Inventory Management for WooCommerce

Optimise your inventory, predict customer demand, automate stock replenishment, and manage purchase orders with the Inventory Management for WooCommerce extension.

Shelf Planner’s Inventory Management for WooCommerce solves a merchant’s costliest problem: accurately predicting customer demand for hundreds of products every day.

This extension offers a plug-and-play forecasting engine that helps you optimise your inventory and improve your margins and sell-through, all while reducing waste. Beautiful.

1. Download the extension from your WooCommerce dashboard.
2. Go to Plugins > Add New > Upload and select the ZIP file you downloaded.
3. Click Install Now, and then Activate Plugin.
4. An installation wizard will guide you through a few simple steps to help create the correct sales forecast based on your business model and assortment architecture.

After installation and completion of the Installation Wizard, a new ‘Inventory’ label is added to the WooCommerce menu:

After installation of the extension to your store, under the WooCommerce/inventory tab, you can login to your my.shelfplanner dashboard:

Your initial account ID for my.shelfplanner is the same as your account used for WooCommerce. After connecting to the app, you will be asked to create your password.

Existing Users can login directly by going to my.shelfplanner.com. From there, you can enter directly into the app. Your store data is automatically synchronised with your WooCommerce store, so there is no need to connect to your store’s admin. 

If you have forgotten your password can reset their password by following the link ‘Forgot Password’:

Simply enter your email and a reset link will be sent to your mail.
 

After installation and account creation, a Getting Started tour is shown in the lower left side of the page:

We recommend you to have a look at these steps, as they will both introduce you to some of the logic in the app, but also set your store up for initial forecasts and order proposals.

On the lower right side of the screen, you will find the Support element. 

The Support element contains three pages; 

On the home part of the support element you will find general information and links to some of the most read articles.

Here you will find news about upcoming developments and release notes. When we release a new feature, we typically will introduce these with guided tours, which can be found there.

We love feedback, positive or negative – anything that can help us to make our app better. 

You can leave comments directly to the development team, using screenshots and short video clips.

The main landing page in the app shows you your store’s performance at a glance and recommendations that might need your attention.  

The first table shows the 10 items that might need immediate attention. 

This is where you find a summary of your placed orders. If orders pass there delivery date, you will receive a notification.

All detailed information (view all orders) can be found under the Order Proposals and the Order History pages.

The graph on the right top of the dashboard shows your store’s Sales Forecast in combination with your store’s Stock projection. 

Based on your sales forecast, incoming and current stock, we project the stock on hand for the next 26 weeks.

The ‘View More‘ button brings you to the Sales & Stock Projection page, where you can review the same projections on product level.

The Stock Summary report shows the main KPI’s of your store at a glance.

If you have set up your suppliers and updated product settings with cost and supplier information, you will find the key measures for your store here.

For individual product and category information, you can find the same KPI’s on the Stock Detail page:

On the lower left corner of the screen, our Shelf Planner team will provide you with insightful tips and recommendations that will help you to improve your business.

These can be anything from user guides to recommendation the Shelf Planner engine provides. In the example below, the tips are generated when products are missing Cost Prices:

Shelf Planner generates Order Proposals for all your products, based on your customer demand, actual sales and external factors. 

The main table on the Order Proposals page shows all products that can be reordered and have a Order Proposal generated for them.

The table is automatically filtered on items that need to be replenished. The table is filtered descending from the Weeks to Stock Out column. 

There are a number of parameters and measures that determine the final order proposal

The Ideal Stock is calculated by the Shelf Planner engine and is based on: 

• your sales forecast
• incoming stock
• current stock

Every night, your sales forecast is updated. This ensures you always have the latest picture of each product’s performance and trends. 

The current is the Stock you have in your store. The live two-way sync ensures you always have the same stock levels picture in my.shelfplanner and your store. 

The Inbound refers to the stock that is incoming or in transit. When you place purchase orders, we will track the expected delivery date for all items.

Order Proposal based on Ideal Stock

The Shelf Planner engine uses your sales forecast for the coming weeks to understand whether you are understocked, or overstocked.

You do not necessarily want to replenish all the items in your store. You can select a single item or place multiple orders for the same item over time. 

In the example below, the Order Proposal for the selected product is 416 units (4). This number is based on:

• Ideal Stock (1) for the product (based on product parameters and sales forecast)
• Current Stock (2) – your current inventory, synced with your store)
• Inbound Stock (3) – any incoming orders that you placed

For some of your products, it can be difficult to create an accurate forecast. Examples could be newly launched products, items with random sales, or items with extreme seasonality.

Our machine learning algorithms will pick up this behaviour and highlight these items in that case. For some of these products, it might be better to set a Minimum Stock threshold instead of using the Ideal Stock for the Order Recommendations. 

To set a minimum stock, open the products settings:

In this example, we set the Minimum Stock to 750 units. Instead of using the Weeks of Stock and the Lead Time to define the order proposals, the Min Stock is used to determine the Order Proposal:

As shown in the example above, the current stock (1) is 514 units. There is no incoming Stock (2). Becuase the minimum is set to 750 units, the Order Proposal is 750 – 514 = 236 units. 

