Suggested Order Reporting is a very powerful feature in Incremental not readily available in off-the-shelf inventory software. In fact, Suggested Order Reporting is the core of Incremental's inventory management capabilities. Many inventory systems notify you of a need to order items only when the quantities have fallen to or below user-defined minimums. The concept is simple, yet has many shortcomings. Consider the following.

You need to submit an order because certain critical item quantities have fallen to or below minimums. Your inventory software reports the items and quantities to order and you create a purchase order containing the items. The dollar value of the purchase order is $410. Your distributor offers free shipping if your order is over $500. In some cases, free shipping on a $500 order may not be much, but think about the following.

There may be other items in your inventory that are very close to reaching the defined minumum quantities and the software is not reporting them. If you are managing any significant number of different inventory items, without reporting, you have no feasible way to know what items are very likely to drop below minimum quantites very shortly or even the day after you submit the order. It would be good if you could see those items and decide if it is in your favor to add them to the order to achieve free shipping and avoid having to possibly submit another order the following day. In Incremental you can enter $500 and it will display the items and quantities that you must have, along with other items and quantities that you will need shortly up to $500. The result is a cascading effect on savings and ordering efficiency.

In the real world, inventory re-orders are often based on a target dollar value. The dollar value may be the amount required for free shipping or the amount required to receive a discount. In other cases an order may need to meet a quantity minimum. In all cases, Suggested Order Reporting can be used to determine the items and quantities to be ordered. Enter a dollar value and an inventory category and within seconds Incremental will display a report of the items and quantities it suggests you order. (Suggested order reporting is useful only after Incremental has sufficient inventory sales records.)

Suggested Order Reporting can be used for simple forecasting. Consider having sold $300,000 of inventory during the previous year and wanting to restock with about fifty percent of the sales during the previous year. You could enter 150000 and Incremental will suggest the items and quantities to order.

If an order must meet a quantity minimum on one or more items combined, use the method below.

1. Roughly estimate what the dollar value of the order would be meeting the quantity minimum. In most cases, only a rough estimate is needed.
2. Enter your estimate to view a Suggested Order Report.
3. Total the actual number of units reported.
4. Multiply your original dollar estimate by the total number of units required and divide the result by the actual number of units reported. If your original estimate was reasonable, the end result should be very close to the dollar value of the required quantities. Enter this value to view a new report.