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Importing the stock history and stockouts

Monica avatar
Written by Monica
Updated this week

Inventory Planner keeps track of your variants' stockouts (days when a variant is out of stock) and stock level history, starting from the date you created your Inventory Planner account.

The stockout and stock level history prior to that date is not available. However, if you have the stockout or stock level history available from another platform, you can import that information into your Inventory Planner account, helping produce a more accurate forecast more quickly. 

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

Tip: If your stock level history includes dates when your stock was "0", Inventory Planner will automatically identify that as a stockout - so you don't need to import both your stockouts and your stock level history!

Importing the stock level history

To import the stock level history, on the Imports screen, select "Stock history", then click "Upload file" at the bottom of the page:

Create a spreadsheet with the following information, including a header for each column:

Column name

Required

Column type

Comments

SKU

Barcode

Title

ID

Text

One of these four columns is required to act as an identifier.

Stock date

Date

Stock

Number

Either drag and drop your file into the upload area, or click the upload area to select your file from your computer, then click "Map columns":

Mapping your columns

Map your columns in the file to Inventory Planner fields:

Field

Description

Required?

Match by

The identifier Inventory Planner should use to determine which variant to update.

SKU is the default option.

Stock date

The column in the file relating to the date of the stock level.

Stock

The column in the file relating to the stock level on the stock date.

Warehouse

Select the warehouse whose history is being uploaded. This field does not correspond to a column in the file.

Period

The period the upload relates to. Existing stock history within this period will be erased and replaced. This period should not be after your Inventory Planner start date.

Date format

The format of the stock dates. If you don't select a specific format, Inventory Planner will try to automatically detect one.

Note: Since stock history is tracked automatically starting with the account creation date, it's usually unnecessary to replace information post-account creation. The primary purpose for this import is for stock history prior to connection, but the import can be used if needed to replace stock history beyond that point.

When all fields are matched to the corresponding field in Inventory Planner, click Import.

You will then see an Import overview page, where changes will be confirmed.


If there are errors, please action these and then re-attempt the import.

Importing the stockout history

Note: Importing a stockout history does not adjust the stored stock history, only the number of stockouts.

To import the stock level history, on the Imports screen, select "Stockouts", then click "Upload file" at the bottom of the page:

Create a spreadsheet with the following information, including a column header for each:

Column name

Required

Column type

Comments

SKU

Barcode

Title

ID

Text

One of these four columns is required to act as an identifier.

Month

Date

Format as mm/yyyy, yyyy/mm, yyyy-mm or yyyy/mm/dd. If you use the latter, the day will be ignored.

Stockouts (days)

Number

The number of days when the item was out of stock that month.

Either drag and drop your file into the upload area, or click the upload area to select your file from your computer, then click "Map columns":

Mapping your columns

Map your columns in the file to Inventory Planner fields:

Field

Description

Required?

Match by

The identifier Inventory Planner should use to determine which variant to update.

SKU is the default option.

Month

The column in the file relating to the month of the stockout.

Stockouts (days)

The column in the file relating to the stockouts in days for the month.

Warehouse

Select the warehouse whose history is being uploaded. This field does not correspond to a column in the file.

When all fields are matched to the corresponding field in Inventory Planner, click Import.

You will then see an Import overview page, where changes will be confirmed.


If there are errors, please action these and then re-attempt the import.

Note: You can import files as large as 100 MB but larger files might take longer to upload.

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