The Plan feature in Fabrikatör is built for long-term demand and supply planning. It helps you project future inventory needs, manage bundles, track incoming inventory, and generate purchase order recommendations over a long planning horizon.
🔄 What’s the difference between the Demand Plan and the Supply Plan?
Demand Plan: This is where you forecast how many units of each product/variant you expect to sell. It includes:
Direct sales forecasts
Bundle-attributed demand (i.e. demand for components used in bundles)
Growth rates
Seasonality
Manual edits
Supply Plan: This is auto-generated from your Demand Plan. It calculates how much inventory you need to order by factoring in:
Current inventory
Incoming purchase orders
Expected returns
Attributed bundle demand
Restock frequency
📦 How does incoming inventory get accounted for in the Plan feature?
Incoming inventory is calculated from your existing approved purchase orders.
Only the unfulfilled quantities are considered.
Incoming POs are grouped by month and product.
This monthly incoming quantity is added to the beginning inventory and ending inventory for each month in the plan.
This ensures that purchase orders expected to arrive during the plan period are fully accounted for.
🎁 How does the Plan feature account for bundles?
Bundles are decomposed into their component products. The system:
Identifies all bundles that include a given component.
Make sure you have your bundles set up correctly in Fabrikatör.
Multiplies the projected bundle sales by the quantity of each component required.
Adds this attributed demand to the component’s direct sales forecast.
This prevents under-planning and stockouts for components used inside bundles.
🧮 Do bundles show up in the Demand Plan or the Supply Plan?
Bundle products appear in the Demand Plan (as SKUs), but they don’t show up in the purchase orders themselves.
Their components show up in both the Demand Plan and the Supply Plan, with their demand inflated by attributed bundle consumption.
So even though the bundle product doesn’t have its own supply need, its components do.
📊 What is bundle attribution?
Bundle attribution means the system attributes part of your demand to the components inside bundles.
📌 Example:
Component A has 100 direct sales forecasted
It’s used in Bundle B (2 units per bundle), and Bundle B has 50 projected sales
Final demand for Component A = 100 + (2 × 50) = 200 units
This demand is reflected in both the demand and supply plans.
📈 How does the Plan feature calculate beginning and ending inventory?
For each product and month:
Beginning Inventory:
For the first month:
Current Inventory – Estimated Sales Until Plan Start + Incoming POs
For following months:
Previous Month’s Ending Inventory
Ending Inventory:
Beginning Inventory – Projected Demand + Expected Returns + Incoming Quantity
If ending inventory is negative, it becomes Required Inventory (i.e. the amount you need to order).
🔁 How are returns calculated in the Plan feature?
Returns are forecasted using a return ratio per product.
Formula:
Returns = Previous Month's Projected Demand × Return Ratio
The return ratio is auto-calculated from the last 6 months of historical data
Returns are added back into the inventory during ending inventory calculation.
📥 How are recommended purchase orders created?
The Plan feature creates POs by:
Calculating Required Inventory per product for each month.
Grouping demand by supplier and order date.
Adjusting for:
Beginning inventory
Incoming POs
Expected returns
Bundle-attributed demand
Respecting your chosen restock frequency (monthly, every 3 months, etc.)
You can then convert these recommendations into actual POs with one click.
🔄 What is restock frequency and how does it affect the Plan feature?
Restock frequency defines how often the Plan feature should group orders:
Options: Monthly, every 3 months, every 6 months, or custom number of days
Affects how recommended POs are grouped over time
Longer intervals = larger, less frequent orders
Restock frequency applies only inside the Plan feature.
✍️ Can I edit the demand plan after creating it?
Yes! You can:
Click into any cell to update projected sales.
Your edits will:
Trigger recalculation of attributed demand (for bundles)
Update beginning/ending inventory
Adjust recommended POs in the supply plan
A baseline value is always shown so you can compare your edit to the system-generated forecast.
♻️ What happens when I edit the Demand Plan after generating a supply plan?
You will see a warning: "The values in your demand plan has been modified. Your recommended POs will now be updated according to these updates once you approve changes."
Recommended POs will be updated after you click the purple View Supply Plan button to approve the changes.
Draft or approved POs remain unchanged.
Inventory metrics and attributed demand will be recalculated.
After editing, just click “View Supply Plan” to refresh all recommendations.
🔁 Can I reset edited values?
Yes. Two options:
Manual reset: type in the original value (shown in small text under the edited value).
Bulk reset: Select rows or cells and click “Reset to Baseline” to restore all selected values.
This also resets the downstream inventory and PO calculations.
📑 Where can I view the recommended purchase orders?
Go to the Supply Plan tab to view grouped PO recommendations.
Go to the Purchase Orders section to view all created/converted POs.
You can track back to the source Plan via linked references.
If you’re looking for a short-term, auto-updating restocking tool, check out the Replenish feature instead.
The Plan feature is best for long-term, strategic inventory planning across months.