AIM Frequently Asked Questions

Welcome! A good entry to AIM is our Modelling tool. You can use this to ensure that you have added stock limits and lead days to control your products. Use the 'Finish' buttons to add any missing lead days or Stock Limits. Learn how to use AIM Modelling.

AIM will automatically load your Unleashed products, so there's no need to do this yourself. You should see in the header the last transaction time and the time since information was updated into AIM from your account. If you want to create or import a new product into Unleashed, it will sync across into AIM shortly afterwards.

You can import historic sales data in AIM to populate a rate of demand.

Note that products without a rate of demand or stock on hand will be excluded from the modelling page, but you can create a forecast for future demand instead.

The amount of time a supplier takes to make a delivery is the 'Lead days.' In AIM, you can use modelling to calculate or bulk update 'lead days' for each product / warehouse. Doing so will ensure that the stock limits and replenishment timings are calculated with enough stock on hand to cover the delivery window.
TIP: If you have a product history, you can update lead days based on how long purchases have taken in the past. Use the 'Use Actuals' option to apply the average past delivery time to each product.
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In Unleashed, each product will have a min and max limit for each warehouse. If the available stock is outside of this quantity, then it will display a stock alert. In AIM, the rate of demand and your strategy for how many days of stock you want to hold will determine the min / max stock limit.

For example, if you sell 28 units a month of a product, and you want to hold 1-4 weeks of stock, then AIM will update the min limit to 7 units and the max limit to 28. This is intended to be used with the Reorder Report to help trigger replenishments when the low limit is reached.

You can multi-select a filter in AIM, then click 'apply' and then further filter again and applying again. The filter selections will be combined as cross-filters.

Forecasting is a step up from Modelling. Forecasting will give you a lot more control to manage a product, so we recommend you create forecasts for your most important inventory items.

While AIM Modelling will calculate a rate of demand based on a past time period, Forecasting will allow you to set future demand expectations. Because of this, you can't use new products in Modelling, as without a history, the calculations come to zero. In forecasting, you can create a forecast for growth of a new product and plan replenishments.

AIM Forecasting also has a much more detailed stock control system. While Modelling will use the average amount of demand to calculate stock limits, AIM Forecasting will calculate replenishment dates and sizes based on the amount of demand that occurs on the following days. This makes forecasting much more suitable for seasonal products, or managing a lifecycle, such as new products or end-of-life products.

AIM features three main strategies, Just-In-Time (JIT), Stock-Days (SD) and Manual.

​Just-In-Time is designed to cover the lead days of the supplier and then take additional buffer days to set the replenishment point and size of the replenishment.
​Stock-Days works similarly to JIT, except you simply enter the number of days for the min / max you want to hold.
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Just-In-Time and Stock-Days will work the same way if they come to the same number of min and max days of stock, the only difference is how you arrive to these numbers. Just in Time will add buffers to lead days, while SD will have you set the Min / Max days of stock you want directly.

​Manual has you directly enter the quantity of stock for the min / max stock quantity instead of calculating it from demand and the desired 'days of stock.'

In Modelling the strategies calculate from the average rate of demand of the selected date range. If you have very quiet off seasons and very busy peak seasons, then you may find the modelling calculation is unsuitable for extremes. Modelling strategies are ideal to set stock limits for fairly consistent levels of demand.

Forecasting looks at each day of the future and checks if it has enough stock on hand that day to cover the min days of stock you set. If it forecasts that it does not have enough stock to cover the min-days of stock of the strategy, then it replenishes equal to cover the amount of demand it sees over the follow number of days equal to the max-days of the strategy.
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If you opt to use a manual strategy and enter the min/max quantity directly, then the forecast will operate in a similar and more limited way as to how Modelling works. As stock hits the min qty limit, it will replenish up to the max qty limit.
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AIM features a stockout risk panel in the AIM Insights Dashboard. AIM will play out open transactions based on their ETA / required date to check if stock on hand goes negative at any point.
If it sees that a product doesn't have enough stock at some point it will list the stock out risk and how many days away the stockout is likely to occur.
Use this panel to consider raising a replenishment or pushing back some transaction dates.

AIM Modelling will only load products that have a historic rate of demand or existing stock on hand. If you want to manage a new product, search for it in the Insights Dashboard and use a forecast to set its future demand.

In Modelling you can select 'Show Toolbar' and select hidden columns using the 'Hidden Column' button. There you can enable Global Demand as a reference and save the layout as a new grid layout for easy access later.
In Modelling you can only calculate the stock limits based on each warehouse / product rate of demand. We are currently looking to add a warehouse selection tool to map which warehouses you want to use to calculate demand for one warehouse if you are looking to purchase into one distribution warehouse initially. (Coming Q4 2024).

In the AIM modelling page, select 'Show Toolbar' and then use the export function to export the modelling page to a file.

