Forecasting and reordering

The forecast watches how fast each of your pallets sells and tells you three things: how many days of stock you have left, the day it will run dry, and the last day you can order more and still get it before then. It also suggests how many to order.

You do not have to set anything up. As soon as a pallet has sold on a couple of different days, LASI starts forecasting it. Reorder warnings then appear on the Inventory page, the dashboard, the notification bell and your phone.

Open Tools → Forecast in the sidebar, or Inventory → More → Forecast.

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The tiles at the top count what needs ordering now and soon, the Soonest runs dry date, and the Units on order. The table has one row per product:

At the end of each row are Order, Receive (when something is on order) and Link. On a narrow screen the rows become cards with Mark ordered, Receive and Link buttons.

Products with nothing on hand, no sales and nothing on order are hidden. Tick Show inactive to see them.

Every product has one status. The phone app uses slightly different words for two of them.

On the Inventory page, Order now and Order soon pallets are the ones counted as Running low.

The forecast counts every unit that leaves a pallet by being sold: show sales, TikTok and Shopify orders, sales you record by hand, and giveaways (a giveaway leaves the bin just like a sale).

• A show counts as soon as its sales are counted, even before it is finalized, so a show counted Saturday and finalized Monday does not look like two days of no sales.
• Each show is counted once, never twice.
• Losses (damage, missing units, write-offs) are not sales and are not counted.
• Days are your business days, in the timezone set in Settings.

Sold/day is the units out over the last 28 days divided by 28 — or by the product’s age, if it is younger than that, so a product received 9 days ago is divided by 9. LASI also looks at the last 7 days: if you are selling faster than usual, the faster run-dry date appears under the normal one.

• Cover = on hand ÷ sold per day.
• Runs dry = today + cover.
• Order by = runs dry − (lead time + safety buffer).
• Suggested = enough to last your lead time plus your order cover, less what is on hand and on order.

So with a 14-day lead time and a 7-day safety buffer, a product that runs dry in 30 days must be ordered within 9 days. Lead time, safety buffer and order cover are settings you can change (next section).

Cover in shows (“~12 shows”) counts how many different days this product sold on recently, so it reads in show nights rather than calendar days.

Three numbers shape every forecast. Set them once for the whole business:

1. 1Open Settings → Business.
2. 2Find Forecasting.
3. 3Set Lead time (days) — from placing an order to units on the shelf.
4. 4Set Safety buffer (days) — a cushion before the predicted dry date.
5. 5Set Order cover (days) — how much stock a suggested order buys.
6. 6Click Save forecasting defaults.

Out of the box they are 14, 7 and 30 days.

A product from a slower supplier needs a longer lead time. Any pallet can override the business defaults:

1. 1Open the pallet’s page (click it on the Inventory or Forecast page).
2. 2In the Forecast panel, click Forecast settings.
3. 3Fill in Lead time (days), Safety days and Order cover (days). Leave a box empty to use the business default.
4. 4Optionally set a Reorder point (units): when set, it replaces the worked-out one, and the pallet shows Low stock at or below it.
5. 5Click Save.

The Forecast panel on a pallet’s page shows the same figures as the Forecast page — Selling, Cover, Runs dry, Order by, and Suggested order or On order — plus a chart of Units out per week (12 weeks).

If one product is spread over several pallet rows — two deliveries entered as separate pallets, or one product kept in two places — each row forecasts on its own history and neither tells the truth. Link them and they forecast as one product: one sales history, one stock count, one reorder date.

1. 1On the Forecast page, click Link on one of them.
2. 2Type a Product name for the group.
3. 3Under Combine with, search for and tick the other bins (or an existing linked product to join).
4. 4Click Save.

trylasi.com/inventory/forecast

To undo it, click Link on the product and then Unlink all bins. A linked pallet’s page says it is “Counted as part of …”.

When you place an order with a supplier, tell LASI so the reorder warning goes quiet. Nothing changes in your inventory until you receive it.

1. 1On the Forecast page, click Order (or Mark ordered on a card).
2. 2Enter the Quantity ordered — the suggested quantity is shown as a hint.
3. 3Optionally add the Cost per unit, the Expected arrival and Notes (a PO number, the carrier).
4. 4Click Mark ordered.

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If the order will arrive before the product runs dry, its status becomes On order. With no expected date, LASI assumes it arrives after your lead time.

On the phone, open the pallet and tap Order stock.

1. 1On the Forecast page, click Receive on the product.
2. 2For each open order, enter the quantity that arrived (leave it empty for all of it) and the cost per unit (leave it empty to use the cost you entered on the order).
3. 3Click Receive.

The units are added to the pallet as a new batch at that cost — the same as Restock. Receive part of an order and the rest stays on order. To drop an order nothing has arrived on, click Cancel order.

An order that is a line of an incoming order shows “On an incoming order. It is received there, with its freight.” with Open the order — receive it there.

On the phone, open the pallet and tap Receive on the open order.

All of these read the same forecast, so they always agree:

• The dashboard — a banner at the top when anything needs ordering: “2 products need ordering now”, the soonest to run dry, and Forecast ›. Red when something is Order now, amber when only Order soon.
• The notification bell — one entry per product to order now or soon (“Order now: Queen Blankets”, with the run-dry date). They clear themselves once the product is marked ordered or restocked.
• The daily reorder digest — once a business day, when anything is at Order now, managers and admins get one notification and a push to their phones: “Order now: Queen Blankets”, or “Order now: 3 products need a purchase order” with the first names and the soonest run-dry date. Yesterday’s digest is cleared, so the bell never holds more than one.
• The Inventory page — the Days left column and the Running low tile and chip.
• Pallet pages — the Forecast panel.

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The Days left column on the Inventory page’s Pallets tab is the forecast’s cover, per product:

Pallets linked into one product share one days-left figure. Sort by Running out first to put the most urgent on top.

Open Menu → Forecast in the iPhone app for the same list: each product’s status, days left, what is on order and how many to order. Tap one to open its pallet, where Order stock marks an order and Receive takes one in. The Inventory tab’s Bins view shows days left too. Reorder pushes arrive with the daily digest.