orders incoming) due to the higher sales expectation not materializing. In turn, this would affect your stock holding due to excess stock.

The information can be compared by month-to-date (if there are large variances here, action can be taken as the app will only run the forecast once a month so you may need to manually adjust the forecast where applicable), one month, three months (for consistent selling items, such as soap), six months or 12 months (for seasonal items, such as summer swimming gear). In the panels, the five items contributing the most to the category are indicated. For the full report per panel, you can click on the total figure in blue (i.e. the -226.0k value or the 2.1m value).

Forecast performance - this panel shows you the sales per month for 12 months (purple bar), as well as the sales exceeds forecast and forecast exceeds sales per month in value. The goal for this panel is to get the sales exceeds forecast (red bars) and forecast exceeds sales (olive bars) as low as possible (little to none).

That covers the “What” - now let’s cover the why and how for the scenario described.

The forecast across the cold weather items needs to be reduced, and it needs to be increased for the warm weather items. To change the forecast for the entire store or group of items, you can select the “Adjust totals” button on the Summary panel on the Forecast screen.

This will allow you to select the months you would like to adjust the forecast for, and you can indicate the forecast adjustment for those months. You can either manually type in the percentage adjustment for each of the chosen months, or use the slider at the bottom of the screen to adjust all the forecasts for the month by the same percentage.

At this point, you might look at your Adjust totals functionality and realize, if you need to increase the forecast for some items and decrease the forecast for others, doing the adjustment here won’t work, because adjusting the forecast via Adjust totals will change the forecast for the entire store or group of items.

There’s the key. Group of items.

Since you would like to reduce the forecast for the cold weather items, and then increase the forecast for the warmer weather items, the forecast adjustment will have to happen in two parts. First the cold weather items, then the warm weather items. How do we do that? By using group filters.

You can go to the top right of your screen and select the filter you want to use.

In the examples below, two groups have been set up.

First, select “Group A warm weather.”

After a collaborative discussion with your team, it has been assumed that the sales on the warm items will grow by 30% immediately and remain consistent until the end of December. To do this adjustment, you will need to select Aug to Dec and drag the slider to 130%.

It is important to note that if you would like to change the forecast which impacts your orders immediately, you would need to adjust the forecast over the cover forward period (i.e. the forecast horizon over the LT+SS+RC) at the minimum. Read more about the cover forward period here: Cover forward period: How are LT, SS and RC converted from days to units?

You could also manually type in the percentage increase per month, which would be useful in the case where the increase per month differed. At the last minute, before you could apply the 30% increase in sales for all months, you get a call from the Marketing team. They advise that there is another slight uptake in sales expected in Nov and Dec, so you then choose to increase the forecast for those months by 33% and 40% respectively, while the rest remain as a 30% increase.

Before being able to apply these changes, you can select the “Model” button which will allow you to have a look at what your forecast changes look like graphically before applying it on the macro-level. The changes will be visible via a green line on the Summary panel, a green area on the bar of the olive forecast on the Comparison panel and by green highlight on the forecast adjustment table.

If you are comfortable with the changes, you may then click “Apply.”

Clicking on “Apply” will keep those forecasts in place until the following month, until the forecast runs again (done monthly) and your changes will be overwritten. If you would like to keep your forecast adjustments in place, you can select the “Freeze forecasts” option before clicking on “Apply”.

If there were previously forecast adjustments that had been frozen, and you would like to now override those forecasts with your new forecast adjustment, you can also select the “Override frozen forecasts” option before clicking on “Apply”.

It’s important to note: freezing a forecast too far in advance (12 months for example), may not be beneficial to your planning because a lot can change in 12 months. What you may have thought you will sell, could change drastically. You may win or lose a customer, or have periods of promotion that were previously unplanned. The landscape of the supply chain is such that our forecasts will need constant review. So even if you would like to freeze your forecasts for a few months at a time, remember to review how your forecast is tracking. You can do this on a macro-level using the Forecast screen as explained in the first section of this article.

Now that the forecast has been increased for the warm weather items, you can go back to the filters and select the next group you would like to change the forecast for i.e. “Group B cold weather.” You would like to reduce the forecast by 25%.

Follow the same steps to adjust the forecast.

Now that you have made the necessary adjustments to the forecasts, you are able to do some fine tuning to specific items via item-level forecast adjustments.

