If your business is a combination of wholesale and retail, you might find it difficult to accurately forecast sales based on the combined sales history. Let's look at an example:
You sell 100 units of a product per month through your retail channel and have a wholesale order of 600 units every 3 months. On average you sell 300 units a month.
average per month = [(3 × 100) + 600] ÷ 3 = 300 units
When replenishing merchandise for the next month, you need either 100 units or 700 units depending on whether you'll have a wholesale order during that month. The average forecast would recommend to you to purchase 200 units.
To make the forecast more accurate, Demand Planner allows you to plan wholesale orders separately from retail orders.
Enabling wholesale planning
To enable wholesale planning, go to Account > Settings.
Within Settings, go to the Wholesale tab and 'Enable wholesale forecasting', then click save. You should also choose the 'Sync wholesale orders' option.
Once wholesale forecasting is enabled, you will find a 'Wholesale menu icon on the left-hand navigation panel. From this screen, you view wholesale orders and customers.
Sync wholesale orders from Brightpearl
Back in the settings at Account > Settings > Wholesale you can distinguish wholesale orders synced from Brightpearl automatically based on the customer, sales order status, channel, or warehouse.
Specify at least one of the criteria to trigger Demand Planner to separate past wholesale orders from regular sales. Once wholesale orders have been properly identified, Demand Planner will begin separating past sales. Monitor the 'Sync' button in the bottom left of Demand Planner to see when the re-computation completes.
Once the recomputation is complete, select Wholesale > Wholesale orders from the left-hand navigation bar to see the newly classified wholesale orders.
Wholesale forecasts and replenishment
In 'Replenishment', when you select the 'Details' icon next to any item (the “i” button), in the 'Replenishment & Forecast' tab the past wholesale orders will be separated from past regular sales in the ‘Forecast Sales’ chart, and in the 'Edit Forecast' table below (toggle to ‘Past Sales’ in the bottom right of the screen).
Prior to excluding wholesale orders:
Post excluding wholesale orders:
Projections now show wholesale orders separately; see the red dots in the above forecast.
Wholesale orders are taken into account in replenishment reporting based on the expected date.
