A major aspect of managing inventory is having full visibility into your current stock levels and accurate data to adjust those levels as necessary. How do you know whether you have too little or too much on hand for any given item? When should you reorder items? What is the optimum amount that you should always keep on hand of an item? Let’s take a look at assessing stock levels in NetSuite.
Key Reports
One of the primary ways that NetSuite assists users in assessing stock levels is through its reporting features. NetSuite has several prebuilt reports that serve this function.
Inventory Level Reports
First, NetSuite has seven reports that provide information about inventory levels.
- Viewing the Stock Ledger: This report provides data on SKU activity throughout a company. With it, users will have a clearer picture of the availability and movement of their inventory.
- Physical Inventory Worksheet: Rather than being an actual report, this worksheet is simply a tool NetSuite provides for physical inventory counts that helps to ensure that the physical count of items and the count for those items in NetSuite are aligned.
- Current Inventory Snapshot Report: With this report, you can establish schedules for ordering inventory based on reorder points and preferred stock levels.
- Inventory Backorder Report: At times, you may find that you have committed items on orders that are not actually in your inventory. With this report, you will be able to identify any items that need to be placed on backorder. It will also help you identify trends for items that are regularly on backorder, giving you the information you need to potentially adjust the preferred stock levels and reorder points for those items.
- Inventory Activity Detail Report: This report shows the trends for how much of an item is regularly committed on transactions.
- Items Pending Fulfillment Report: This report helps you to speed up your fulfillment process by highlighting the items that have been committed on orders and are already available in your inventory.
- Inventory Turnover Report: This report gives you a holistic view of the flow of your inventory. Knowing the turnover of your inventory (how much time it takes from receiving items to fulfilling items) helps you to better understand the effectiveness of your inventory processes.
These reports all bring the current status of your inventory right to your fingertips.
Demand Planning Reports
In addition to reports that break down your inventory levels, NetSuite also provides prebuilt reports that can assist you with demand planning.
- Demand History by Item Report: With this report, you will be able to see historical data on the ordering patterns for your items.
- Item Demand Plan by Item Report: This report provides a list of the item demand quantity by item.
- Item Demand Forecast vs. Actual Report: This report compares forecasted demand with the actual demand for a time period you select. With this information, you will be better able to adjust your stock of various items to better respond to the actual demand.
All these reports better equip you to track the demand of your items.
Stock Replenishment
Once you know what your inventory levels are and you have a good idea of what they should be, you are ready to get started with stock replenishment. Two key features that can help you with stock replenishment are Advanced Inventory Management and Demand Planning. Advanced Inventory Management is a parent feature to Demand Planning, and with it you can calculate the reorder points of various items, as well as what their preferred stock levels should be. This feature helps to automate stock replenishment by tracking lead time, safety stock, and seasonal demand on individual item records.
The Demand Planning feature opens up even more control in stock replenishment. When you have enabled Demand Planning, you are able to automatically calculate both demand plans and supply plans. NetSuite uses these plans to suggest ordering items when your inventory falls below desired levels.
Conclusion
Understanding and responding quickly to your stock levels in NetSuite is essential to inventory management.
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