Summary
Overview
Wholesale Planning with Inventory Planner
How to Enable Wholesale Planning
Sync Wholesale Orders from an Integrated Platform
Manage Wholesale Orders in Inventory Planner
Overview
In order to accurately plan forecasts and replenishment when wholesale orders are involved, it is important to consider wholesale orders separately from regular orders. The Wholesale Planning feature in Inventory Planner allows merchants to:
Separate past wholesale orders from regular sales orders (to generate forecasted needs based only on regular sales), and
Plan future wholesale orders; adding needs for future wholesale orders to replenishment recommendations above & beyond the replenishment needed to satisfy forecasted regular sales during the planning period.
Here is simple example to demonstrate the significance of treating these separately:
In this first scenario, past regular sales and wholesales are combined together to generate a forecast based on the summed past sales.
In this second scenario, past regular sales (blue) are separate from past wholesales (red). The forecast is based on the past regular sales. Future wholesale orders can be planned separately, in which case they will be added to Replenishment recommendations when the planning period includes expected wholesale order date.
Here is another example to demonstrate when Wholesale Planning would be useful:
George sells 100 shirts on average per month in his store. Every 3 months, a wholesale customer purchases 1,000 units from George. Without treating these sales orders separately, Inventory Planner recognizes that 1,300 units were sold during a 3 month period (433 units per month) and generates the forecast accordingly.
By enabling Wholesale Planning in Inventory Planner, George's forecast separates the past wholesale orders to generate a realistic forecast of 100 units per month instead. George can also plan for future wholesale orders to be sure that the requirement for his wholesale customer (1,000 units every 3 months) can be satisfied in addition to ordering enough supply to cover the forecasted regular sales.
Wholesale Planning with Inventory Planner
Inventory Planner supports two modes depending on how you create your wholesale orders.
1) Sync wholesale orders from an integrated platform. Use this when you create wholesale orders as normal sales orders with a future date in your connected store. Orders can be identified and matched by customer, sales order status, channel or warehouse.
2) Manage wholesale orders in Inventory Planner. If you do not create wholesale orders through the connected store, Wholesale orders can be entered or imported directly into Inventory Planner to be considered with forecasting, reports, and replenishment recommendations.
Note: Inventory Planner does not support syncing past wholesale orders from the connection while planning future wholesale orders in Inventory Planner simultaneously. This strategy easily leads to data disconnects. Wholesale orders should either be synced from the connected store, OR managed directly in Inventory Planner.
How to Enable Wholesale Planning
To enable Wholesale Planning in Inventory Planner;
Select Account > Settings;
Select the Wholesale tab, then 'Enable Wholesale Forecasting' to switch on the ability to separate past wholesale orders from regular sales orders, and to plan for future wholesale orders.
Enabling this setting opens up a new icon on the left-hand navigation bar for Wholesale.
Sync Wholesale Orders from an Integrated Platform
For merchants who create wholesale orders in their connected store, enabling the 'Sync Wholesale Orders' option in Account > Settings > Wholesale opens up additional settings to distinguish wholesale orders automatically based on customer email address or full name, sales order status, channel, or warehouse.
Specify at least one of the criteria to trigger Inventory Planner to separate past wholesale orders from regular sales orders in your connected platform:
Wholesale Customers: this defines wholesale customers using the email addresses (or full names) associated sales orders from wholesale customers. To define wholesale customers:
Select the Wholesale icon > then Wholesale Customers;
Select an existing customer (synced from the sales orders in your integrated store);
Alternatively you can import wholesale customers using a CSV file by selecting the Import button in Wholesale > Wholesale Customers;
Select the “CSV Template” hyperlink, then fill the required columns and follow the instructions on the right side of the screen to import the file.
Wholesale Order Status: this defines wholesale customers using a specific sales order status. Select the wholesale status from the available options using the dropdown menu.
Wholesale Order Tag: this defines wholesale customers based on sales order tags synced from the connected store. Select the wholesale order tag from the available options using the dropdown menu. (Order tags are not available for all platforms. Contact Inventory Planner support using the chat in the lower right corner if you want to use order tags to define wholesale but do not see this option in your account.)
Wholesale Channel: this defines wholesale customers using a specific channel in the connected store. Select the wholesale channel from the available options using the dropdown menu.
Wholesale Warehouse: this defines wholesale customers using a specific location/warehouse from the integrated store(s). Select the wholesale warehouse from the available options using the dropdown menu.
After the wholesale sync configuration is saved, Inventory Planner will start a sync to separate past and future wholesale orders from the connection; then update the Replenishment. Monitor the 'Sync' button in the bottom left of Inventory Planner to see when the re-computation completes.
Once the recomputation completes, select the Wholesale > Wholesale Orders from the left-hand navigation bar to see the newly classified wholesale orders.
In Replenishment once you select the Details icon next to any item (the “i” button), in the Replenishment & Forecast tab the past wholesale orders will be separated from past regular sales in the ‘Forecast Sales’ chart, and in the Edit Forecast table below (toggle to ‘Past Sales’ in the bottom right of the screen).
Manage Wholesale Orders in Inventory Planner
If wholesale orders cannot be synced from the connected store, or in the case that wholesale orders are not being created anywhere else - users can create planned wholesale orders directly in Inventory Planner.
Once the Enable Wholesale Planning feature is turned on (see the ‘How to Enable Wholesale Planning’ section above), select the Wholesale icon > then Wholesale Orders;
Create a new wholesale order by adding or creating the wholesale customer (by email address or full name), setting the Expected Date, and selecting the “+ Add Variants” button to add products to the planned wholesale order.
As Variants are added to the planned order, input the quantity and wholesale price information.
To plan recurring wholesale orders, select the ‘Settings’ button in the top right.
Once the planned order is saved, the forecasted wholesale quantity appears in addition to the forecasted regular sales in the Edit Forecast screen (using the main Edit Forecast section, or in the Details view for any variant).
Past wholesales from the same customer are separated automatically from the past regular sales; so that forecasts are always based on regular sales.
To create planned wholesale orders in bulk, you can also import wholesale orders using a CSV file by selecting the Import button in Wholesale > Wholesale Orders;
Select the “CSV Template” hyperlink, then fill the required columns and follow the instructions on the right side of the screen to attach and import the file.