Reviewing Your Synced Data

Below are a few important data review steps to take now to make sure your demand is being forecasted accurately in the future.

Inactive Items:

All SKUs (and suppliers for QuickBooks) are synced from the past 4 years in your data source, which means there is the potential for inactive items to appear in your ForecastRx account. Please check your Suppliers and Items pages for unwanted items and hide them if you do not want them forecasted. For more information on how to hide items, click here.

 

Duplicate Items:

You may come across duplicate products in your Items list and this may occur for multiple reasons.

• Duplicate ASINs: If a product is sold via FBA and FBM, there will be 2 items listed in ForecastRx, one for FBA and one for FBM, sales and inventory data. If you would like to combine the data so these items are forecasted together, please set up a Purchase As on the FBM item. For more information on how to set up a Purchase As, click here.
• New Identifier for an existing product: If you switch to a new SKU or ASIN when selling a new version of a product, such as a new and improved model, or an issue arises with a product listing forcing you to create a new one, you will need to set up a Purchase As on the old item to combine the sales data and remaining inventory. For more information on how to set up a Purchase As, click here. 
• An item is duplicated by mistake: First, check your data source and rectify the issue if it is the cause, then initiate a sync with ForecastRx to update the data. If the duplicates do not originate in your data source, please contact ForecastRx support. 

 

Suppliers:

Amazon-integrated users will need to upload their suppliers manually under Manage Company > Suppliers and then connect Items to the corresponding supplier from Manage Company > Items > Supplier Name. If a supplier has a different Lead Time, Order Interval, or Safety Stock from the Company Details settings, please enter that information for each supplier. This can also be done at the item level if the item requires different settings than the Suppliers or Company Details settings. 

Suppliers for QuickBooks-integrated users will sync automatically from QuickBooks. Inactive and unused suppliers may sync as well. You can either hide the supplier or ignore them since no products will be linked to them. Lead Times, Order Intervals, and Safety Stock will need to be entered for each supplier if their settings differ from the Company Detail settings. If not, the Company Detail settings will automatically be applied to them. If you notice a supplier is missing, please check your suppliers in QuickBooks and update QuickBooks as needed. If a supplier is shown in QuickBooks and is missing from ForecastRx, please contact ForecastRx support.

 

Items:

For Amazon-integrated users, item data will be pulled from Seller Central for inventory and sales columns. Please verify that the inventory looks accurate to what is shown in Seller Central for On Hand quantities and Inbound inventory. Keep in mind the last sync date is the last recorded inventory quantity, so some items will be off by a few units if inventory has changed in Seller Central since the last data sync. Many fields under Manage Company > Items are user-defined, such as Supplier Name and Supplier Price, and will remain blank unless you populate them.

For QuickBooks-integrated users, many fields are user-defined as well, such as MOQ and Case Pack Qty, but inventory data, sales data, Supplier Price, and Supplier Name will sync from QuickBooks automatically. If you notice items that are missing this information or the information is incorrect, please check and correct the data shown in QuickBooks, then initiate a sync to ForecastRx. If the data in QuickBooks does not match ForecastRx, please contact ForecastRx support.

 

Open Purchase Orders:

If you are a QuickBooks-integrated user, navigate to Manage Company > Purchase Orders to view your open purchase orders. This data is synced directly from QuickBooks and should reflect the same quantities as your QuickBooks file. Order Qty in ForecastRx will reflect the total inventory on the PO and Open Qty will reflect the inventory on the purchase order that has yet to be received.

Please check that your Receive Dates in ForecastRx for open purchase orders accurately reflect the Due Dates or Expected Dates in QuickBooks. ForecastRx will sync the Due Date first and if one is not found, will sync the Expected Date. If you do not have Due Dates or Expected Dates set for your purchase orders in QuickBooks, you will need to add one for any open and future purchase orders. Purchase orders without a Due Date, Expected Date, or have a past-dated Receive Date will not be factored into the recommendations and inventory.

If you find old purchase orders in ForecastRx that are still displaying an Open Qty, please close out the purchase order in QuickBooks. If the Receive Date is in the past, the Open Qty will not be factored into the recommendations but it's best practice to close out old purchase orders so they don't display under the Purchase Order section of your recommendations.

Fields ForecastRx syncs from QuickBooks for Purchase Orders:

If any of this data is not correct, please update QuickBooks if applicable and run a sync. If the data in QuickBooks still does not match up with ForecastRx, please contact ForecastRx support. 

