Welcome back, Odooers! I’m Ariel, and honestly, I’ve been feeling sick of doing all of Stealthy Wood’s stock counting and replenishing by myself. I have to make sure customers get what they need, avoid overstocking, order from vendors, and track delivery times.
It’s a lot to handle. If only Stealthy Wood had an inventory management software that handled it all for me. Well, with the help of Odoo’s manual reordering rules, we’re able to set up notifications for when our product stock reaches a predetermined low level.
We can even set a maximum stock limit to avoid overstocking. Plus, Odoo can sync with vendor lead times to ensure our products arrive just in time for delivery. How cool is that?
Today, I'll walk you through on how it's done in Odoo, using manual reordering rules. So, let's dive in! Let’s say we want to ensure a minimum forecasted quantity of Conference Chairs, but we don’t want to keep manually checking the amount we have on-hand.
To do that, let’s check out the reordering rule I created for the conference chair, by going to the Inventory app. Then, we’ll click on the Products subheading, access the Product list, and then we’ll go into the Conference Chair’s product form. On the product form, we’ll go to the Purchase tab to ensure we’ve listed at least one vendor.
The vendor at the top is the default vendor when we create a purchase order. As you can see, we have Wood Corner listed over here. Next, we’ll click the Reordering Rules smart button at the top.
It has a cycle icon that says min and max. Here we can see the reordering rules I have in place. In the min quantity, we have 5, and in the max, we have 20.
This means when the forecasted quantity of conference chairs falls below the min quantity of 5, the rule will be triggered to replenish our inventory back up to the max quantity of 20. Alright, My next order of business is setting up the trigger for the reordering rule. To do that, we’ll go to the far-right here, and click the additional options menu and I’ll check the Trigger field.
Now, we can click the Trigger drop-down menu to show options. Here, we have the option to set it to ‘Auto’. This will automatically generate a request for quotation in the Purchase app when the forecasted quantity falls below the minimum.
However, using 'Auto' means that we won't receive notifications in the Replenishment report about products running low, since Odoo automatically handles it. For now, we’ll make sure that the reordering rule is set to ‘Manual’. I actually recommend this setting for you all, because the manual option provides a lot more flexibility.
Manual reordering rules are useful if you make irregular orders, or want to anticipate fluctuation of quantities, or lead times, to order. So, let’s see what that looks like. The go-to place for replenishment is the Replenishment dashboard.
To get there, I’ll go to the Inventory app, go to the Operations subheading, and select Replenishment from the drop-down menu. Here, you’ll see a list of products that have a forecasted quantity below the minimum specified in their reordering rule. These are manual reordering rules, waiting for us to trigger them.
The ‘To Order’ amount is the difference between the ‘Maximum Quantity’ minus the ‘Forecasted’ quantity. So, for the Conference Chair, we need to place an order for 16 chairs, because math. So let’s go ahead and click ‘Order Once’ to order those chairs.
Before we review the purchase order we just generated, let me share a “quick-tip” about one of my favorite tools in the Replenishment dashboard! Let’s click on the “i” icon for the Drwer Organizer to see the ETA, based on various lead times. We can see that Gemini Furniture has a lead time of 5 days.
These ETAs helps us decide, based on sales order deadlines, whether we can wait a few extra days to snatch a deal from Gemini Furniture! And when I set them as the supplier, the RFQ I generate from the Replenishment dashboard using the ‘Order Once’ button will use Gemini Furniture as a vendor! Gemini Furniture is now the default vendor for the Drwer Organizer until we change it or delete them from the Vendor field.
Next, I’ll remove the To Reorder filter here at the top. This will reveal inactive reordering rules. When I click the checkbox for the ‘Large Desk’, the Order to Max button pops up at the top.
"Order to Max" generates a purchase order for the quantity needed to reach the maximum specified in the reordering rule, considering the current forecasted quantity. For example, if we have 50 units of the Large Desk forecasted, with a reordering rule of 30 minimum and 90 maximum, and we anticipate increased demand, because Christmas is coming up, we can use Order to Max to generate a purchase order for the additional 40 units needed. Isn’t that convenient?
Now, let’s review and confirm the purchase order we generated in the Purchase app. I’m going to go back to the dashboard and click on Purchase. Let’s click on the purchase order for Conference Chairs.
On the vendor price list, we specified that the vendor lead time is 2 days. The Order Deadline tells us the deadline to confirm the order with the vendor, to ensure we receive the products by the Expected Arrival date. Next, we’ll click Confirm Order to place the order, and we can expect it to arrive in 2 days!
Now let’s check on the other purchase order by clicking the Request for Quotation breadcrumb and selecting the other purchase order. On this purchase order for Large Desk, we can confirm that the ordered Quantity is 40, which is the amount we needed to reach the maximum quantity! And there you have it!
Today, we learned how to use manual reordering rules to keep our warehouse stocked, without wasting a ton of effort keeping track of current and future inventory! We also learned about the “Order to Max” button, which is another way to quickly replenish your stock. You learned a lot today, Odooers, you’re doing great.
See you in the next video!
