Generate reorder suggestions

Cin7 Core forecasts future product sales from your existing sales history to generate suggestions of when to replenish your stock, via purchase, transfer, or production orders. There are multiple ways to do this:

Inventory Velocity Report: This feature uses your inventory velocity along with lead time information from your suppliers to suggest when, which, and how many products should be reordered to meet customer demand. This method is included in the Cin7 Core base subscription and is available to all users.
Materials Requirements Planning: MRP considers demand from sales and supply from stock on hand, transfers, production, assembly and suppliers to generate supply management suggestions. Use MRP to compare actual and forecasted sales demand with available and potentially available stock supplies, then determine when products should be produced in-house, bought from suppliers, and delivered from distribution centers. This method takes into account more demand/supply considerations and is an add-on to your base subscription.

This article will focus on generating reorder suggestions from the Inventory Velocity Report. Please see Materials Requirements Planning documentation for information on this feature.

Prerequisites

Set up products
- Set suppliers and reorder parameters for products
Set up locations
- Allow to reorder stock level option must be checked in Reference Books → Locations & Bins
Set up mailing lists (to receive reorder suggestions by email)
Inventory Velocity Report important information (describes how calculations work)

Run Inventory Velocity Report

The Inventory Velocity Report shows information about each SKU, including its sales velocity (units sold per day), the number of items in stock, the number of days until you run out of stock, and recommends how many units of an item should be reordered in the forecast sale period. Please see Inventory Velocity Report - Input and output for a detailed explanation of all report fields.

Go to Reports → Sales reports, then click Inventory Velocity Report.
Select whether to Calculate reorder quantity using safety stock. When this is enabled, the system takes into account the sales velocity, lead time, and safety stock to make reorder calculations. When disabled, the system will simply make sure that a minimum stock level is maintained for each item, without accounting for velocity or lead times.
- Enabled: Reorder amount = Sales velocity x (safety + lead time) - available - on order
- Disabled: Reorder amount = Product reorder quantity + minimum before reorder - available - on order
On the header section of the Inventory Velocity Report page, set a report interval - this will be the sale forecast period.
On the layout section of the Inventory Velocity Report page, you can configure your report layout by adding or removing field headings. It is recommended that you leave the default selection as is, though you may also create your own report layout.
The Recommended action column is filled after the report is calculated. Available options are:
- Inventory is ok: You have enough stock available and on order to maintain your current sales velocity for the entire reporting period (if safety stock is enabled) or to exceed your minimum before reorder threshold + reorder quantity (if calculate using safety stock is disabled).
- Reorder product: You will need to reorder this product before the end of the reporting period. Click the hyperlink for Cin7 Coreto suggest replenishment orders for this product. If the number of available units + awaiting units < 0 and reorder quantity is specified for a product, this is set to Reorder Product, even if Velocity=0.
- Please specify reorder quantity: This reorder parameter, how many items to order when the stock falls below the minimum threshold, has not been set for this product. Please set reorder parameters for this product.
If you have set up mailing lists for this report, generating the report will automatically send a copy of the reorder suggestions to those recipients.
Filter the report by recommended action: reorder product to see all applicable products. This view can then be exported to another format if necessary.

View reorder suggestions

Clicking a Reorder product link will take you to the Reorder suggestions page for that product, opening a new window. This page can also be accessed from the reorder suggestions list sent by email.

This view will by default be filtered to show the product that was clicked in the report, however, simply remove the product name/SKU from the search field to view all products for reorder and their recommended reorder quantity. Your method of calculating reorder quantity (using or not using safety stock) will appear at the top of this section.

The reorder suggestions page can show suggested purchases, transfers, or production orders.

Purchase (default option) – reorder replenishment product quantity from one or more suppliers. This can be filtered by location and supplier. Other products from the specified supplier location that are within 7 days of their reorder date will also be listed here. See reorder suggested purchases.
Transfer – reorder stock from another location in your organization. See reorder suggested transfers.
Production – reorder items with an assembly or production BOM by creating an assembly or production order for those items. See reorder suggested production orders.

Reorder suggested purchases

After running the inventory velocity report and viewing reorder suggestions, you can create new purchase orders from the list of suggested purchases.

From the Locations list, select either All locations to view all products requiring reorder, or limit the suggestions to a single organization location. Select Purchase as the reorder type.
Select All suppliers to view all available suppliers, or limit the suggestions to a single supplier at a time. If a single supplier is selected, you will have the option to add reordered products to existing unauthorized purchase orders with that supplier.
Check the box next to an SKU to mark it for reorder, choose to create a new purchase or add to an existing purchase order in the drop down menu, then click Reorder to create or amend draft purchase orders. Other products from the specified supplier location that are within 7 days of their reorder date will also be listed here. Your method of calculating reorder quantity (using or not using safety stock) will appear at the top of this section.
A summary of the reordered products is then displayed at the bottom of the page. The new purchase orders are generated in draft status and will need to be authorized.

Reorder suggested transfers

After running the inventory velocity report and viewing reorder suggestions, you can create new transfers from other locations in your organization.

From the Locations list, select either All locations to view all products requiring reorder, or limit the suggestions to a single organization location. Select Transfer as the reorder type.
Select a location to order from. You will have the option to create a new transfer or add reordered products to existing unauthorized transfers.
This will display products to reorder, the availability at the ordering location, the availability at the destination location, and the total reorder quantity for that item. You can quickly check the availability of products at a location by using the descending sort function, by clicking the "Available at [X location]" table heading.
Check the box next to an SKU to mark it for reorder, and select whether to create a new transfer order or add the items to an existing transfer order.
Click Reorder to confirm. A summary of the reordered products is then displayed at the bottom. The transfer will be created in draft status and will need to be authorized.

Reorder suggested production orders

After running the inventory velocity report and viewing reorder suggestions, you can create new production and assembly orders for manufactured or assembled products.

From the Locations list, select either All locations to view all products requiring reorder, or limit the suggestions to a single organization location. Select Production as the reorder type.
This will show all production/assembly products available for reorder. Check the box next to an SKU to mark it for reorder. Clicking Reorder will create production orders for that SKU at the specified Shopfloor location. If the item contains semi-finished components, production/assembly orders will also be created for these also if your production process settings allow this.
A summary of the reordered products is then displayed at the bottom. Production/assembly orders are created in draft status and will need to be authorized.

Receive reorder suggestions by email

Every time the Inventory Velocity Report is generated, the results are sent to the mailing lists designated in this section, found at the bottom of the Inventory Velocity Report page. You will need to have already created your mailing lists, which are a feature of the Automation module (paid add-on to your subscription). Each location can be assigned a different mailing list.

If there are items that need to be reordered, the email will contain a link to the reorder suggestion page. It will also give the number of items that need to be reordered, but not the details. The link will be active for 24 hours.

If there are no items that need to be reordered, the email will not contain a link to the reorder suggestion page.

Schedule Inventory Velocity Reporting

Users who have the Automation module added on to their subscription can automatically run the Inventory Velocity report on a schedule and send out reorder suggestion emails to the intended recipients.

Go to Reports → Sales reports, then click Inventory Velocity Report.
On the header section of the Inventory Velocity Report page, click the Scheduling icon.
Enter, then select the report name from the list, then click Next.
On the next page, choose the layout for the report, select the desired report interval (7, 14, 30, 60, and 90 days) from the list, then click Next.
Select a start date, frequency, mailing list, and report format from the lists.
Click Save. The report will then be run depending on the start date you specified in Step 5.