What this page is for
A channel is a sales channel — a place demand comes from. That could be a marketplace, a retailer, a B2B (business-to-business) account, an EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) partner, or your own direct sales. You model each channel here so the engine knows where demand originates and can forecast it.Your company may have renamed “Channels” to a term that fits your business. The setup works the same whatever the label says.
Key attributes
| Attribute | Plain meaning |
|---|---|
| Name | The channel. |
| Type | Dummy — a Spherecast-native placeholder for a channel that isn’t syncing yet. Actual — a real channel synced from your ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning system). |
| Sell-by days | Days before expiry by which product must be sold in this channel. Can be overridden per product. |
| Sales rep | The person who owns the account. |
| Forecasting enabled | Whether this channel is included in forecast runs. |
| Active | Whether the channel is in use. |
| B2B | Marks the channel as a business-to-business account rather than direct-to-consumer. |
How channels map to products
A channel doesn’t sell everything — it sells the products you link to it. That link is called an eligible product (a product-to-channel connection), and it carries the per-channel details that shape demand:| On the product-channel link | Plain meaning |
|---|---|
| Launch date | When the product starts selling in this channel. |
| Phase-out (discontinuation) date | When the product stops selling in this channel. |
| Royalty | Flags the product as carrying a royalty in this channel. |
| Planning status | Where you are in setting it up: Untouched, In progress, or Done. |
| Demand profile | An optional seasonality shape applied to this product in this channel. |
Dummy to real transitions
Before a real channel is connected to your ERP, you can plan against a Dummy placeholder so forecasts aren’t blocked. Once the real channel starts syncing, a Dummy → real transition rewires the forecasts from the placeholder onto the real ERP channel — so the demand history and plan you built carry over instead of being lost.How it affects planning
Each channel with Forecasting enabled contributes its demand to forecast runs. Launch and phase-out dates control when a product’s demand turns on and off in that channel, so new items ramp up and discontinued ones wind down on schedule. The demand profile bends that demand into a seasonal shape. And because a channel is tied to the warehouse(s) that fulfill it — the sales flow — the engine knows which stock covers that demand.Step by step: set up a channel
- Open Settings → Supply chain network → Channels and add the channel.
- Set Type (Dummy or Actual) and turn Forecasting enabled on if it should feed forecasts.
- Set Sell-by days, Sales rep, and the B2B flag as needed.
- Add eligible products and set each one’s launch and phase-out dates.
- Attach a demand profile where a product is seasonal. See Demand profiles.
- Confirm the channel is tied to the warehouse(s) that fulfill it (the sales flow).
Example
You launch a new SKU on a marketplace channel before your ERP is connected, so you plan it against a Dummy channel with a launch date of March 1 and a summer demand profile. When the marketplace integration goes live, the Dummy → real transition moves those forecasts onto the real ERP channel automatically, and planning continues without a gap.Note: This page is the network-setup view of channels — how they are modeled. The day-to-day demand-side view lives in the Channels management table. See also Markets and Products, SKUs & BOMs.