Sales period

Sales period is number of days of sales history that we use to analyse and base our forecasting results on. This only affects the forecasting data in the main Products table - you will still see forecasting results for all periods when you open the detail view for each product.

We currently offer 5 different settings for sales periods / strategy’s:

• 90 days (weighted average)

• 90 days

• 60 days

• 30 days

• 14 days

Use larger sales period if your store has very consistent sales all year round.

Use smaller sales period if you have very volatile sales or you have more seasonal type products.

By default, we have it set at 90 days weighted average setting as it should be the most accurate for an average store. It works by averaging out sales rate of each of the other periods which results in a forecast that still takes into account 90 days period but puts a higher importance on the most recent sales.

Simply put, weighted average takes into account sales trend - if a product is starting to pick up in sales recently, it will start suggesting higher reorder quantity to make up for the increased demand. And vice versa.

We suggest using the 90 days weighted average for most stores. Using shorter sales history can lead to bloated estimated order quantities.

e.g. if a product experiences a spike in sales, using 14 days sales period, the suggested quantity would be likely extremely high if you know that it’s just a temporary spike

For now, we don't have ability to accurately forecast seasonal products by using the previous year sales data. This is something we have on roadmap.