After your data sync has been completed, log in to finish the initial setup, as this will be the criteria used for the first forecast of your data. You can skip any steps if you are unsure of what to enter or if any of the fields do not apply to your company.
This information can be modified at any time while using ForecastRx and the ForecastRx onboarding team will help you enter the correct information later if needed.
Company Info:
Global Defaults:
Here you will enter top-level settings for your company that will apply to all products unless you edit the settings for the individual suppliers or items. Lead Time is the average number of days it takes from issuing a purchase order to the products being available for sale. Order Interval is the number of days between each purchase order on average. For example, if you place purchase orders weekly, you would enter 7 days. Lead time and order interval are important because together they make up your sales horizon. This number of days will be how much inventory we recommend you purchase to cover.
Service Level and Additional Inventory will influence your safety stock. On top of purchasing to cover your sales horizon, we recommend adding safety stock. For forecast recommendations, you will set a Service Level from 0-10 for how much safety stock to be added on.
For more information on understanding service level, click here.
For daily sales rate recommendations, you will set Additional Inventory for how many additional days of stock you would like as safety stock, on top of your sales horizon (lead time + order interval).
Currency will default to the currency of the Amazon marketplace selected, but you can change this at any time and all monetary fields in ForecastRx will convert to the currency selected.
Email notifications will be sent out to all associated users of the company when a sync and forecast is completed unless toggled off.
Pending Orders toggled on will include pending customer orders in the number of units sold. Some users might want this toggled off if they have a high rate of pending customer orders that get canceled and do not want the order to count as a sale until payment has been processed.
The Adj. Daily Sales Rate setting when toggled on will discount out-of-stock days from your daily sales rate recommendations. For example, if a product is out of stock 10 out of the last 30 days, the adj. daily sales rate will use the average sales from the 20 in-stock days, so the out-of-stock period does not affect your reorder and restock quantities.
Inventory Source Preference is where you set if you sell through FBA, FBM, or both. If you select FBA only and you have some FBM items, the FBM items will not be forecasted for.
Associated Users allows you to add additional users to the company you are setting up. Make sure the users you are adding have created a user profile with ForecastRx before adding them to the company.
Purchasing Daily Sales Rate Rules:
Select how you would like daily sales rates calculated for your purchasing recommendations. This does not affect RestockAMZ daily sales rates. This is a global setting that will apply to all product purchasing recommendations unless modified on the supplier or item level.
We recommend setting automatically adjusted weightings where the percentages are distributed automatically to various lookback windows based on each product's sales history. For example, a product that has been selling for less than 90 days will not have any weight placed on the 180-day range or the forecasted demand because it has not been available for sale long enough for that period or an accurate demand forecast.
If you choose to use Average, you can select the weight distribution across multiple lookback windows and the forecasted demand to calculate your average daily sales rate.
For more information on Purchasing Daily Sales Rate, click here.
RestockAMZ Settings
If you are not planning on using RestockAMZ for Amazon restock recommendations, please skip this step, otherwise continue.
FBA Replenishment Model is how you typically restock Amazon, directly from your suppliers or from your local warehouse. Warehouse Ships to FBA will use the Warehouse Lead Time for all products in RestockAMZ and Supplier Ships to FBA will use your Company Details set lead time or your individually set lead times on the supplier or item level in your Forecast Recommended Qty restock recommendation.
Warehouse Lead Time is the average number of days it takes from creating a shipment to arrival at Amazon when shipping from your local storage facility. This lead time is used in your Warehouse Restock Recommendation and your Forecast Recommended Qty (when set as your FBA Replenishment Model).
Ideal FBA Inventory will set your restock alert flags and target quantity to send to Amazon. The Minimum Days of FBA Inventory is the lowest stock you want in FBA and RestockAMZ will display an orange flag if you go below this number. The Maximum Days of FBA Inventory is the target quantity you want at Amazon at any given time and your restock recommendations will be based on this number. If you have stock levels just below this, a yellow flag will be displayed and if you have stock levels above this, a green flag will be displayed.
