Summary
The Stock Outs screen shows items that you are currently stocked out on, according to your definition being used for a "stockout" in the Inventory Limits settings, e.g. is a stock out when you have < 0 on hand, or < 0 available.
If you wish to see projected stock outs, the Projected Stock Outs screen, and its associated alert, are what you will want to review in the Purchase module.
For help on figuring out why a stock out occurred, see: How can I figure out why I stocked out on an item?, along with the Stock out Root Cause Analysis -- see below.
What is a Stock Out?
Defining a stockout is slightly different for different organizations.
By default, StockIQ is configured to mark something's inventory position as Stocked Out if it has zero on hand.
However, some items it is OK to be out of stock, such as:
- Items that are REPLACED are not normally included in the stock outs screen
- Items that are on a NON-STOCK order policy are not normally included on the stock outs screen
Items that are usually included on the stock out report are items with a STOCKING order policy, but have a zero safety stock.
Each one of these can be set via the Display Options for this screen - see below.
Column Description
In addition to the usual item/site/description/ABC/XYZ columns, the following columns are available to help with analyzing and prioritizing your stock outs. You can right-click on any row to get a context menu with useful options such as an inventory snapshot, alert actions, a table of stockout history for this item, or opening in a new window.
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Alert Priority (bell) - If present, this is the priority of an alert associated with the stockout. Stockout alerts are prioritized by the approximate amount of revenue lost per day by not having this item on the shelf.
*If using site groups, the site groups inventory position is taken into account when setting the alert level. - Safety Stock - the active safety stock set for this item, e.g. the minimum you are supposed to have in inventory at any given time.
- Target SL % - Lists the active target service level percent for the item that is currently active. This can be useful since it gives you a sense of if this item should be out of stock or not. If you have a relatively low service level percent (90% or less), then sometimes you will just be out of a product, but for higher service levels, this probably means some analysis is warranted.
- On Hand Qty - Seems obvious, but if your stock out basis is NOT on hand quantity (e.g. available quantity), then this value can be nonzero. Also, if you have specified a non-zero out-of-stock quantity your actual on hand can be more than zero. (this is not common)
- Avail. Qty - Shows your available quantity. Useful to know if a.) anybody wants some from you right now or b.) if your stockout basis is available quantity being <= 0.
- Out Of Stock Quantity - Shows the out-of-stock quantity, usually zero.
- Lead Time - Shows your overall Planning Lead time for the item, e.g. how long it might possibly take to get more.
- Last Date In Stock - The last time that you had some in inventory
- # Days Out - This is the number of days you've been out of this product since you last had it in stock. If you have been out for a long time, this usually indicates supplier performance problems, e.g. they are delivering your requested quantities late, and/or you have had unusually large demand.
- # Times out - How many times you have been out of it in recent days. This is a parameter in the Display Options (see below), usually 90 days. If you are frequently out of an item, this indicates that your stocking policies might not be correct, since you're stocking, and stocking out of the item frequently. If you kept more on hand, you could hopefully avoid stocking out in between order arrivals.
- On Order Qty - On order quantity, e.g. how much is on the way to help alleviate the stockout
- # Open Orders - How many open supplies you have open for this item right now.
- Next Supply Date - Expected Dock Date of the order that is supposed to arrive soonest, e.g. how soon might this stockout end?
- Next Supply Quantity - What quantity is supposed to arrive on that next supply date?
- Days Until Next Supply - How many days away is this?
- Projected In Stock Date - This is the date that you are projected to be back in stock on this product, considering only your current on hand, open demands (e.g. backorders), and firm open PO's.
- Historical Daily Usage - what were you using of this item per day before you ran out of it, e.g. how many sales are you losing?
- Lost $/Day - This is your daily usage multiplied by the price of the item, e.g. what are your lost revenues?
- Open Demand Quantity - How many open, firm demands exist for the item, e.g. how many different customer orders are waiting on inventory? Compare this to your On Order Qty to make sure you have enough incoming supply to handle customer demand.
- Open Demand $ - Those same quantities dollarized so you can try to prioritize the biggest revenue possibilities first.
- Site Group - Shows which site group this item/site is in, if any
- Site Group Inv. Pos - Shows the inventory position of this item within its site group. For example, while an item might be stocked out in warehouse A, within its site group, it might simply be below panic point, or even in excess.
- Site Group On Hand - Shows total on hand within your site group
- Site Group Avl. Qty - Shows total available within your site group.
- Date Suspended - any date suspended associated with a suspended stockout alert
- Alert Note - any note associated with the alert state
Display Options
- Include Items that have zero safety stock - enable/disable showing items in the report that have zero safety stock. Usually these are included if they have a stocking order policy, since it means it's a little unusual for them to be out of stock OR you may want to consider switching them to a non-stock order policy if you're OK with them not having any stock.
- Include items with non-stock order policies - enable/disable showing items with non stock Order Policies. Typically these are not shown since you're OK with being stocked out of things that are not supposed to be in stock at any given time.
- Include items that are replaced - Typically you don't care if you're out of items that are replaced, since they are replaced/obsolete and you don't need stock of them any more.
- Chart Time Interval - sets the bucketing interval on the stock outs over time chart, which tracks how you're doing on stock outs over time, to see if you are having more, or less of these as time goes on.
- # Days to check for Stockouts - How far back to check for the "# Times Out" field. 90 is a decent value here.
Detail Tabs
Many tabs are available at the bottom of the screen to help you learn more about the item that is stocked out:
- Order Schedule - The order schedule for the primary supplier of this item
- Sawtooth - Graphical representation of the sawtooth chart for this item's projected schedule
- Open Supply Orders - A list of open supplies for this product that may help with solving the stock-out when they arrive - this would be a list of potential expedites.
- Expedite Recommendations - StockIQ will provide a list of supply order expedite recommendation(s) where possible, for all supply orders not already shipped, in order to help solve the stockout.
- Substitutes - Shows a list of possible alternates or substitutes for this item, such as inventory at another location, replacements, shorter LT vendors, or even alternate part numbers, similar to the Substitutes feature in the Place Orders screen.
- Alternates - Shows inventory status of any/all alternates for this product, both at alternate sites, and alternate part numbers.
- Alerts - A grid showing other alerts for this item, such as late PO's, open customer demands, forecast errors, and so on.
- Stockouts Over Time - Shows a chart of history of stockout over time for all products matching current filters
- Root Cause Analysis - Performs a Stockout Root Cause Analysis