Introduction

Hello everyone! This is Cameron with ReadySetRetail. Today, I’ll be showing you how to use ReadySetRetail’s Reorder Point Plans. We’ll go over how to make a new plan, I’ll explain the settings used in this utility, and how to run a plan. Use these time stamps to skip to a specific part you are looking for. All of this information is also available in our support articles at support.readysetretail.com.

Making a new plan

First, I’ll show you that we have no reorder points on this item in our inventory.

To make a new plan, we need to first go to the RSR website.

Go to app.readysetretail.com and sign in with your username and password
Click on “Purchasing” in the navigation bar then “Reorder Point Plans.” This will take you to a page with the header “View Reorder Point Plans.” This page will show you all previously made plans, if you have not made any, this page will be blank.
Click on “Add Reorder Point Plan.”
Select a connection to use by clicking on the dropdown menu labeled with “connection” and name your plan.

Settings explanation

Now that we have the plan started, let’s go over each of the many settings that are available for this utility.

Location, Vender, and Item filters
- These can be used to restrict the transfer made to specific locations, vendors, and items. Each filter line can only handle one setting at a time, so to add a filter for multiple settings you’ll need to add multiple lines. These will auto-populate with settings from your Heartland account and include all of Heartland’s default fields and any custom fields you may have made.
- When using location filters, it is recommended to use the “Any” condition when using location # or name to get the best results. If you are using location custom fields then using the “All” condition can work.
- The Item filters can use any item value. For example Default Cost, Current Price, Group, Style Name, etc…
Last X Weeks
- This is a lookback period that is used to determine average weekly sales.
Min Weeks
- This is the desired number of weeks of supply to use as the Reorder Point.
- If an item has an average sales velocity of 1 per week and Min Weeks is set to 10, Reorder Points would be calculated and set to 10 units.
Curve Type:
- Curves can be an extremely powerful tool for calculating seasonal lifts and falls. If a curve is selected, the calculation of the average weekly velocity of an item is much more sophisticated. The quantity will be normalized to the curve. There are three types of curves.
  - Item Filter: Calculates the curve based on performance of the entire item filter across the whole organization. If there is not enough data, it will fall back to the Location curve type.
  - Location: Calculates the curve based only on the location the item sold in.
  - Organization: Calculates the curve based on sales across the entire organization.
Multiplier
- This is a factor applied to the calculated Reorder Point and Target Quantity. For example, if a Reorder Point is calculated to be 10 and there is a Multiplier of 0.5, the Reorder point will be adjusted down to 5. This is useful for accommodating increased or decreased demand due to general market conditions.
Minimum qty
- This is the absolute minimum units to set as the Reorder Point or Target Quantity. This is the last calculation applied. If a calculated Reorder Point or Target Quantity is below this threshold, the calculation will be adjusted up to the Minimum Qty.
- For example, if it is determined that an item’s calculated Reorder Point is 4 but the Minimum Qty is set to 5, the Reorder Point will be set to 5.
Adjustment qty
- This is the quantity that is added or subtracted from a calculated Reorder Point Plan and Target Quantity.
- This is different from Minimum Qty because the Adjustment Qty is ALWAYS applied.
- Adjustment Qty is applied BEFORE Minimum Qty changes are considered.
Lead time in weeks
- If you are targeting a selection of items from which a lead time is known, you can use this field to specify that. This is particularly important when dealing with plans that utilize curves.
- For example, if reorder points are calculated at the beginning of a peak selling season but there is a lead time that would cause items ordered to be delivered after the selling season ends, this setting prevents over-ordering.
Auto Exclude Markdowns
- Check this box to instruct the plan to set the Reorder Point and Target Qty to 0 for any items where the Original Price is greater than the Current Price.

Running a plan

Once you have selected the setting you want to use, let’s move to how to run the plan. There are two ways to run a reorder point plan. First, there is the autorun option that can be seen under “auto exclude markdowns.” When checked, this will automatically run the plan on the day of the week and the time you set in the “Day of week” and “Time to run (Eastern Time) fields. One thing to note is that due to backend processes with Heartland, we’ve run into some issues with running this utility at 7:00 AM on the hour. If you would like to run this around that time, just set it for a minute or two after 7:00, like 7:01 or 7:02, for best results.

If you want to run this utility manually, what you need to do first is save your plan, then go back into it as if you were going to edit it, and scroll to the bottom of the page. There you should see a green “Queue for processing” button. Clicking that will set the utility to run.

When the utility has finished running, you should see reorder points set for the items that were selected by your filters.

Outro

And that’s it! Thanks for watching. If you have any questions feel free to email us at support@readysetretail.com. Also, take a look at our support articles at support.readysetretail.com. For more tutorials on our other products, check out our YouTube channel.