The Weeks of Stock (4) is in this example ignored. 

When we set the Minimum Stock back to 100, the Order Proposal is recalculated:

The Min Stock is now set to 100 and the Ideal Stock is using the Weeks of Stock and Lead Time (1). With a Lead Time of 2 and a Weeks of Stock setting of 6 weeks, the Ideal Stock uses 6 weeks of Sales to calculate the Ideal Stock, in this case 426 units:

As you can see in the example below, the Forecast for the next 8 weeks is 593 units, hence the Weeks to Stock out is 7 weeks and technically, this item is ‘overstocked’:

The Weeks to Stock out is calculated using the sales forecast for the product and the current stock level. 

Once you have set up a supplier, you can create a Purchase Order for multiple products by selecting a supplier in the top of the table:

The table will show all items with order proposals:

Tick the box for the items you want to order and press the ‘Create PO’ button on the top of the table. This will trigger a pop up where you can enter the order details:

Once you have created a Purchase Order, you can track and manage the orders in the Order History tab. The order history tab shows all Purchase Order and their current statuses:

There are 5 Order Statuses available, 4 of which can be selected by the user.

• On Order
• Completed
• Delayed
• Cancelled
• Deleted

On Order

Once a Purchase Order is created, it is automatically set to On Order. This means there is incoming stock, which is used in the calculation of the Order Proposal.
As described in the previous chapter (Create Purchase Order), the Expected Delivery Date is generated by looking at the longest lead-time of the products in the order.

Completed Orders

When an Order has been received, the user can complete the order by selecting the ‘Completed Status from the Drop Down list and save.
Setting the Order to ‘completed’ also updates the ‘Current Stock’ in WooCommerce and updates the order proposal accordingly.

For Completed and Cancelled Orders, the Expected Delivery date in the table is Light Grey (Col #D3D3D3 instead of the normal Dark Grey (Col # 131313) to indicate this order has been received or cancelled and is no longer incoming.

Delayed Orders

If a Purchase order is dealyed, you can change the status and update the ‘Expected Delivery Date’;

After saving the changes, the Purchase Order status changes to ‘Delayed’:

If there are any impacts on the availability, you will receive a notification of potential lost sales, or get a new order recommendation.

Cancelled Orders

When an order is cancelled, the inbound stock for this order is deleted and the Order Proposal is updated accordingly.

Deleted Orders

The fifth status is ‘Deleted’. When an Order Line is deleted, the entire order line is deleted from the table. Deleted Order Lines will need to be stored for a selected period of time.

There are two options to ‘mass edit’ Purchase Orders. 

1. Complete Orders 

If you select one or more orders with the tick box in the table, you can set them to completed with the ‘Completed’ button above the table:

This action will set the order to completed, with 100% delivery (all items in the order have been delivered)

2. Delete Orders

The second option allows you to delete the orders:

This action deletes the selected orders. If selected Purchase Orders are ‘On Order’, the incoming stock is deleted as well and the Order Proposals are recalculated automatically.

You can edit purchase orders and update them by selecting the edit button:

The pop up that appears allows you to make changes to the status of the order (1), the Expected Delivery Date (2), Order Quantity (3) and the Received Quantity (4)

Update Order Status

After placing the Purchase Order, you can update the status as we discussed earlier in this article.

Updated Delivery Time

When you set an order status to ‘Delayed’ you can adjust the Expected Delivery time to the new date:

Changing the Delivery date will automatically recalculate your order proposals and stock requirements.

Update Order Quantity

You can update the order quantity on the order by order line. For example, if your suppliers informs you about short delivery or additional quantities, you can still amend the quantity and see the impact on your stock.

Quantity Received

After delivery, it can happen you’re missing units, for example due to short deliveries or damaged goods during transportation. You can adjust the delived quantities and the system will automatically recalculate the impact on your stock. 

By default, the value for Qty Received is equal to the Order Qty, but you can override it by selecting the field:

Header

The header contains the company Logo, Supplier General information and the PO numbers and order dates.

The values presented:

Supplier Information

 Supplier information is maintained on the Supplier page. The Supplier address will appear on the PO header:

The Supplier information contains all general information about the supplier, that is created in the Supplier pages:

Purchase Order Information

The order details contain the most relevant information with regards to the purchase order:

Order Details

The Order Details contain the products on order, quantities and values of the order:

Delivery Details

Delivery details contain the information where the order has to be shipped to.

The Delivery information is the company address, unless a different Delivery address is entered in the Settings pages:

Note to supplier

The note to supplier is a free text the user can add to each purchase order. It will appear on the PDF underneath the Delivery Address Details:

Footer

The footer of the PDF contains general information of the company. 

Some of the information is not mandatory and if it is not filled in the PO settings, they will not appear in the footer, as shown in the example above for Web, Email and VAT Reg. No.
 