If you have calculated the replenishments necessary for your forecast, you can store this detail by navigating to the 'Supply' chart in a forecast, and selecting Export in the top right of the chart. If you export the chart to spreadsheet, you can filter out any rows that have no replenishment to display a concise replenishment plan.
Note: A replenishment interface is coming soon that will compile all your forecast required replenishments.

Purchase Orders and Assemblies cannot be created from AIM. Currently you can extract forecast replenishments from AIM as spreadsheets. You can also set stock limits and trigger replenishments from the Unleashed Reorder Report. (Reports > Purchasing > Reorder Report).

Yes. You can import historic sales data which will populate the Business Intelligence and Advanced Inventory Manager databases.

There are a couple of ways to do this. If you have a rate of demand for a product, you can see how many days of stock you have comparing stock on hand to the rate of demand. In the modelling page, select 'Show Toolbar' and 'Hidden Columns.' Tick 'Stock Days' to add this column. Save this new layout for easy access next time.
If you are in a forecast, open the Supply chart and disable the option 'Forecast Replenishments' to see how the forecast will burn down your current stock. If you don't have any forecast demand, you will need to set the forecast demand in the Demand chart, or by using the Fill Forecast quick action. Learn more about forecasting.

AIM Forecasting will plot your open transactions in the Supply chart. To open a forecast, select a product from a dashboard panel, or search for a product in the AIM insights dashboard and go to the Supply chart.

In a forecast, open the supply chart to see required replenishments. If you want to see replenishments which are required because of open transactions instead of just forecast demand, disable 'Apply forecast' to remove forecast demand. This will show the open stock movements based on the expected dates entered in the transactions. If your open transactions booked in deplete your stock, you'll see AIM calculates the required replenishments. You can toggle these controls to check your forecast expectations versus what is currently booked in.

AIM uses terms such as Understock, Overstock and Within Limits. This will compare the stock limits of a product to the stock on hand. Note that the stock limits may need updating at regular intervals, in which case you may find that the stock position is now quite different if your strategy or the rate of demand for a product has changed.

AIM Forecasting is much more dynamic than Modelling with static stock limits.
In Forecasting, you set a strategy for how many days of stock you want (excluding manual strategy) and then AIM will calculate for each day what the correct min and max quantity is depending on how much demand occurs on the following days. This makes Forecasting much better suited for products need careful management.
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The Supply chart in AIM Forecast will take your open transactions, or forecast rate of demand and your strategy to calculate each days stock on hand, and when replenishments are needed and how large they should be depending on the demand that falls upon the following days.
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Yes, inside AIM you can set a replenishment using the 'Purchase at: Set Interval' option. You can then set how many days occur between replenishments. The strategy 'min days' will not be used and the replenishments will instead occur on these set days and will purchase stock to cover the max days of stock in the strategy.

In Stock Days and Just in Time strategies you will set the days of stock you want to hold and the size of the replenishment will be determined based on how much demand occurs in the following days. If you need to set a replenishment size, you can change the strategy to Manual and set the min / max stock control to differ by your replenishment size. Whenever stock on hand reaches the min, it will replenish up to max.

Otherwise, you can simply take the recommendations from AIM and enter replenishment transactions that fit your minimum size. These replenishments will then be loaded into AIM and the forecast will incorporate the future stock movements.

Yes! In a Forecast of a product that is an Assembled Product you can enable production planning to link component demand dates to required replenishments of assembled products.

Once you have calculated a Production Plan you can click 'Export Production Plan' in the strategy panel of the finished product. This will give you a spreadsheet of each replenishment forecast.

No. Lead days is a set number of days between order and delivery, while production will often be affected by the size of a job. The AIM Production Planning system will look at the Bill of Material Production Duration settings to calculate a start date of an assembly. Make sure you configure the production duration settings in your BOMs and then Export a Production Plan to calculate required purchases and assembles for a product.

AIM helps you plan inventory in several ways. Firstly, it will calculate your stock limits through modelling your rate of demand with your strategy of how many days of stock you want. This will set stock limits that will trigger alerts in the Reorder Report.

Secondly, you can forecast future demand with AIM. Using the Supply chart found in AIM forecast you can see what future replenishments are required. These replenishments are calculated in a more precise way than what Modelling will achieve. Export your supply chart to create a detailed replenishment plan. Use forecasting for your most important products, or if you have seasonal products, or perhaps you need careful management of long lead times for imported products.

Finally, AIM will assist you in planning production. In Forecast, you can enable component demand calculation if the product is an assembled product. This will link the required replenishments of the assembled product to the components based on the production duration that is calculated from the Bill of Materials details.

Your product does not have a Default Supplier so AIM could not save the New Lead Days to your product for the specific supplier.
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The ETL processes all changes on the hour for the previous hour. If you made a change in Unleashed at 14:15, then the change will most probably only show in AIM at 15:30 after the 15:00 ETL run.
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This is because you are a trialist of Unleashed or have a Partner account. We do not have a dedicated AIM database for each Trial/Partner account.