Setting forward cover at a total level (using top-down planning) attempts to set the cover for each category, brand or vendor automatically. OTB is recommended in Categories only where the forward cover goal is feasible.

If the goal is not feasible, usually due to overstocking, no OTB recommendation will be provided.

Consider the following examples:

For “furniture”, an OTB of $95,496 in April ensures that the month will close with $84,849 to support May, June and July’s revenue (black arrows) by May 1.

However, for “bags”, no OTB is recommended since the current stock is much higher than 3 months’ worth of cover already. There are no changes in this category.

Therefore, if it’s not possible to achieve the goal in a defined period (due to overstock), Inventory Planner will not recommend purchasing additional inventory (shown as OTB at retail) in the category for the period.

Every enabled category is reviewed according to these steps. Once the sequence is completed, Inventory Planner provides a summary of categorical Overstock errors.
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Opening Stock will then be re-aggregated to the Total level using the new recommendations, and Forward Cover is recalculated based on the Overstocked categories.