Updating Inventory and Supply for Better Purchase Order Recommendations - Amazon Companies

If you are using ForecastRx for purchase order recommendations, it is important to make sure your inventory and incoming supply are up to date. Continue reading below to learn how. 

Information needed for purchasing recommendations:

Purchasing recommendations are generated based on current inventory levels, forecasted demand, and safety stock. ForecastRx will automatically update your forecasted demand, safety stock, and inventory synced from Amazon. Amazon inventory includes On Hand Qty (Amazon Available), FC Transfer, and  Inbound (all open FBA shipments). 

You will need to manually update your current warehouse inventory (inventory stored outside of Amazon) and any open purchase orders (Supply). This information is essential to update before viewing your purchasing recommendations to prevent over-ordering. If the inventory is not entered into ForecastRx, it will not be accounted for in the purchasing recommendations. 

How to upload Warehouse Inventory:

Navigate to Manage Company > Items and locate the "Warehouse Qty" column. Here you can click on each cell to update the Warehouse Qty, or you can upload the data in a .csv file with the Bulk Management tab. To do this, you need a spreadsheet that includes SKUs (Item Name) and the inventory quantity. We recommend exporting your warehouse inventory from your warehouse management system (WMS) and directly uploading that sheet to Items. Note: The Item Name in ForecastRx needs to align with the item names in your WMS. To upload data into Items, select Bulk Management > Upload Data > Update Existing Entries. 

For more information on how to upload files in ForecastRx, click here. 

How to upload Supply:

First, navigate to Manage Company > Supply. Supply is entered as one row per SKU (Item Name), for each purchase order (PO). For example, if Item A is on two purchase orders (Order 1 and Order 2), you will need a row for Order 1 - Item A and another row for Order 2 - Item A. 

You will need to enter the Item Name and PO number/identifier, the date the PO was issued (PO Date) and the PO expected arrival date (Receive Date), as well as the Order Qty (total units on order) and Open Qty (outstanding units/not yet received).

Open Qty is important because this is the number of units that will factor into the purchasing recommendations. When uploading a new PO, Open Qty and Order Qty should be equal. Over time as units begin to be received, you will reduce the Open Qty until it is fully received, and then you will delete the data from ForecastRx.

You can enter individual rows of Supply for each item by selecting "Add New" and entering the required information, or you can upload a .csv file with the required information. 

We recommend uploading a .csv file of each open PO. If any columns of data required in ForecastRx are missing from your PO, add them to your .csv before uploading.

For more information on how to upload files in ForecastRx, click here. 

Ongoing inventory maintenance: 

Keeping Supply and Warehouse Inventory up to date is a manual process and can become time-consuming if not done efficiently.

Typically, users will use a separate accounting and management system to track POs and the receiving process. In this case, you only need to update Supply and Warehouse Qty before viewing your purchasing recommendations. If you are using ForecastRx as your main PO tracking system, you will need to update the data as frequently as changes in inventory occur. 

To update existing Supply in ForecastRx:

Navigate to Manage Company > Supply, and select Download Data from the Bulk Management tab. Update the Open Qty column in this sheet to reflect the amount of inventory that has yet to be received. Once this is done, return to Supply, select Bulk Management > Upload data > Update Existing Entries, and import the file.

*Note: If any items or full POs have been received, delete the rows in ForecastRx by clicking the check box and selecting Delete Supply. 

If you need to add new entries to Supply, follow the How to upload Supply steps above.

To update your Warehouse Qty in ForecastRx:

Prepare an up-to-date warehouse inventory file that includes Item Name (SKU) and your total local inventory. Follow the instructions above for How to upload Warehouse Inventory to overwrite the previous data. 

If you are using ForecastRx to keep track of your local inventory instead of another management system:

Navigate to Manage Company > Items, make sure the Warehouse Qty column is enabled, and select Bulk Management > Download Data. In this file, update the Warehouse Qty column to reflect any changes in inventory and then reupload the file to Items. If you received items into your warehouse and updated them in Supply, the inventory deducted from the Supply section will need to be added to Warehouse Qty. In addition, if you transfer out inventory from your warehouse, please adjust the quantities with this upload as well. If you are a RestockAMZ user and create a shipment into FBA using RestockAMZ, you do not need to adjust your Warehouse Qty, it will be done automatically. 

Uploading Supply from ForecastRx generated purchase order recommendations:

If you are exporting purchasing recommendations from ForecastRx to complete your purchase order, you can upload the same file, with some modifications, to Supply in order to track your new purchase order in ForecastRx with ease.

After exporting your suggested purchase order from Purchasing, modify or delete items as needed to finalize your PO. Create a copy if needed, then duplicate the Purchase Qty column and rename this duplicated column to "Open Qty". Next, insert a column called "PO Date" and enter in all rows, the date you are issuing the PO. Then, insert a column called "PO Num" and enter in all rows, the PO number for this order.

Now your file is ready to upload into Supply. Navigate to Manage Company > Supply, select Bulk Upload > Upload Data > Create New Entries and attach your file. Here you will need to map the column headers from your sheet correctly to the Supply column headers. The columns you created for "Open Qty", "PO Num", and "PO Date" will match up with existing columns, as well as Supplier Name, Item Name, ASIN, and FNSKU (if entered). The columns you will need to map manually are as follows: "Purchase Qty" to "Order Qty" and "Due Date" to "Receive Date". Once this is completed, your new purchase order will be uploaded to Supply.

For more information on how to upload files in ForecastRx, click here. 

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