For example, the item for code 20001 is “Umbrellas” at your warehouse. The umbrellas were placed into the cold weather group, and they therefore also experienced the reduction in forecast (reminder: we did a macro-level forecast adjustment for the “Group B cold weather” items by 25%). HOWEVER, your team happens to know that umbrellas don’t just sell well during the cold weather, but they also sell moderately during the warm weather as well. People tend to buy them for shade and for those sudden showers of summer rain. Therefore, in this case, having a 25% reduction in forecast was not ideal for this item. Since the forecast was reduced on a macro-level, you can use the item-level adjustment function to fine tune what the realistic forecast should be at this item level.

To do that, you can navigate to the item Inquiry screen. You can do this by drilling into an item from any screen, or by searching for the item on the Search bar.

Once on the Inquiry screen, navigate to the “Forecast” tab towards the lower part of the screen. The pencil highlighted in red below is what will be selected to get to the order adjustment screen. But before we do that, let’s take a look at what we’re seeing on this tab.

Here, you will be able to view the historic sales for the years past both on the table, and on the purple portion of the graph at the bottom of the screen. Where you notice red indicators below the sales figure, you can hover over it for information regarding the number of days you were stocked out in that particular month. This ties in to the graph below the table. If you were stocked out for any of the months, you will find a gray bar indicating this. Once again, hovering over the bar will reveal information about how many days you were stocked out during that month. For example, Dec 2020-2021, there is a red indicator. If we hover over it, we find that this item was stocked out for 9 days. Hovering over the gray portion on the graph will reveal the same information.

You will also be able to view the current 12 month future forecast (bottom row of the table). This relates to the olive portion of the graph. On the olive portion of the graph, you will also be able to see that the cover forward period (LT+SS+RC) extends from August until October. This means, the minimum months that the forecast needs changing for in order for you to place the correct orders and balance your inventory is August, September and October.

Since the forecast was reduced until December on a macro-level, your team decides it’s best to adjust the forecast on an item level until then as well. Let’s start by clicking on the pencil to get to the item-level forecast adjustment screen.

As shown in the image, you can select the months you would like to adjust the forecast for. You can then select the radio (circle) button next to each of the below elements before filling out the field next to it.

“+” the number you would like to increase the forecast for all selected months by

“-” the number you would like to increase the forecast for all selected months by

“=” the number would you like the forecast for all selected months to be

You may also choose to use the slider, to either increase or decrease the forecast for all selected months by a percentage. As you move the slider, the olive portion of the graph will develop a second line which will move in line with your slider, so you can immediately see the effect of your change on your original graph. In the case below, the slider was chosen and the forecast for this item was increased by 30% from months August to December.

Once you are comfortable with the change, you can then apply the forecast. On an item-level, the forecast automatically gets frozen once a change is made, so there is no need to select the “Freeze” button at this stage. However, if you would not like a frozen forecast in place, you may select “Defrost.” You then have the option to go back in to freeze the forecast thereafter by selecting “Freeze.”

Now once you have selected “Apply new forecast” you will be taken back to the item’s Inquiry screen. You will then see a pop-up notification (shown below) that confirms that the amended forecast has been applied.

Well, what if you blinked and missed that notification? There are other ways to double check that the forecast has been amended.

Below are the images of the Demand panel, before and after the forecast has been amended.

Before (left): there is an average monthly forecast of 7.7k

After (right): there is an average monthly forecast of 8.5k. This figure also has a little snowflake to the right of it, which indicates that the forecast has been amended and frozen.

If you open up the Forecast tab again, you will now see little red snowflakes next to the forecast for the months where forecast changes were made, and therefore have frozen forecasts in place.

Because we know that the forecast over the cover forward period is used to convert LT, SS and RC from days into units (and is therefore a major driver in the ordering process), we can expect that any changes made to the forecast would therefore impact the Policy and Order recommendation Panels.

Let’s compare the impact on these panels.

On the Policy panels below (before - left, after - right), we can confirm that the unit figures for the LT, SS and RC have increased (while the figure in days remains the same), due to the increased forecast.

On the Order recommendation panel below (before - left, after - right), we see that increasing the forecast has increased the recommended order quantity from 5000 units to 8500 units. For more detail around the recommended order calculation, head over to the article: How is the Recommended Order Quantity (ROQ) calculated?

Now that your forecast changes have been made, both on an item- and macro-level, you can be confident that when looking at your order schedule and dashboard statuses to make the right inventory decisions.