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What this page is for

A Channel is a route to market - a way your products reach customers (for example, Retail, Wholesale, or E-commerce). This page is the management table for your channels: a spreadsheet where you review and edit every channel and its per-product setup in one place. It is the same channel entity you see in the network view; this is simply the spreadsheet-style place to manage them.
Note: “Channels” is the default name and may be renamed for your company. The behavior is unchanged.

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What you set up

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How it works

Each channel also carries per-product setup, so you control which products sell where and when:
  • Eligible products - the products allowed to sell in this channel.
  • Launch date and phase-out date - per channel, when a product’s demand starts and stops in that channel.
  • Royalty - a flag marking products that carry a royalty in this channel.
  • Planning status - a simple progress marker: Untouched, In progress, or Done, so you can track which products you’ve finished setting up.
Keep two ideas separate:
  • Launch / phase-out is about timing - the start and end of a product’s life in a channel.
  • A demand profile is about shape - the seasonal curve of demand across the year. See Demand profiles.
A product can have a launch date (when it begins) and a demand profile (how its demand is distributed) at the same time - they answer different questions.

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Step by step: set up a channel

  1. Find the channel’s row, or add a new one.
  2. Set the Type, Sell-by days, Sales rep, Forecasting enabled, and Active values.
  3. Use Add eligible product to list the products allowed in this channel.
  4. Use Add launches / phase-outs to set when each product’s demand starts and stops here.
  5. Add rule to define channel-specific logic, and set a royalty flag where it applies.
  6. Update each product’s planning status as you work so the team can see progress.

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Row actions

  • Edit and Delete - you can only delete Spherecast-native (Dummy) channels. ERP-synced (Actual) channels are deactivated at the source, not deleted here.
  • Add rule, Add eligible product, Add launches / phase-outs.
  • Transition - turn a dummy channel into a real one once it exists in your ERP.

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Example

You create a Dummy channel called “New Retail” while a store rollout is still being finalized. You mark three products as eligible, set a launch date of March 1 for each, leave phase-out blank, and set sell-by days to 90. As you finish each product you flip its planning status to Done. When the channel goes live in your ERP, you use Transition to make it a real channel.
Tip: Use planning status as your checklist - sort or scan for anything still Untouched or In progress before you finalize a cycle. See also Markets, Demand profiles, and Network channels.