The Inventory Planner Launch Guide walks through setting up a new account, account settings, catalog maintenance, forecasting and replenishment, and other key details to help with gaining success with Inventory Planner.

This guide is more specialized, as it explains how Inventory Planner can be configured when connecting directly through Amazon. Both guides will be a useful reference throughout your Inventory Planner experience.

This guide is focused on configuring Inventory Planner with an Amazon connection. If/When you have multiple connections with Inventory Planner beyond an Amazon connection, you can refer to the following specialized guides:

When you connect an Amazon store with Inventory Planner, the FBA warehouses throughout the same region appear as options you can enable/disable in Account > Settings > Connections & Warehouses. FBM (seller-fulfilled Amazon) for the region appears as its own warehouse. Only enable locations/warehouses that you need to evaluate independently for forecasting and replenishment planning purposes.

Note: For specific details on the fields and statuses from Amazon used to provide product information, stock levels, sales orders, and FBA shipment detail; visit the Amazon Integration article.

You can create a Combined Warehouse to aggregate sales (and/or stock) information from multiple warehouses into a single view - to generate forecasted needs and replenishment recommendations based on totaled data.

Note: you do not need to enable individual warehouses if it's sufficient to include them the combined warehouse configuration.

In this example, the stock and sales are combined from all FBA locations in North America, along with stock and sales from our main Shopify warehouse. FBM (Amazon seller fulfilled) sales orders are captured in the 'combined warehouse' view for forecasting and replenishment planning purposes, but the stock in FBM is irrelevant in this case since the FBM sales are fulfilled from our Shopify warehouse.

Note: if you have multiple connections and/or duplicative listings of the exact same Variant/SKU connected to Inventory Planner, it is important to combine Listings first in order to maintain accurate reports using a combined warehouse.

Here are some videos and resources that Amazon users can reference related to forecasting, replenishment, purchase orders, and reports in Inventory Planner.

Replenishment and Edit Forecast are the key areas of Inventory Planner to generate your forecast and replenishment recommendations. Use the Replenishment Report for Variant/SKU level forecasting and replenishment analysis, and to create Purchase Orders using replenishment recommendations. Replenishment is an output of your Forecast Method & Settings, Forecast Edits, and your planning period (lead time + days of stock).

The Edit Forecast section shows a monthly breakdown of forecasted sales. Select the date range in the top right for your Report, then click on Columns (using the gear icon in the top right) and Filters to see the information you need. Metrics are calculated at the Variant (SKU) level. Use the top left dropdown to aggregate reports and/or override forecasts in different dimensions (eg. by category, by vendor, etc).

How is the forecast and replenishment calculated?

New FBA Shipments: When you create a Purchase Order (to Vendor) or a Transfer Order (between warehouses) in Inventory Planner, and you have an FBA location selected as the Destination Warehouse, an option appears after you create then save the order to Amazon. This initiates an FBA shipment in Amazon, which can be managed and completed there. Once Amazon receives the Shipment, the order status and stock levels update automatically in Inventory Planner on a daily basis.

Once the prompt appears to save a Purchase Order (or Transfer Order) to Amazon, specify whether or not shipments should be split based on Amazon's requirements.

Note: selecting "Do not split shipments" will produce an error when attempting to save to Amazon if the inventory placement setting is not enabled in Amazon.

Why is my purchase order split into two shipment plans when syncing with Amazon Seller Central?

Purchase Orders and Transfer Orders that have been successfully synced with Amazon will have a green label associated with them in the Purchase Orders section. These orders are locked for editing, and must be edited directly in Amazon. Any changes in Amazon will sync back to Inventory Planner following the next sync.

Existing FBA Shipments: By default, all existing FBA shipments are pulled into Inventory Planner as Purchase Orders by default, with an unknown source - since Amazon doesn't provide this information.

You can filter and select orders anytime in the main Purchase Orders screen on the left hand navigation bar, then use Bulk Actions at the bottom to 'Set Source' for these orders.

You can also configure the default method for classifying future orders we pick up from Amazon in Account > Settings > Connections & Warehouse > then select 'Connection Settings' to the right of the Amazon warehouse.

Automatically ignore unreceived FBA shipments: To exclude unreceived FBA shipments from the calculation of the forecast, you can go to Settings > Purchase Orders > Platforms, enable "ignore unreceived FBA shipments" and specify the number of days that need to elapse after a shipment's "expected date" before it is excluded.

Learn more: Purchase Orders / Transfer Orders

Planning for Assemblies should only take place in warehouses where there are forecasted sales and accurate stock levels. If components are stocked and/or assembled in a different facility from where customer orders are fulfilled, configuring a combined warehouse allows you to aggregate the stock and/or sales information from multiple warehouses into a single warehouse for Assemblies Replenishment planning.

Whether you create a new Purchase Order, Assembly Order, or Transfer Order using recommendations from a combined warehouse or an individual warehouse view, you can select the 'true' Destination Warehouse once the new order is created.

Replenishment for Assemblies

Understanding forecasting and How Replenishment is Calculated for any item is key to understanding replenishment recommendations for Assemblies & Variants (components). The Bundle and Assemblies article goes in depth in the "Forecasting & Replenishment for Assemblies" section.

In order to calculate Replenishment for Assemblies and generate a schedule, the planning period and cycle details must be defined:

The recommended workflow for Amazon integrations is to:

Learn more about Bundles and Assemblies

Explanations of metrics, columns/filters, or other features:

Visit the Integrations Page for a full list of details Inventory Planner syncs from every integration, or experiment with features anytime in the Inventory Planner Demo Store.

Feel free to contact Inventory Planner directly at [email protected] or to schedule a call to review any other questions.