Inventory Restock Suggestions

Executive Summary

The Inventory → Restock Suggestions page helps you turn current inventory signals into a practical reorder plan. For each product, it combines Current Stock, Sales Velocity, Lead Time, and a target Coverage horizon to calculate when you should reorder, how many units you should buy, and how urgent the situation is. You can refine the inputs directly in the table, apply bulk updates across many products, generate a draft Purchase Order from selected recommendations, and export a simplified plan to Excel from the View tab.

Limitation: Some actions on this page clearly change values used for calculations on-screen, but the provided implementation notes do not confirm which edits are saved for future sessions versus which are temporary for the current planning session.

Key Concepts & Metrics

Current Stock

Current Stock is the inventory quantity used by the restock calculations. It starts from the system-provided available quantity and can be adjusted on-screen using additional stock sources (such as in-transit, inbound, AWD, or a user-entered amount) or by overriding the stock value entirely.

Current Stock is the number used in comparisons such as “Reorder Now” and in timing calculations such as days until stockout.

Sales Velocity

Sales Velocity is the estimated daily rate of sales for a product. You can select a velocity based on a period (for example, 7, 14, 30, or 90 days), a year-over-year 14-day option, or enter a custom numeric value.

Sales Velocity drives nearly every planning output:

• safety stock
• reorder point
• days until reorder
• days until stockout
• reorder date and stockout date
• recommended order quantity

Lead Time

Lead Time (days) is the number of days it typically takes for replenishment to become available after you initiate a reorder. If Lead Time is missing or set to 0, the product is treated as incomplete for recommendations.

The page also provides a product-level modal action intended to permanently adjust lead time fields.

Limitation: The notes confirm a “permanent adjust” workflow exists in the product modal, but they do not confirm the exact save behavior.

Coverage Days

Coverage (days) is the planning horizon you want to maintain after replenishment arrives. Coverage does not affect the reorder point; it affects the recommended order quantity by increasing the amount of inventory the plan aims to cover.

Safety Stock

Safety Stock is an internal buffer intended to protect against variability. The page uses a fixed “two-week buffer” approach:

Reorder Point

Reorder Point is the stock level at which the product should be reordered. The page computes it as:

Order Quantity

Order Quantity is the recommended number of units to order to cover the selected horizon, including consumption during lead time:

Days Until Stockout

Days Until Stockout estimates how long current stock will last at the chosen sales velocity:

If Sales Velocity is missing or 0, the product is considered incomplete and timing cannot be reliably computed.

Suggested Reorder Date

Suggested Reorder Date is derived from the time remaining until Current Stock reaches the Reorder Point. A product becomes “Reorder Now” when Current Stock is at or below the Reorder Point:

Status

In Configure mode (when selection is off), each row receives a Status:

• Missing Data when required inputs are not set
• Reorder Now when inputs are complete and Current Stock is at or below Reorder Point
• Stock OK when inputs are complete and Current Stock is above Reorder Point

Order Summary Cards

At the top of the page, summary cards roll up the plan:

• Total Products: count of products loaded into the page
• Products to Reorder: count of complete products marked Reorder Now
• Total Units: sum of recommended order quantities for Reorder Now products (rounded)
• Est. Cost: sum of $\text{Order Quantity} \times \text{Unit Cost}$ across Reorder Now products
• m³ / ft³: total estimated volume for Reorder Now products

Note: The visible behavior indicates cost displays in USD and missing unit cost contributes 0 to the estimate.

Operational Logic

Two working modes

The page is organized into two tabs:

• Configure: an editable grid where you adjust inputs and see calculations per product.
• View: a simplified, “receipt-style” list focused on urgency and export.

What makes a product “incomplete”

A product is treated as incomplete when required planning inputs are missing. In the visible rules, “Missing Data” applies when:

• Sales Velocity resolves to 0 or is not set, or
• Lead Time is 0 or is not set

Incomplete products can be shown or hidden, and they are treated specially in “Reorder Priority” sorting.

What changes when you change inputs

The page recalculates restock outputs whenever you change inputs such as:

• Sales Velocity period or custom velocity
• Lead Time
• Coverage Days
• Current Stock adjustments (in-transit, inbound, AWD, other stock, custom stock override)
• Condition filter and marketplace (which change the product dataset being planned)

How urgency is classified in View mode

Urgency is derived from the relationship between Days Until Stockout and Lead Time:

• Critical when $\text{Days Until Stockout} \le \frac{\text{Lead Time}}{2}$
• Urgent when $\text{Days Until Stockout} \le \text{Lead Time}$
• Soon when $\text{Days Until Stockout} \le 1.5 \times \text{Lead Time}$
• Planned otherwise
• Unknown when required values are missing

User Guide

Step 1: Select the planning scope

1. Use the marketplace selector to choose a single marketplace.
2. Choose the product Condition used for the dataset.
3. Decide whether to show or hide incomplete products.

What you should expect:

• Changing marketplace or condition refreshes which products appear and which inventory/velocity inputs are available for calculations.

