Items using non-seasonal forecasting methods ("Recent sales and trends" and "Last sales") can still see a spike in demand due to holidays. Inventory Planner takes spikes in sales due to holidays into account in two ways:

These methods are discussed in further detail below.

Spikes in sales for the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend and the week before Christmas could cause the forecast for the following weeks and months to be overstated.

For example, if 500 units of an item are purchased during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend when the normal sales velocity is 100 units per month, then the forecasted demand for January could be too high.

The Excluded sales section in Account > Settings > Forecast allows you to set which dates should be excluded from the forecast calculation. Actual sales will still be reported - this exclusion is only for the purposes of forecasting.
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Learn more about configuring forecast methods and settings in Inventory Planner here.

When the "Apply seasonal increase for non-seasonal products" option is set, Inventory Planners will take holiday sales seasons (including Black Friday and Cyber Monday) into account for items that are non-seasonal.

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To do so, we check the previous year's sales in the months of November and December and if increases are detected, they're automatically applied to your future forecast for the holiday period in the current year.

Note that the seasonal increase doesn't take stockouts or sales overrides into account, nor does it factor in exclusions or manual overrides. If you're unsure whether there should be an increase, please contact the Support team.

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If you set a forecast override, Inventory Planner won't apply any increases automatically to avoid a potential spike in sales forecasting.

If you make use of sales increase percentages, we recommend disabling the option to automatically consider holiday seasons under Account > Settings > Forecast.