RetailVista has always included a forecast stock feature. This forecast represented the stock you would have in the long run. It was calculated based on your available stock plus open purchase orders. The downside of this forecast stock was that it didn’t differentiate between stock that would arrive soon and stock expected much later.

A good example of this is a purchase order scheduled for delivery next year as part of a new season. In many cases, no stock can be expected in the short term because in-season reordering isn't possible. However, the traditional forecast stock didn’t make it clear that nothing would be arriving anytime soon.

With the introduction of short- and long-term stock forecasting, this has now changed. In the example above, the short-term forecast will now correctly show zero. The number of days defining the boundary between short and long term is configurable, and RetailVista automatically recalculates the short-term forecast every night. In fact, what used to be simply the forecast stock is now referred to as the long-term forecast. The short-term forecast is a new calculation and display that has been added.

This distinction significantly improves the usefulness of our stock automation tool. This tool automatically suggests purchase orders when stock levels are dropping. Previously, it already checked for existing purchase orders, but because long-term orders were included in the forecast, it wasn’t always possible to trigger replenishment based on short-term needs.

From now on, the stock automation tool uses the short-term forecast, and will no longer be misled by stock arriving much later.

More information on how to set up and use the short- and long-term forecasting can be found in this article on our documentation website.