Skip to main content
Meet Susan — a supply planner with fifteen years in the business. She owns replenishment: keeping product available without drowning the company in inventory. Here’s how her Wednesday runs.

​
Morning: the health check

Susan opens the Cockpit first, every day. She reads the three KPI (Key Performance Indicator) cards top to bottom — Availability (is she covering demand?), Inventory value (how much cash is tied up in stock?), and Overstock value (how much of that is more than she needs?). Today availability dipped a point. Something needs her. See Cockpit KPIs. Below the cards is the Exceptions queue — her real to-do list. She works it by type:
  • Stockout and Stockout risk rows offer an Expedite action; she pulls forward the orders that are running late.
  • Overstock rows offer Defer; she pushes out incoming supply she doesn’t need yet.
  • Consolidation rows offer Consolidate; she merges small orders to the same supplier into one.
  • Order delay rows she opens individually to see what slipped.
Details live in Exceptions. Then a quick look at her Inbox — the sidebar task feed — where “Review planned POs” and “Review overdue draft POs” are waiting under Today.

​
Her own “POs to place” view

Now Susan opens the view she’s proudest of — one custom view she built herself. It’s a Purchase Orders view she saved with two filters that matter: Status = Recommended (only orders Spherecast is suggesting, not ones already in flight) and Issue by = “Latest due in 14 days” (only the ones she has to place in the next two weeks so they arrive on time). She grouped it by status and sorted by ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival), then favorited it with the star so it pins to her sidebar — one click every morning.
Aside: Spherecast ships a ready-made “POs to place” starter template that defaults to the next 7 days. Susan started from that idea but built her own 14-day version, because her lead times need the extra runway. Yours can be whatever window fits your supply chain.
She works down the list. For each recommended PO (Purchase Order) she advances its status — Recommended to Draft, on toward placed — and then syncs it to the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning system) so it becomes a real order to the supplier. There’s no accept-or-reject button here; placing a PO simply means walking it through those statuses. See Purchase orders.

​
Midday: working the supply plan

A juice product family looks tight, so Susan opens the Supply plan and filters to it. The time-phased grid shows her, week by week:
  • Coverage as DOS (Days of Supply) or WOS (Weeks of Supply) — how long stock lasts.
  • Available — inventory she can actually use.
  • A red Shortage — where demand outruns supply.
Two weeks out, a shortage glows red. She reads Spherecast’s recommendation, adjusts the quantity slightly, and creates a fresh PO straight from the Supply row using its ”+”. Where timing is the problem rather than quantity, she expedites an inbound order; where she’s carrying too much elsewhere, she defers. Filtering and layout tips are in Filter and display.

​
Rebalancing stranded stock

One warehouse is short while another two states over is sitting on a pile of the same SKU (Stock Keeping Unit). Rather than buy more, Susan rebalances: she creates a transfer order to move the stranded stock to where it’s needed. The Transfers metric shows her exactly what’s already moving so she doesn’t double up.

​
Checking what’s behind the builds

A couple of her products are manufactured, not bought, so their supply comes from work orders. Susan expands each work order’s BOM (Bill of Materials — the recipe of components) to check raw-material coverage. No point scheduling a build if a key ingredient won’t arrive in time. One component is short, so she places a PO for it too.

​
Afternoon: stress-testing a promo

Late in the day, Marketing flags a big promotion on her juice family. Will current supply cover it, or does she need to buy ahead? She doesn’t gamble on the live plan — she creates a scenario, a safe what-if copy. She decides whether to freeze the supply plan (locking recommendations so she’s only testing the demand change), bumps the demand to match the campaign, and then compares vs baseline: new stockout alerts appear, and she can see the next recommended PO per product. The comparison is clear — three products go short under the promo. Back in the live plan, Susan places and consolidates the needed POs and writes them to the ERP, well ahead of the campaign. Another day, product on the shelves, cash under control.
Tip: New here? Read Key concepts for the vocabulary, then the Supply planning overview.