Step 2: Review the summary

Use the top summary cards to understand:

• how many products are loaded,
• how many are currently flagged to reorder,
• the total units recommended,
• estimated cost and volume for the reorder-now set.

Step 3: Configure inputs per product

In the Configure table, work left to right:

Current Stock

1. Select the Current Stock cell to open its adjustment popover.
2. Include or exclude additional stock sources (such as in-transit or inbound quantities) if those should be considered in your plan.
3. Add “Other Stock” when you have inventory outside the system’s standard sources.
4. Apply a custom stock override when you need the plan to use a specific number.

What changes immediately:

• Reorder Now vs Stock OK classification
• Days until stockout and suggested reorder timing
• Recommended order quantity

Limitation: The visible behavior confirms stock adjustments change calculations on-screen. Whether those adjustments persist beyond the current planning session is not confirmed.

Sales Velocity

1. Choose a velocity period (7/14/30/90 days, YoY) to reflect recent demand behavior.
2. If you select Custom, enter a numeric value to use as the sales velocity for calculations.

What changes immediately:

• Safety stock, reorder point, reorder date, stockout date, and order quantity

Lead Time

1. Enter the Lead Time (days) directly in the row.
2. If you need to maintain lead times centrally, use the product modal action labeled to permanently adjust lead time.

What changes immediately:

• Reorder point
• Order quantity
• Timing outputs, including urgency in View mode

Coverage

1. Set Coverage Days to match your planning policy (for example, 30 days of coverage after replenishment).
2. Increase coverage if you want larger orders and fewer replenishment cycles.

What changes immediately:

• Order quantity (coverage affects the target inventory horizon)

Step 4: Validate the recommendation

Use the clickable cells and popovers for:

• Reorder Point: shows how safety stock and lead time combine into the reorder threshold.
• Reorder Date: shows whether you should reorder now, or how long until reorder, plus the projected reorder and stockout dates.
• Order Quantity: shows how coverage and lead time consumption minus current stock produces the recommended units.

Step 5: Sort and filter to focus attention

Use sorting to prioritize work:

• Stock Level (Low → High) to find low inventory first
• Reorder Priority to bring incomplete products and reorder-now items to the top, then prioritize by earliest stockout risk
• Product Name (A–Z) for operational scanning

Step 6: Bulk update across multiple products

1. Select Quick Select to enable row checkboxes.
2. Select the products you want to update.
3. Choose a Sales Velocity period and/or Coverage Days in the bulk controls.
4. Apply the bulk update.

What you should expect:

• Selected products update together and calculations refresh accordingly.
• After applying, selection mode is cleared.

Limitation: Bulk changes clearly affect the current plan view, but persistence beyond the session is not confirmed.

Step 7: Create a draft Purchase Order

1. In Configure mode with Quick Select enabled, select products you want to include.
2. Select Create P/O.
3. The system builds a draft order from products that have a positive recommended Order Quantity.
4. After creation, you are taken to the new order.

Important behaviors to understand:

• Products with 0 recommended units are excluded from the draft order.
• Unit cost selection follows an internal precedence (a cost field when available, otherwise a fallback price source).
• Currency display is shown as USD in the visible flow.

Limitation: The detailed save contract and return fields of the draft order creation process are not confirmed in the provided notes beyond the fact that the created order can be opened afterward.

Step 8: Use View mode to finalize and export

1. Switch to the View tab.

2. Toggle between:

   • Show Only Needed (focus on reorder-now products), and
   • Show All Products (review complete products more broadly).

3. Use the urgency labels to understand time sensitivity.

4. Select Export to Excel to generate a spreadsheet containing the key planning fields used in View mode.

System Behaviors & FAQs

Why do some products show “Missing Data”?

A product is incomplete when Sales Velocity or Lead Time is missing or 0. Until those inputs exist, reorder timing and quantities cannot be calculated reliably.

Why did a product change from “Stock OK” to “Reorder Now” after I toggled in-transit or inbound stock?

Current Stock adjustments change the stock level used in the reorder comparison and timing math. Including or excluding additional sources can move Current Stock above or below the Reorder Point.

Why does Coverage change Order Quantity but not Reorder Point?

Reorder Point is a threshold for “when to reorder” (lead time plus safety stock). Coverage is a policy for “how much to order” to maintain inventory after replenishment.

Why does the cost summary look low for some products?

If a product is missing a usable unit cost, its cost contribution can effectively be treated as 0 in the rollup. The plan still recommends units; only the estimate is affected.

What does the AI Suggestion do?

The AI Suggestion feature provides an analysis for a product’s restock situation based on the product’s planning context shown on the page. It is intended as a supporting narrative signal alongside the numeric recommendation.

Limitation: The visible notes confirm that prior AI suggestions may be reused when available, but they do not confirm how long suggestions are stored or how they are managed administratively.

Are my Configure-tab edits saved automatically?

Edits clearly affect the current plan calculations. The provided notes do not confirm which edits are persisted permanently, especially for Current Stock adjustments and bulk updates.

Limitation: Lead time adjustments made through the product modal are described as permanent, but the save behavior cannot be verified from the provided notes.