On the supplier page, use the ‘New’ button on top of the table:

A pop up appears where you can enter the main Supplier details, such as name, lead times, location and currency:

There are a number of mandatory fields required when creating a Supplier:

Two critical settings are important when creating a new supplier:

• Average Lead Time in Weeks
• Supplier Currency

Supplier lead times are used when calculating the Order Proposals. They are also used to pre-fill the Expected Delivery Date on the Purchase Orders.

A drop down list of currencies, which will be used in calculation of Cost Prices.

The payment terms are predefine by us on the back end and the user can choose between:

• None
• Payment in advance
• Net 7 days
• Net 14 days
• Net 30 days
• Net 45 days
• Net 60 days

There are 3 ways to edit products in the program:

• Single Product Edit
• Bulk Edit
• Mass Upload with CSV files

On the Product Settings page, you can open the edit function with the pencil icon:

A popup appears for the item with the values you can change the following measures and values:

Suppliers

The Supplier field is a drop down list. You will have to set up a supplier before you can assign a product to a supplier.

Supplier Product ID

Supplier Product ID and Supplier Product References are free text fields where you can add additional supplier specific information, for example SKU references or Supplier product descriptions.

Both of these fields will also appear on Purchase Orders and the when PDF’s are generated.

Lead Time

The Lead Time is one of the KPI’s that has a significant impact on your order proposals. 

The number represents the amount of weeks it take for a supplier to deliver the goods to your warehouse. 

The Lead Time by Product overrides the Lead Time by Supplier and also the Default Lead Time for your store. 

Minimum Stock

The minimum stock can be entered by product in the Product Settings. 

The Minimum Stock in Shelf Planner is not to be confused with the low stock threshold that is used in WooCommerce. Instead, the Minimum Stock is used as a Safety Stock in the Order Proposal calculation. It works in tandem with the Ideal Stock. For more information, have a look at the dedicated article for Order Recommendations.

Minimum Stock is an optional field and you can enter any ‘whole’ value here.

Cost Price

The Cost Price is the purchase price for your products. 

The currency for cost prices is linked to the supplier you have assigned to the product. If you don’t assign suppliers to your products, the default currency for the store is used.

Product Settings Table Filter

The product settings contains a number of measures and KPI’s. You can filter and add or remove columns from the tables with the Column Selector:

Product ID and and Product Name are static values and cannot be removed.

Select Products

On the Product Management pages, you can select multiple products and change the settings for these items in one go. Start by selecting the products in the table:

When you have selected the products you want to edit, the ‘Bulk Edit’ on top of the table allows you to chose the values you want to edit:

All the fields that are editable in the single product edit are also editable in the bulk edit. When you select one of the values you want to change, a pop appears where you can enter the value:

When you save the data, the new value is entered for all selected items. 

Download Sample File

On the Product Management pages, you can download a sample file. 

Download import template with data

The template with data will create a CSV copy of the entire assortment of your store. You can use this template when you set up your store for the first time. 

All relevant product data from your platform is there and you can enrich it here in one go with additional parameters, for example Lead Times and Weeks of Stock.

Not all fields are mandatory and if you leave them blank, no changes to the data will be made. 

Please note that if you want to assign a Supplier to a product, the Supplier has to be created already.

Download import template (emtpy)

If you have thousands of SKU’s, you might not want to download the entire product list. In that case, you can simply download the empty table. It contains all the relevant measures you can amend.

Make sure the Product ID is entered correclty, this will ensure the data is updated.

Upload CSV File

Once you have made the changes to the file, you can upload the saved file using the same upload button. Select ‘Browse’ and upload the file:

Confirm the import:

Once the import is completed, you will see a notification on the screen and you can refresh the page.

You can select single products, suppliers or categories and mass-edit a selection of your products.

Simply select the items or selection you want to edit using the Search function: 

When you download import table with data, only the selected fields in the table are downloaded:

Make the changes in the csv file and upload, only your selected files are uploaded and amended.

Watch this short video on how to down- and upload product information easily.

Immediately, our dashboard provides real-time analytics.

However, depending on your store size, it might take a couple of minutes before you see data updated in the reports.

You can check the progress in the ‘Integrations’ tab, or update the data manually on the Home page by hitting the refresh button.

Yes, you can. The Sales Forecast is calculated with live data, but we update the sales forecast for your store only once per week, every Monday morning for your time zone.
However, if you want to update the forecast on demand, you can do this in the ‘Integrations’ and ‘Update Forecast Data’, or simply hit the ‘Refresh’ button on the Home page to update the sales forecast on Demand.

Our forecasting engine analyses your store’s historical and daily sales, as well as external data sets that factor for local events, news trends, weather, holidays, and even school schedules. This is then translated into a daily sales forecast for all your products.

The order proposals are then calculated based on the sales forecast per product and variation, based on the stock parameters you have entered – weeks of stock and lead time.

Yes, our extension automatically recognises what setup you use for your store and will adjust the synchronisation accordingly.

I couldn’t find my answer here. What do I do?
If you couldn’t find what you’re looking for in the documentation, you can open a ticket through the WooCommerce Support Portal with us, and our 24/7 support team will be happy to give you a hand!