An automatic forecast based on historical sales and is recomputed by Inventory Planner every day, but sometimes it makes sense to manually override the automatic forecast to take other factors into consideration. Overriding the forecast can be especially useful in the following situations:
You are planning a marketing campaign or other changes to your business and projections based only on past sales are not reliable enough
You are planning purchases and would like to review the forecast first to fix it. Once the forecast has been fixed for a period, it stops recomputing every day, allowing you to postpone creation of purchase orders
You are receiving brand new products and would like to manually enter the initial demand for them
To apply Open-to-Buy planning information at a category level for replenishment purposes.
Edit Forecast screen
You can edit the forecast in three ways:
Directly on the Edit Forecast screen to change the units forecast to be sold, the forecast revenue, or the forecast by a percentage
Note you may be changing figures that include category overrides based on Open-to-Buy (OTB) information
Using bulk actions to increase the forecast by a percentage
By importing a forecast override to change the units forecast to be sold, the forecast revenue, or the forecast by a percentage
Changing the forecast on the Edit Forecast page
Use the Edit Forecast screen to modify the forecast by units sold (forecast sales) or forecast revenue.
You can also specify the forecast percentage increase, applied to either the forecast override (if set) or the automated forecast. The final result is shown in "Total Forecast".
If you use Open-to-Buy planning, you can use bulk actions on the Edit Forecast screen to apply overrides at the category level.
First, filter the Edit Forecast page by category, then select your categories on the left-hand side. Click Bulk actions, then click "Seed revenue from Open-to-Buy plan".
Bulk changes to forecast percentage
To make changes in bulk, select your products using the checkboxes on the left-hand side of the page.
Then use the Bulk actions menu, which allows you to affect your selected products at once. You can:
recompute the forecast calculation
add/remove the percentage increase
set custom forecast settings including seasonality and consideration of stockouts when calculating the forecast
The forecast override option allows you to review the aggregated forecast for products, categories, vendors, and the entire store. The forecast can be overwritten and reconciled against variants.
Enter your forecast override in units or revenue, then save changes to update the forecast override. Inventory Planner will then automatically distribute the override across the variants.
For example, say you have two products in a category. The default forecast for these products is 10 and 20 units for December. The bottom-up forecast for the category is 30 units (10 + 20). When you override the top-level forecast to 60 (+100%) and save changes, Inventory Planner updates the forecast to 20 and 40 units respectively.
Replenishment Screen
Forecasts can also be edited in the Replenishment screen by clicking the "i" (Details) icon for any item, then clicking into the Replenishment and forecast tab.
To make changes in bulk, select your products using the checkboxes on the left-hand side of the page.
Then click "Bulk actions" to view the menu. You'll be able to:
recompute the forecast calculation
add/remove the percentage increase
set custom forecast settings including seasonality and consideration of stockouts when calculating the forecast
Importing forecast overrides
You can also import forecast overrides using a CSV file.
To import forecast overrides, create a spreadsheet with the following information, including a column title for each:
SKU or other identifier such as title, ID (used by your sales platform), Inventory Planner ID, vendor reference, or barcode.
Month you are overriding the forecast for, in one of the following formats:
mm/yyyy
yyyy/mm
mm-yyyy
yyyy-mm
For example, 01/2021 in one row, 02/2021 in another row, and so on
Forecast override for that month, in units, revenue or a percentage
Each row should correspond to a specific month.
You can also download a template from Replenishment > Import > Forecast override.
For example:
Note: Each row should only contain data in one forecast override column, i.e. each row can have a single entry in either units, revenue or as a percentage.
Import your forecast override by going into Replenishment and click Import > Forecast override.
Once you're happy with your spreadsheet, upload it and click "Map columns".
In the import file mapping screen, make sure you select the correct identifier. SKU is set by default.
When all fields are matched to the corresponding field in Inventory Planner, click Import to complete the import process.
Removing a forecast override
If you want to remove forecast override information you've previously entered, go to Edit Forecast or Replenishment and use the filters to find the variants you want to reset.
Select the variants using the checkboxes on the left-hand side of the page.
Then, click Bulk Actions > Clear forecast override (if the units were overridden) or Clear forecast percentage adjustment (if the forecast was overridden using a percentage increase).
On removing the override, Inventory Planner will revert the forecast and subsequent replenishment recommendations back to its own calculated figures.