Quick Summary: The Dashboard serves as the central command center for monitoring inventory health, offering Key Performance Indicator panels, Top 5 exception lists, and actionable full reports.
Why the Dashboard Matters
The Dashboard provides a high-level, at-a-glance view of your most important inventory metrics.
Its purpose is to show what is urgent today and guide your daily operational actions. It is different from a report, which is designed for deeper analysis over time.
Dashboards | Reports |
Show what’s urgent today. | Show trends and performance over time. |
Guide daily action. | Enable analysis and learning. |
Used by planners and managers for operational control. | Used by analysts and leaders for strategic decisions. |
Together they form a closed loop: Dashboards drive action, Reports drive improvement.
The exception panels beneath each KPI on the Dashboard guide your attention to the specific items that require the most urgent action — whether they are driving up excess stock or causing a drop in your fill rate.
What the KPI Panels Show
The Dashboard is composed of several panels, each representing a core KPI. These panels typically show the current value of the metric, its trend over a recent period, and a comparison to a model or target value.
The primary KPI panels include:
Stock Holding: Compares Actual stock value to Model stock value, the optimal amount if every item were perfectly balanced.
Fill Rate: Shows your ability to fulfill customer demand, comparing your “Achieved” fill rate against your “Target” fill rate. Achieved is weighted by forecast value at cost.
Stocked Out and Potential Stock Outs: Highlights items that are currently out of stock or predicted to run out soon.
Excess Stock and Surplus Orders: Identifies inventory that is already in excess or purchase orders that will create excess if received.
Stock Turns: Measures how many times you are projected to sell your entire stock value over the next 12 months.
Top New: Highlights recently added stocked items, ranked by the highest current stock value.
How the Top 5 Exception Lists Work
Beneath each main KPI panel is a list of the Top 5 items that contribute most significantly to that KPI’s value. For example:
The Excess Stock panel lists the five items with the highest value of excess.
The Fill Rate panel lists the five items having the biggest negative impact on your overall fill rate.
These exception lists are designed to be actionable. Instead of analyzing thousands of items, you can focus on the few that are causing the biggest problems, allowing you to make high-impact decisions quickly.
Strategic and Executive Views
While the main Dashboard focuses on operational, day-to-day inventory health, Netstock also provides higher-level tools for strategic analysis.
The Executive Dashboard
For a multi-location summary of your inventory, sales, and order performance, Client Administrators can use the Executive Dashboard.
➜ For more on this topic, read: Executive Dashboard - From data to decisionsThe Stock Projection Feature
To project how your key inventory metrics will evolve over the next 12 months based on current policies and forecasts, use the Stock Projection feature.
➜ For more on this topic, read: Stock Projection Feature
How To: Download All Items
➜ Read: How To: Download All Items
Executive Dashboard Feature
Stock Projection Feature
➜ Read: Stock Projection Feature
⚠️ Watchouts
Ranking interpretation: The Stock Turns Top 5 is ranked by highest weighted cover, not by highest turn rate, so the slowest movers appear first.
💡 Tips
Daily dashboard check: Review the Dashboard at the start of each day to quickly gauge inventory health and decide where to focus your efforts.
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