This feature can help you improve your sales department's performance and your inventory management by using your sales forecast to purchase products by only generating a PO or a SO.

Future Sales from a PO: Instead of starting with a prebook, the future sales process may start with a purchase order, once the products are confirmed by the vendor, they will go right into the Future Inventory. At this point, the sales team can see the products and offer them to the customers (note that the products are not actually in your warehouse).

Future Sales from a SO: Instead of beginning with a PO, this sales process starts with a standing order which then, depending on your SO settings, generates a manual or automatic PO, once the products are confirmed by the vendor, they will go right into the Future Inventory where the sales team can see the products and offer them to customers (note that the products are not actually in your warehouse).

Future Sales from a Prebook: The future sales process may start with a prebook with Future Sales customer. Once the PO is created and approved by the vendor, the products will be deleted from the prebook (see below) and will go to the Future Inventory. At this point, the sales team can see the products and offer them to the customers (note that the products are not actually in your warehouse).

How to set it up

In order to enable future sales, a customer must first be created under the name of ''Future Sales" (note this customer will only handle future sales inventory.) Selecting a customer in the settings is the key to associate PO's to the future inventory, all the items that you purchase under this customer (for example "Future Sales") will go to the future inventory. To create this customer, follow the steps below:

1. Add the customer "Future Sales" to your customer list on Setup > Customers > Add Customer. 

If you are working with several locations, make sure that the customer you entered on the Future Sales Settings is associated with the different locations that you are currently using.

1. Go to Setup and select Settings.
2. Click on Inventory.
3. Click on Future Sales.
4. Once the steps mentioned above are done, the Futures Sales Settings window will pop up. Please enable the Future Sales option, select a customer and set the "Truck days after".
5. Click on Save.

Info: The Truck Days After setting allows you determine the Max Age for the products to be included in the availability. However, when the number of days have been specified per product or per category, the system will consider those values first. For further information about this, please read How to Set Up the Max Age for the E-commerce Products (Options 1 and 2)

Final Price Behavior & Hold on Confirm

The future sales setting has also two additional options for managing your Future Sales:

1) Final Price Behavior: This window will allow the user to choose how the price should behave, once unsold items are transferred to the inventory based on the 2 available options.

2) Hold on Confirm: Allows selecting whether or not the product should be automatically put on hold after the items are confirmed or available in the inventory.

Allocation Price Behavior

This option allows to choose the price behavior when an allocation is performed with products within a Prebook without sales price. There are two options available:

1. Should calculate the sales price based on the landed cost and GPM: The system will calculate a new price based on the landed cost of the item and the GPM set. 
   
2. Should maintain the sales price specified in the PO or Future Inventory pricing screen: The system will set the price set in the Future Inventory Pricing screen, even if the GPM is lower than the one set as default.

For those Prebooks that already have a price assigned, the system will always respect that price. Remember this option applies both for Prebooks in boxes and units.

How to purchase products from future sales?

There are three ways to create a Purchase Orders for Future Sales; through Prebooks, PO's Standalone, and PO'S at a time.

Option one: Create Prebook for Future Sales

1. Go to Prebooks & SOs and select Add Prebook.
2. Enter the Prebook information.
3. Select Future Sales as a customer.
4. Go to Purchase Orders and select Add PO.
5. Search the Prebook.
6. Complete the Prebooks information.
7. Click on Add from the Actions column.
8. Go to PO Summary.
9. Approve the PO.
10. The PO will be submitted to the vendor, once confirmed, the products will be transferred to the future inventory and the items will be removed from the Prebook.

Option two: Create a Standalone Purchase Order

1. Go to Purchase Order and selecet Add PO.
2. Click on Standalone POs.
3. Enter the General Order Information.
4. Click on Save.
5. Add items to the PO.
6. Click on Add.

Once your Purchase Order is submitted, the vendor must confirm the products in order to transfer them to the Future Inventory. Refer to How to Create Future Sales Orders for more information.

Info: Keep in mind that the Truck days after count from the POs Truck day, this will determine the number of days that the items will be available in the future inventory.

Option three: Create a PO in the Single Purchasing Mode

1. Go to Purchase Order and select Add PO.
2. Click on One PO at a time.
3. Enter the General Order Information.
4. Click on Save.
5. Click on Add single items.
6. Select Future Sales as a customer.
7. Add items to the order.
8. Click on Add.

Info: The system will suggest the prices for the items based on your company’s GPM.

When the Vendor confirms the order, these products will be added to the future inventory.

POs for future sales created by the vendor

You can enable your Vendors to create Standalone Purchase Orders for Future Sales.

Do the following instructions to give permissions to a Vendor:

1. Go to Setup and select Vendors.
2. Click on Edit from the Actions column in the Vendor you are editing.
3. Click on the Options tab.
4. Check the box on Allow creating POs.
5. Click on Save.

Price Lists for Future Sales

Enabling this setting will allow the system to take the price from the price lists (type Prebook or All) already created and associate it with the customer when creating orders with future inventory in Order Entry, Prebooks, and in the E-commerce instead of using the price set up in the Purchase Order. If the setting is disabled or there is no price list for the product, the system will take the price entered in the PO.

To use price lists for Future Sales, you must enable the setting Price Lists. To enable the setting, do the following instructions:

1. Go to Setup and select Settings.
2. Click on Future Sales from the Inventory group.
3. Click on the checkbox of Price Lists.
4. Click on Save.

Skip Local After

By enabling this option, the system will not refer to the Local After value set up per product or category in all the screens where this information is used and will only consider the Truck Days After value.

E.g.: You have a product for Future Sales with a Local After value per product setup at 4 and the setting Truck Days After is set up at 6. With this configuration, the product will be available in Future Sales inventory from 03/02/2018 to 03/06/2018. If you enable this setting , the system will skip the local After Value, meaning that the product will be available two more days, until 03/08/2018.

Hide Inventory from Sales Screens

If this setting is enabled, the system will hide the option for adding Future Inventory Items when the users are creating a Prebook or an Order.