Stock Insight
A stock report tells you how much you have and what it is worth. Inventory analysis is about the next two questions: where is the stock, and why is it there? Fashion Planner's Stock Insight module answers both. It shows which item options hold the stock, which ones have stopped selling, and the history of each one from the first pre-order to the first delivery, so the cause of stuck stock is visible before the next buy.
The challenge
These are the problems we meet when brands try to understand the stock they already have.
An ERP stock report lists what is in the warehouse today. It does not say when the goods arrived, what was pre-sold, or what was cancelled along the way. Rebuilding that per style means several reports and a long afternoon in a spreadsheet.
A collection selling to plan overall can still carry styles that have not sold a piece in three months. Unless someone goes looking for aged inventory, it is found when the season is over and the only option left is a markdown.
Part of every buy is backed by pre-orders, and part is bought beyond them. When stock gets stuck, the first question from management is which part it came from. Without the numbers, the answer is a guess.
A style that arrived three weeks late and missed its window looks, in a sales report, exactly like a style that nobody wanted. The fix for each is completely different.
A style can sell well and still leave a pile of stock in the sizes that were bought too deep. Without sell-through analysis per size, the same size split is bought again.
30 seconds
Give us 30 seconds of your time and we'll let you know if Fashion Planner is right for you. If it isn't, we will say so.
How Fashion Planner solves it
Stock Insight is a separate module in Fashion Planner. It reads stock, sales and purchase orders from your ERP and is refreshed after each daily sync.
The home page opens with tiles for the units in stock, the stock value, the units that are not selling, what was sold in the last four weeks and what is on its way. It follows the brand chosen in the header.
Lists grouped into Where the stock is, Needs attention and What's moving show the most units and highest value in stock, the longest on stock, no sale in 90 days, the best sellers, what is selling fast and the largest incoming. Search by name, EAN or item option number finds anything else.
Each item option is shown on a timeline from sales start through the collection deadline to the first delivery. Sales are split into Pre-sale, Pre-delivery and In season, so you see when the demand came, compared with when the goods did.
Cards show what was purchased, pre-sold, bought beyond the pre-sale, cancelled, sold since the collection deadline and returned, next to what is in stock today. Charts follow the stock week by week and the weekly order intake, and the page lists the purchase orders and the sell-through per size.
Knowing why stock got stuck is the start of changing how you buy. BZIMPLE 360 reviews buying processes, resources, and workflows, and Planning as a Service puts an experienced planner in the seat when yours is empty.
In practice
Most stuck stock comes from a handful of causes: bought beyond the pre-sale, arrived after the selling window, cancelled, or bought in the wrong sizes. How to find slow-moving inventory and read each item's history to tell those causes apart is the subject of our article on slow-moving inventory. The cause decides the action, both for the stock you have and for the next season.
Too much stock in one place often sits next to too little in another. The demand you lose when the right sizes run out never shows in a sales report, which is why we wrote about lost sales and the demand your sales report never shows. Inventory analysis looks at both sides of the same buy.
The earlier a style that is behind plan is spotted, the more options are left. How to read the season while it is still running, and act on it, is covered in our piece on seasonality and in-season management. Stock Insight shows the result; in-season management is how you change it next time.
What changes
The gain is not a new report but an answer to the question every buying meeting ends up asking.
Slow-moving and aged inventory found while there is still time to act on it
A clear split between stock backed by pre-orders and stock bought beyond them
Late deliveries told apart from weak demand, so each gets the right fix
Sell-through per size that shows where the size split went wrong
One view of the stock that planning, sales and management read the same way
Questions we get
Stock Insight is a separate module in Fashion Planner, switched on per company. A demo is the best way to see whether it fits your range and how it sits next to the planning you do today.
Stock, sales, orders, cancellations and purchase orders come from your own ERP. The analysis is refreshed after each daily sync, so it reflects the stock as of the last night's data.
It is the date of the first purchase order placed for the item option. Sales before it are the pre-sale, the demand you knew about when you committed to the buy. Everything bought beyond that is the part of the buy that depended on reorders and in-season sales.
Fashion Planner synchronises with the ERP, and integration is a full service on our side, so it does not turn into a project for your IT department.
Related reading
Three articles that go deeper into the parts of this page.
How to find the stock that is not moving, and read each item's history to see why.
Read articleThe other side of the same buy: the demand you missed because the right stock was not there.
Read articleHow a 52-week stock projection shows where stock goes short, or piles up, before it happens.
Read articleNext step
A demo is the fastest way to find out whether this fits your range, your ERP and the questions your buying meetings keep coming back to.
Give us 30 seconds of your time and we'll let you know if Fashion Planner is right for you. Can we help?