RestockAMZ Daily Sales Rate Rules function the same as Purchasing Daily Sales Rate Rules but apply to RestockAMZ restock recommendations only.
For more information on Purchasing Daily Sales Rate, click here.
Total Inventory Available Calculation is where you choose what inventory is counted in your total available inventory. We recommend having all inventory toggled on so they are factored into inventory you have that is saleable, unless there are special circumstances. For example, some sellers might not want Inbound Working to count toward the inventory total if many outstanding working status shipments are drafts and not going to be sent to Amazon.
Ignore Old Shipments will hide old shipments from the Manage Shipments page of the application.
Suppliers
If you are using ForecastRx for purchasing recommendations from multiple suppliers or shipping to Amazon from your suppliers, you will want to upload data to this page. Your suppliers that have been identified from FBA shipments will populate here automatically, but you will need to update the lead time and order interval accordingly. You also have the option to add MOQ, email address, and set Service Level per supplier if needed. Any suppliers that have not been synced will need to be added using the "Add New" button or through a "Bulk Management" upload. If there are suppliers synced that are not needed, you can either hide them or ignore them. If items are not linked to the supplier, the supplier will not be in use.
Items
Items will automatically sync your active products from Seller Central, their sales history, and Amazon inventory quantities. The Items tab has a lot of data that you can edit, but not all fields may be necessary for your business and can be edited at any later time. The most important fields to fill in (if applicable) would be Supplier Name, Supplier Price, MOQ, Case Pack Qty, Warehouse Qty, and Service Level (if you want safety stock to vary per item). In addition, if there are items populated that you are no longer selling, you can hide them in this step. Modifications can be made by selecting the cells in the grid, or through a "Bulk Management" upload.
For more information on uploading data files to ForecastRx, click here.
Upload Kits
If you are using ForecastRx for purchasing recommendations and you sell bundled/kitted products, assign the kit product relationship here. This can be done using the "Add New" button or as an upload through "Bulk Management".
This does not include virtual bundles, only products that you purchase from suppliers and assemble in-house before shipping to Amazon.
Parent Name is the SKU for the kit that is selling on Amazon.
Component Name is the SKU for each product/part that makes up the kit. Note: if the component is not a product sold on Amazon directly and is only used in assembling the kit, you will need to add the product to Items before assigning it to a kit here.
Kit Qty is the number of units of a component product that go into the assembly for a single unit of a kit. For example, if you sell a 3-pack of white shirts, the Kit Qty for "White Shirt" would be three units.
Purchase Orders (Previously Supply)
If you are not using ForecastRx for purchasing recommendations, you can skip this step.
Purchase Orders is where you will enter your open purchase orders if you are using ForecastRx for creating purchase orders that are not shipped directly to Amazon. This is necessary for your purchasing recommendations so the software knows you have stock arriving soon and will count it as part of your total inventory.
Purchase Orders are entered per SKU, through the "Add New" button or through a "Bulk Management" upload. You will want to enter the total units on the PO into the Order Qty field and the total number of units that have not arrived yet into the Open Qty field. These numbers will typically be the same unless you have a partially received purchase order.
For more information on updating Purchase Orders, click here.
Finished
The final step of onboarding is to schedule a meeting with ForecastRx staff to go over your data, make modifications if necessary, and answer your questions about using ForecastRx going forward. Once a meeting is set, select "Run Forecast" to analyze your data to produce your first forecast and recommendations. Once the forecast is completed, your account will remain in locked status until you meet with ForecastRx staff. Your 30-day free trial does not begin until the account is unlocked because we would like to maximize your usage of the free trial period.
If you prefer to skip the meeting with ForecastRx staff or have your account unlocked before the meeting, you can request this under Step 1 as well.
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If you would like to schedule a meeting with a member of our team—let us know, we are here to help!
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