Inventory Intellect | Forecasts

Forecasts in Listing Mirror allow you to run reports on current stock and sales history to give you recommendations on what you may need to order from your Vendors. You can also create POs off of your Forecasts to make PO creation easier! 

To get to the forecast page, you'll click on the Inventory drop down, and Forecasting:

From here, you'll be able to view any existing Forecasts, or create a new one. 

Creating a Forecast

To create a Forecast, you'll click on the Create Forecast button:

From this page, you'll choose the information you want presented in your Forecast.

1. Vendor- This dropdown will have you choose which vendor this Forecast is for. To learn more about Vendors/Vendor Catalogs, please check out our article on Vendors. 

Name- This is the name of the Forecast. It can be anything you want, we recommend naming it something that will allow you to identify which forecast it is. 

2. Lead Time- This is the time it will take from purchasing items on a PO for the Items to be received by your warehouse.

Desired Days Stock- How many days of stock do you want to forecast for. If you want to make sure you'll have enough stock for 2 weeks, this would be 14.

Sales Report Length- How far back do you want us to consider your sales when determining how many items to order.

Minimum Quantity in Stock- What is the minimum stock amount you want to keep for your items.

3. Get Sales Data from Which Integrations?- Which integrations do you want us to consider when looking into Sales information to determine how many items to order?

4. Are we forecasting for your full catalog of items, or are we forecasting for FBA and having your vendor send the items to Amazon? 

If you choose to forecast your full catalog of items, this includes catalog items that may not exist as marketplace listings in Listing Mirror. These items will be included in the forecast, but because there is no marketplace listing, we will not have any sales data for those catalog items.

If you choose the FBA inventory, you will need to choose which Amazon integration:

Once you're all set, you can click Create Forecast!

Translating the Forecast

Forecasts have a lot of information, broken down into a couple of categories, all meant to help you determine what to order.

1. Current Quantity. 

• Available- Available refers to the number advertised for sale on other marketplaces.
• Awaiting- Awaiting refers to sum of undelivered items from incoming purchase orders.
• Total QTY- Total QTY refers to the result of Available plus Awaiting minus Lead Time Sales.
• QTY After Lead Time- QTY After Lead Time refers to the available amount you are expected to have if you resupplied from this vendor at creation time of this forecast. Note: This figure assumes that your Avg Daily Sales has already been deducted for the day.

2. Sales

• Total Sales- Total Sales refers to the gross number of sales for this sku over your selected Sales Report Length.
• Days in Stock %- Days in Stock % refers to the number of days an item was in stock divided by the Sales History Length.
• Avg Daily Sales- Avg Daily Sales refers to the average sales of this SKU over your selected Sales Report Length WHEN the item was in stock. For example, if you sold 30 of SKU-123 over 30 days but only had SKU-123 in stock for 15 days,your Avg Daily Sales will be 2.00.

3. Projections

• Proj Sales Over 7(14,30) Days- Based on all of the information from Current Quantity and Sales, what does Listing Mirror think you will sell over the next 7, 14, and 30 days.
• Proj Stock in 7(14,30) days- What does Listing Mirror think you will have in stock in 7, 14, and 30 days, based on projected sales, current quantity, and any awaiting quantity.
• Note: If your average sales are less than 1 but greater than 0 your projected daily number over 7 days will be 7. 

4. Items to order. 

• Suggested- Based on all of the information in previous portions of the Forecast, this is what Listing Mirror suggests you order. 
• Order- This is where you can enter the amount you want to order on a PO. 

5. Actions

You will have available actions to either add the suggested amount to the order line, to 0 out the order line, or to Save the forecast to work on it later.

As long as at least one order line is at a value over 0, you will have the additional option to Create a PO from this forecast:

And that's how Forecasting works! If you have any questions about Forecasting, please reach out to support!