A stockout is a period of time when a product is out of stock, usually measured in days. When we calculate your forecasted sales, we can use this data to produce a more accurate estimate of demand.

Your account is set to take stockouts into account by default, but if you allow overselling (continuing to sell items even when they're out of stock), then you should change that setting to disregard stockouts instead.

Inventory Planner automatically detects when a product is out of stock starting from the moment you connect your store, but it cannot import stock history from your platform. However, past stockouts can be imported, as discussed below.

You can see the "Use stockouts history" setting for all items in your account under Account > Settings >  Forecast. Enable the toggle to use stockouts history, and disable the toggle to disregard it.

If you allow overselling on only some products, you can set those to ignore stockouts.

To do so, enable custom forecast settings for the variants by using the Catalog, clicking into the "Forecast" tab on the "Details" page for any item, or by selecting the items and using Bulk actions > Set forecast settings.

Ensure you have set the variants to use custom forecasting settings beforehand.

There are two key implications when "Use stockouts history" is enabled:
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For a given period, the sales velocity is calculated as the number of sales divided by the number of days in the period.

When stockouts are included in the calculation, the number of sales stays the same, while the number of days decreases. Therefore the sales velocity per day will increase.

In the below example, the reference period is September 2023 - December 2023.

In October, 150 units of this item were sold. However, the item was out of stock for 15 days.

With "Use stockouts history" enabled, those days are removed from the denominator when calculating the adjusted sales velocity, making the demand 9.38 units/day. If stockouts weren't taken into account, the sales velocity would be calculated as 4.84 units/day, making the forecasted demand too low.

Another key consideration when enabling the "Use stockouts history" setting is how to consider backorders during the lead time period.

With the setting enabled, no backorders will be forecasted if stock runs out while waiting for new stock to arrive.

To forecast for backorders during the lead time period, disable "Use stockouts history". With the setting disabled, Replenishment considers all sales that could take place during the planning period (lead time plus days of stock).

To view the forecast lost sales, revenue, and profit due to predicted stockouts that are predicted to take place during the lead time period, select the date range in the top right of the replenishment report, then edit the columns (using the gear icon in the top right) and filters to add in the "Forecast lost sales", "Forecast lost revenue" and "Forecast lost profit" metrics.

Understanding how the Stockouts % and In stock % are calculated is a key step to understanding how reports are generated for viewing forecast lost sales, revenue, and profit using the Inventory KPI Report.

Stockouts % and In stock % look at the percentage of time items were out of stock or in stock during a defined period.

All metrics are calculated at the variant (SKU) level. Use the dropdown in the top left-hand side of the report to aggregate reports by different dimensions (e.g. category, vendor, total).

Stockouts are tracked by variant, by day. When KPI reports are aggregated, Inventory Planner first adds together the number of days of stockouts during the period, then divides that figure by the number of current tracked variants multiplied by the number of days in the period.

For example, take a single category:

You can aadd the Variants in stock metric to see the current number of tracked variants in stock within an aggregated set of data.

The KPI report can also be filtered by metrics such as Stockouts, Stockouts % and Sell through % to limit the data in the reports view.

Past stockouts data can be adjusted for a single item at a time, or for multiple items at once using a CSV import.

To adjust past stockouts for a single item, select the "i" icon under the 'Details' column for a specific item, then go into the Replenishment and forecast tab.

Scroll to the "Edit forecast" table at the bottom, and toggle to the "Past sales" view. From there, you can input the number of stockouts in days into the table.

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Inventory Planner tracks the history of stockouts (days when a variant is out of stock), as well as the actual stock level, starting from the date you create your Inventory Planner account. Stockout and stock level history information prior to that date is not automatically available.

If you have stockout or stock levels history available from another program, you can import that information into your Inventory Planner account. Doing so can help to produce a more accurate forecast more quickly.

Inventory Planner takes into account stockouts when calculating the forecast and replenishment recommendations. Read more about how the forecast is calculated here.

Please note that if you import your stock level history including dates where the stock was "0", Inventory Planner will automatically note that as a stockout day. You are not required to import both the stock level history and the stockout history.
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To learn how to import your stockout history, please see the Importing the stock level and stockout history article.

Inventory Planner allows users to set a minimum stock level to treat as a stockout level, which can be useful in situations where inventory falls below a specific threshold and is no longer considered sellable within the inventory management system.

For example, say your inventory management system makes a specific SKU unavailable for selling once its stock level reaches 5 units or less, so no further units can be sold until more inventory is received.

If the minimum stock level in Inventory Planner is set to 5, the SKU will be treated as being out of stock despite having inventory, because that inventory cannot be sold.

The minimum stock level is applied on a warehouse basis and can only be updated by Inventory Planner administrators. Please contact the Support team if you would like to adjust this setting.