One Page Inventory provides powerful forecasting capabilities to help you predict future sales for your various products and sales channels. Particularly useful for seasonal products or products with consistent seasonality patterns. Additionally, if you’ve seen an overall increase in recent sales trends this year, that uptrend will be reflected in the projections. In this article, we will explain how forecasting works in OPI.
To get started: Navigate to the Forecasting workmode:
Hovering over any cell will pop up “Forecast” details for that specific SKU and time period. The graph below visualizes your sales basis, past sales and projected sales.
Escalation Percentages
Escalation percentage is shown for each month. This is calculated based on 2 years of past sales history and represents the typical percentage increase or decrease compared to average monthly sales.
For example, a 15% escalation means that month typically sees 15% higher sales than the average, and -15% month means that month typically sees 15% less sales than the average. Clicking the “fx” icon under each month’s projected sales explains how these are derived.
Sales Basis Calculation
The sales basis is the average monthly sales amount used for forecasting. It is calculated based on “normal” sales months over the past 2 years, which are months with consistent “non-seasonal” sales patterns (January-September usually).
The projection for each month takes the sales basis and applies the escalation percentage on top. For example, if the January sales basis is 1,000 units and the escalation is 10%, the projection will be 1,000 * 1.10 = $1,100.
Accounting for Recent Trends
In addition to seasonality patterns, the forecasting algorithm also accounts for recent sales trends compared to prior years. So if you’ve seen an overall increase in sales this year, that uptick will be reflected in the projections.
Manual Adjustments
You can manually update the escalation or “Sales basis” if needed.
To make escalation changes, simply enter the new Escalation percentage under the desired month.
To make changes to the Sales basis, click “edit it manually” at the bottom of the Forecast pop-up.
Changes can be reverted back to the system-calculated values as well. Simply click the Orange arrow and the system calculations will be reapplied.
Forecast updates apply individually to each SKU/channel combo and require saving (click “Save Changes”) for the new forecast updates to be reflected.
