What this page is for
A scenario is a safe copy of your plan. It duplicates the current plan so you can test how a change plays out without touching your live data. You make your what-if edits inside the scenario, look at the results, and only act on the real plan once you’re confident. This matters because a supply plan is connected: pull one order in, and coverage, alerts, and later recommendations all shift. A scenario lets you try that move in a sandbox first, compare it to where you stand today, and keep the two cleanly apart.What a scenario copies
Creating a scenario clones the records that drive reordering into an isolated copy tagged to that scenario. Your live plan stays untouched and is called the base (or baseline). The copied records are:| Record | What it is |
|---|---|
| Purchase orders (POs) | Orders you place with suppliers to buy product in. |
| Transfer orders (TOs) | Stock moving between your own warehouses. |
| Work orders (WOs) | Builds that turn components into finished goods. |
| Shipments | The inbound deliveries tied to those orders. |
How it works
Once a scenario is created, you work “in scenario”: the app shows you that copy instead of the live plan. From there you can make what-if changes — pull orders in, push them out, or restrict the plan to certain products — and watch how the numbers respond. The real value comes from the comparison against the baseline. Side by side, the comparison shows you:- Changes in alerts — which stockout or expiration warnings appear or disappear under your changes.
- Changes in your key metrics over time — how coverage and inventory move period by period versus today.
- Changes in the next recommended purchase order per product — how your what-if shifts the very next reorder Spherecast would suggest.
Example
A planner wants to see what a three-week supplier delay would do. They create a “Port strike” scenario, push the affected purchase orders out three weeks inside it, and open the comparison. The scenario surfaces two new stockout alerts and a shift in coverage in November — none of which touched the live plan. Now the planner knows exactly which products to protect before committing to anything.Where to go next
- Creating a scenario — walk through the create modal step by step.
- Supply planning — the grid where you make and read what-if changes.
- Demand — the expected outflow your scenario plans against.
Tip: Treat scenarios as disposable. Spin one up to answer a single question — “what if this supplier slips?” — compare it to the baseline, act on what you learn, then delete it. The clean separation from your live plan is the whole point.