Sales forecasts

Description

“Sales forecasts” allows you to drive your planning systems on forecasts demand in addition to actual requirements (open sales orders and work orders).

Forecasts are either of two types:

Comparative:          Forecasts the  total  requirement for a product in the time period. Demand is calculated as the greater of actual requirements or the forecast

Tentative order:     Forecasts the additional requirement for a product that is expected in the period. Demand is calculated by the sum of actual requirements and tentative orders. This can be used for rolling (sometimes called “blanket”) orders from your customer. Tentative order forecasts can be generated automatically from a sales quotation, which has the effect of including the breakdown of requirement from a quotation in the purchase planning.

Sales forecasts can be easily converted into sales orders. Note that to include the breakdown of requirements in purchase planning, the automatic purchase planning tool is needed.

Benefits

1. Allows you to plan purchasing and capacity even before you have firm orders from your customers.
2. Particularly useful if you have material and manufacturing lead times greater than that required by your customers for product deliver lead time.
3. Particularly useful if you have complex product structures as the planning system will net out your overall requirements from all sales, purchase and manufacturing activities.

Getting Started

1. On the licensing menu, select the “Sales forecasts” and license if for the time required.
2. On the Sales main menu, there is a new dashboard for Sales forecast. Press New to create a new forecast.
3. Enter product, quantity and date. Optionally select a customer. The forecast is to be scheduled or not. This will determine if its breakdown is included in planning or not.