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How to Plan Your Replenishment to Cover Supplier Vacations and Holidays
How to Plan Your Replenishment to Cover Supplier Vacations and Holidays
Learn how to handle lead time and days of stock to cover factory shutdowns or supplier delays during seasonal downtime.
Monica avatar
Written by Monica
Updated over a week ago

From Chinese New Year to the festive period and summer vacation season, there are certain times in the calendar when your factories and warehouses may close down or slow down – and it’s important you’re prepared.

Luckily, Inventory Planner makes it simple to ensure you have enough stock to meet demand, even if your suppliers are away.

To do this, you'll need to tweak your Days of Stock setting. Here’s how to do it…

  1. Export your current settings

    Before you make any changes, we strongly recommend that you export your current Days of Stock information from the Replenishment tab. This is so that you can reupload your current settings once the vacation season or holiday is over.

    TOP TIP: Be sure you've enabled your SKU and Days of Stock columns. If you have more than one variant with the same SKU, then you'll need to enable the ID column before you export.

  2. Update your Days of Stock

    It’s easiest and quickest to update your Days of Stock using the Bulk Actions tool. Simply select ‘Set Lead Time and Days of Stock’.

    Then, add in the relevant number of Days of Stock to cover the period of downtime. Lead time settings should stay as they are normally set in your account.

  3. Place your order

    The next step is to place an order for the suggested quantities and items. With Inventory Planner, this is easy - simply go to your Replenishment Report, select the items you want to reorder and hit the New PO button. And you can make further changes to the POs in Account > Settings > Purchase Orders.

  4. Import your ‘old’ Days of Stock data

    In step one of this article, we advised you download your Days of Stock data. Now it’s time to upload the spreadsheet you exported during that step.

    Attach the spreadsheet with one column for the SKU (or another unique identifier such as ID, if you duplicate SKUs) plus a separate column for Days of Stock.

    TOP TIP: Be sure to match your column title to the corresponding field in Inventory Planner.

    Finally, click Upload.

    That’s it! You’ve successfully ordered enough stock to cover seasonal downtime.

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