 

Initial Sync Date and Demand:

It is important to sync as much data as possible with ForecastRx to get a more accurate forecast. To check if you have synced 4 years of data, please check the earliest sale date shown in Manage Company > Demand to make sure it goes back 4 years or to your first recorded sale date. You can also verify this by checking the Item Card Forecast Data to see if the sales history matches up with your records.

For QuickBooks-integrated users, Demand is synced from your Sales Orders and Invoices. Please filter for Invoices and Sales Orders using the Reference Number column in the Demand tab to verify sales. Sales Order Qty should reflect the total units sold, and Open Sales Order Qty should reflect any outstanding sales orders. If you notice there are Sales Order Quantities counted for a single sale from both a sales order and an invoice, please contact ForecastRx support. 

For Amazon-integrated users, Demand is synced from your orders in Seller Central. This includes sales from Multi-channel Fulfillment as well. Please verify your recent sales are accurate to what you are seeing in Seller Central. Additionally, Amazon inventory removal orders are counted as sales orders. If you have submitted removal orders from Amazon, they will need to be hidden from your demand to not be counted as units sold. To learn how to Hide Demand for removal orders, click here.

If your sales history looks incorrect in ForecastRx compared to your data source or is not synced back 4 years, please contact ForecastRx support. 

 

Forecasted Sales:

Items need to have at least 1 full month of sales history to be forecasted and the forecast models perform better at identifying sales trends and seasonality when a product has 2 full years of sales history. 

If any of your products do not have at least 2 years of history or have recent or multiple stockouts, you may want to modify your sales history to adjust the data for better forecasts. To learn how to do this, click here. 
If you would prefer to rely on daily sales rates for purchasing and restocking recommendations rather than the forecast recommendations, check that your daily sales rate weights are set to the time periods you would like to focus on. For more information on setting daily sales rates, click here for QuickBooks users, and click here for Amazon users. 

 

Safety Stock (Service Level):

Verify that your safety stock level is where you would like it to be if you are using the forecasted purchasing recommendations. In the initial sync, the Service Level was set on the Company Details page. To check your safety stock recommendations based on your Service Level, navigate to Purchasing > Custom to view all items, then select the Item Card icon to view the safety stock, or view the Recommended Safety Stock column in the grid, and compare that to the item's projected sales.

Safety stock and projected sales are shown for the sales horizon (lead time + Order Interval) as a whole. For example, if your sales horizon is 90 days, the projected sales and recommended safety stock are for the upcoming 90-day period.

If the safety stock seems too high or too low, adjust your service level accordingly. If safety stock is too high or low across all items, adjust the Company Details Service Level. If the safety stock is too high or low for specific suppliers or items, adjust it for the individual suppliers or items. 

 

Lead Times, Order Intervals, Service Level, and Additional Inventory:

For Purchasing, it is important to make sure your Lead Times, Order Intervals, Service Level, and Additional Inventory are set correctly to your specifications to have accurate recommendations. Lead Time + Order Interval sets your Sales Horizon which is the number of days ForecastRx is targeting stock for. Additional Inventory sets your additional days of inventory for safety stock in the Daily Sales Rate Recommendations, while Service Level sets your safety stock for the Forecast Recommended Qty. These can be set on the company, supplier, or item level and adjusted at any time to update the period you are stocking for and recalculate your Purchasing recommendations. 

 

RestockAMZ Settings:

If you are using ForecastRx for recommendations to restock Amazon FBA, check that your FBA Replenishment Model is set correctly based on whether you ship products directly from a supplier, using supplier lead times, or from a local warehouse. This setting influences the lead time used in the Forecast Recommended Qty in RestockAMZ. If you ship from a local warehouse, enter the average number of days it takes from creating a shipment to when it is received in Amazon under the Warehouse Lead Time.

In RestockAMZ, lead time + Maximum Days of FBA Inventory equals the number of days ForecastRx is targeting stock for. If you want your restock recommendations to match your purchasing recommendations, set your sales horizon to the same number of days in both sections. Enter the correct lead times, then adjust your Maximum Days of FBA Inventory and Order Interval to where the sales horizons are the same number of days. 

Total Inventory Available Calculation sets which inventory is counted as saleable when producing your recommendations. If you have FBM inventory available and toggled on, those quantities will be counted as Amazon Inventory and will reduce your FBA restock recommendation. This is not recommended for users who are using the Purchase As feature for FBA + FBM items and are restocking FBA from a local warehouse.

                                                                                                                                                                 

If you would like to schedule a meeting with a member of our team—let us know, we are here to help!