Tim Tips Thursdays: A Review of ForecastRX

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When it comes to product forecasting for QuickBooks inventory users, there are few software tools out there that can give a usable forecast without costing next month’s entire budget.

Thanks to my colleague, Scott Gregory of Better Bottom Line consulting, I came across an affordable, inventory purchasing forecasting tool that predicts the needs for products, and can be used as a simulation tool. It goes way beyond ‘what do I need next month?’ to simulate and predict the trends and seasonality based on prior activity. 

The tool is called, ‘ForecastRx’ and works with QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise, although Enterprise users will experience more value from it. It also connects with ‘Amazon Seller Central,’ for online retailing.  Once connected to QuickBooks via the Web Connector, ForecastRx ‘looks back’ over four years of data to come up with 12 months of product-forecast based on past demand, including trends in product consumption, as well as seasonality, for those kinds of businesses.

Here’s an example of a chart and data you might get out of ForecastRx on a single item. The 2018-2019 line is the forecast, and the lines below it are historical sales:

The historical and forecast data in the middle section is brought in via the Web Connector, then ForecastRx makes its calculation based on a number of setup factors:

  • Minimum Stock Quantities (MOQs)
  • Service Level (% guarantee to not be out of stock)
  • Amount of safety stock
  • Lead times
  • Length of historical data

The historical data fields are actually interactive, allowing the user to adjust prior periods, and therefore, influence the projected forecasts.

The ‘Purchasing Calculations and Details’ provides a lot of useful information to the purchasing agent, such as sales history and details like the ‘Projected Out-of-Stock (OOS) Date.’

This information is critical for businesses trying to balance supply with demand, especially if they are dealing with thousands of items. And, "The more data you put in, the better the product gets," according to Ryan Carbone, Director of Support and Product Implementation.

The program interface drives off of two frames: Purchasing and Manage areas. The Purchasing section summarizes needed PO quantities and costs once a Forecast is run.

The Manage frame allows the user to track new items added, OOS items and items lacking assigned vendors for reordering.

The new user starts by connecting the QuickBooks file to ForecastRx via the Web Connector.  The program provides ample instructions on the setup:

In the process, the user will initiate the ‘Update Web Services’ under the File drop-down, and run the connector:

ForecastRx will confirm the transfer:

Prior to a forecast run, the user will want to adjust the Item and Vendor settings to include important triggers like lead times, MOQs and service levels under the Manage frame. Here’s a representation of the item list in ForecastRx. The columns are selectable under Filters.

The Vendor list works in the same way, and tracks the information needed for a forecast:

After the sync, two other windows are available to the user showing Demand (open Sales Orders) and Supply (open Purchase Orders).

ForecastRx will also show a graphical history under each item’s record:

Once the initial sync and the settings have been completed, the user is ready to run their first Forecast. This is a one-button push on the Purchasing screen.

Using the data collected, the program runs its algorithms to determine the best suggested quantities of items needed to be ordered. This includes rounding up to the MOQ, including case lot quantities. 

It usually only takes one to two minutes to run the process:

The detailed results, along with forecasts, are shown in the graph and data collection at the top of this article for each item. Confirmation emails are also distributed automatically.

The forecasts developed are, in turn, used for suggested Purchase Orders. On the Purchasing window, there is a summary tab for suggested POs:

Clicking on an order takes the user to the detailed line items:

Notice the detail included for open SOs and POs of the items. The user can then agree with or change the Recommended Quantity. This makes purchase order management much more controllable and predictable.

Lastly, the user can export out the entire forecast report for the next 12 months out to a CSV-format file:

Or, export each vendor order with items included:

While ForecastRx is a worthwhile program, and a big step above any forecasting capabilities in QuickBooks, there are some limitations the user should be aware of regarding the program:

  • The program does not ‘write back’ to QuickBooks. Once the Suggested Purchase Orders are created, the users may need to manually enter the POs into QuickBooks. The csv files could also be adjusted for import into QB via a transaction import 3rd-party tool like, ‘Transaction Pro Importer.’
  • The program aggregates quantities at the multiple inventory locations. While this is not a problem for many users, QuickBooks Enterprise users with multiple locations would not be able to create forecasts for each warehouse.

If you are needing a program like this to help you with Inventory forecasting, then you will want to contact the developer (at the link provided below) for information about product options and pricing as Insightful Accountant doesn't generally publish prices (since articles might not reflect current pricing at the time they are read) within their articles. You should be aware that the developer offers 30-day free trails of their product offerings.

Managing inventory for any business is difficult. ForecastRx brings together a lot of the information for the user, and does the calculations for expected inventory needed automatically, saving time, effort and wasted mistakes in ordering. So, if you have an inventory centric business and you are reliant upon QuickBooks Premier or Enterprise, this is one software option you should certainly check out for yourself at ForecastRx.