Overview

A purchase run is used to determine what products need to be ordered and in what quantities. Readysell provides two basic ways to calculate this: by defining minimum and maximum stock levels for a product (Min Max), or by considering average weekly sales.

Nett Quantity on Hand calculation:

with Stock Allocation on:

this.NetQuantityOnHand =   this.QuantityAvailable 
                                           - this.QuantityOnSalesBackOrder 
                                           - this.QuantityOnLayBy 
                                           - this.QuantityOnTransferPick 
                                          + this.QuantityOnOutstandingPurchaseOrders
                                          + this.QuantityOnTransferIn 
                                          + this.QuantityOnTransferPending;

stock allocation off:

this.NetQuantityOnHand = this.QuantityOnHand
                                         - this.QuantityOnSalesBackOrder 
                                         - this.QuantityOnLayBy 
                                         - this.QuantityOnTransferPick 
                                        + this.QuantityOnOutstandingPurchaseOrders
                                        + this.QuantityOnTransferIn 
                                        + this.QuantityOnTransferPending;

Product fields

Each product has a number of fields that govern how it behaves in a purchase run. These fields are set on the Products screen. The table below shows how each field is used in a purchase run, and the tab within the Products screen where each one is located.

All quantities are in Eaches, regardless of the units that are defined for the product.

Purchase Run Set fields

Each purchase run set has a number of fields that govern how products are selected to order. The table below gives a brief description of each field. A key feature of any practical automatic reorder system is to :

• Focus on the great majority of products where the purchasing demand can be fairly accurately forecase. Typically such products have a steady demand profile. If you were to graph sales of those products over time. The demand would be significant and steady. Computers are good at estimating the purchase required quantities for those products.
• Identify products that are too hard to forecast. The system should give up on purchasing those products. Those products are handled by the human knowledge of the purchasing office and by sales back orders.Typically such products :

• • May have very low demand. Where holding stock of the product is not justified. It might be better to back order the item.
  • May have a very lumpy demand profile. If you were to graph the sales of those products. There might be no demand for a long time. A big sale then no demand for another long period. Alternatively the sales may jump around wildly. With very small sales one week and huge sales the next. If the computer was to purchase such items, it may buy a lot of stock then you could get stuck with the stock when the lumpy demand drops back to a lower demand profile.

Readysell's average weekly sales reorder strategy has three fields that help identify products which are setup to be reordered. But should not be automatically reordered due to the unpredictability of demand. Those fields are 'Minimum Weekly Sales Count', 'Minimum Weekly Sales Quantity' and 'Average Weekly Sales Variance'. By adjusting those settings you can configure Readysell to take a more aggressive or more defensive purchasing strategy.

Readysell's suggested workflow for implementing automated purchasing is as follows :

• Elect to use only the average weekly sales reordering strategy. Average weekly sales always uses the most current sales figures. So it is more up to date then the older style min/max reorder strategy.
• Decide how often you are going to run automatic purchasing each day. Then Build a list on a spreadsheet of reordering strategy names by week of month, day of week and hour of day. For example Week1MondayMorning, Week2WednesdayMidday etc.
• For each time you are going to run automated purchasing each month. Decide how aggressive you want to be in respect to purchase order quantities. For example, early in the month buffer up stock. Around the middle of the month reduce purchase order quantities. Until on the last afternoon of the month. Just purchase enough to cover sales back orders. Make this a shared document. Perhaps pin it on the wall next to your desk.
• Create a set of purchase runs that implements the purchasing strategy defined on your spreadsheet.
• Train an assistant to run each purchase run at the appropriate time each day. Then to tell the purchasing officer that the purchase runs are ready for review. This approach :
  •  frees up the purchasing officers time,
  • provides a backup person who is able to keep purchasing functioning reasonably when the purchasing officer is away sick or on holidays.

If you want to ignore a particular field, you must set it to 0.