The concept of Materials Requirement Planning (MRP) does not only apply to manufacturing. Trading companies also need to plan for purchases based on sales forecasts and actual demand. They also want to minimize stock levels, prevent shortages and maximize their cash positions.

Inventory Planning (I/P) fully integrates with Accpac Inventory Control (I/C), Order Entry (O/E) and Purchase Order (P/O) modules. I/P uses the sales information in O/E, inventory levels in I/C, purchase information in P/O plus sales forecasts to generate a realistic purchase plan.

With I/P, inventory planners spend more time planning instead of just tracking, compiling and calculating stock requirements.  I/P main features include:

Available to Promise (ATP)

• Allows salesmen to query and view online the available to promise quantity of selected items
• Provide stock inventory information such as on hand quantity, PO on order quantity, SO allocated quantity by location
• Displays the default sales price based on Accpac I/C
• Displays summary customer credit status based on Accpac A/R
• Includes a date-based sales history information
• Displays detailed item planning information for the selected item 

Item Planning Information

• Allows the user to define safety stock levels for each item record in I/C
• User may also define an order multiple (e.g. purchase unit) for each I/C item
• Purchase Lead Time can be maintained for each I/C item
• Option to automatically generate planned orders for selected items

Sales Forecast Entry and Consumption

• Sales forecasts can be inputted or imported for use during planning runs
• Actual Accpac O/E sales orders can consume user-defined sales forecasts thus preventing excessive estimation of item demand.
• Consumption tolerance can be defined by using backward and forward consumption days  

Simplified Planning Runs

• User-friendly planning run interface requires only one click of a button to run the entire purchase planning process
• Includes option to exclude I/C stock, P/O orders, O/E orders
• Includes option to ignore minimum stock levels and work calendar

Auto Generation of Purchase Requisitions

• Planned orders can be automatically converted to P/O Requisitions via the I/P Generate PR routine
• Buyer has the option to combine or generate separate P/O Requisitions
• Buyer has the option to change order dates, due dates and order quantities for planned orders prior to generating P/O Requisitions

Planning Calendar

• Allows user-defined working and non-working days
• Sets the default working days for a normal week

“What If” Scenarios

• Allows four (4) other planning records per Distribution Network to simulate “What If” scenarios
• Option to copy a source planning record to any target planning record

Buyer Information

• Allows definition of unlimited number of buyers for purchased I/C materials
• Create planned purchase orders by buyer
• Generate planning inquiries by buyer

Minimum Order

• Generate realistic purchase plans with minimum order quantities per item
• Minimum order levels are useful to simulate purchase economic order quantities (EOQ) and supplier minimum order requirements

Flexible I/C Location Coverage

• User-defined I/P Distribution Networks determine the scope of purchase planning runs
• I/P Distribution Networks are used to group I/C Locations to form supply chains
• Supports unlimited number of I/P Distribution Networks