Distribution Standards of Product Categories

Overview

You can use distribution standards to decompose the sales forecast by categories to the sales forecast by item based on:
  • Weighting factor defined for each item.
  • Ratio of various attributes of items under consideration.
  • Distribution coefficient defined as the Cartesian product of all attribute factors.
For example: we are planning to sell 10,000 items of the Women's sportswear product category. The category contains 5 items. The items can be of two colors (black and white) and sizes from 42 to 46. According to statistics, among the sold items, 60% are black and 40% are white. For colors, the situation is as follows: size 42 - 10% of sales, 43 - 15%, 44 - 35%, 45 - 20%, 46 - 20%.
When we create sales forecasts, we want to take into account these two parameters (the size and color). To decompose the plan into categories up to the item, we multiply the standards as follows: 10 000 / 5 * 60% * 20% = 240 black items of size 46. This logic applies to all items of the category. The total number of items in the resulting sales forecast will be 10,000.

Creating Distribution Standards

  1. Go to Planning > Settings and catalogs and then click Distribution standards of product categories.
  2. Set the effective date in the As of: field.
  3. Review the list of Product categories. Find those without the appropriate standards set as of the effective date.
  4. Select a Product category and click Create.
  5. In the Distribution standards of product categories document, select a Product category and an Attribute, and specify the effective date.
Note: you can create multiple standards for one product category depending on different attributes.

Filling Distribution Standards

With Past Statistics

  1. In the Distribution standards of product categories document, click Fill > By sales statistics.
  2. Set the period for analysis, and select the range of numbers to be used as factors in the Standard presentation field.
  3. Click Save and close.

Manually

  1. In the Distribution standards of product categories document, click Fill > By ones used in Items (the system will automatically fill all values that were specified in the Items and Variants) or Fill > All values (the system will automatically fill all attribute values, regardless of whether they were specified in the Items and Variants).
  2. Specify values in the Distribution percentage column. The system automatically calculates proportions of each attribute value. If the value is empty, the share is considered to be 0.
  3. Click Save and close.

From Spreadsheet

  1. In the Distribution standards of product categories document, click the Import from external file icon.
  2. In the form that opens, insert data copied from the spreadsheet.
  3. Click Next. The system will automatically parse the inserted data and fill in the form with the system master data.
  4. Review the information and click Move and close.
  5. Click Save and close.