Customer Order Requirements

The other requirement that is available to the Acumen system is that of customer orders. Given the time span that is to be purchased for, the system will total customer orders required within that time. Added to this is the Minimum Stock holding. The minimum stock is a quantity that can be entered against each product for each branch. It signifies a quantity of stock that is required at all times. Thus if a customer order for 12 items exists and a minimum stock of 6 has been established the Customer Order requirement for this item is 18:

$$Customer\ Order\ Requirement = Orders\ for\ Period + Minimum\ Stock$$

This total is usually offset against the overall total of customer orders and overall expected stock. This prevents over ordering where stock is already on purchase order but will arrive later than when the customers require it. This is called the Maximum Outstanding Orders rule. The application of this rule can be turned off by selecting the "Ignore Later Deliveries" check box where applicable. The formula for this rule appears as:

$$Maximum\ Outstanding\ Orders = Total\ Customer\ Orders - Total\ Purchases\ \&\ Stock$$

Note that where stock plus all purchase orders exceeds the total of customer orders, the Maximum Outstanding orders is considered to be zero (ie. the maximum cannot be negative). Where the Customer Orders for the period exceeds the Maximum Outstanding Orders the Customer Requirements formula becomes:

$$Customer\ Order\ Requirement = Maximum\ Outstanding\ Orders + Minimum\ Stock$$

The Stock Requirements facility of Acumen provides full details of requirements, expected stock levels and suggest ordering for all product, branch and purchase type combinations. This facility shows in detail the statistics used in the automatic purchasing facilities.