Inventory Forecasting for Unleashed Software

Lokad can be seen as an add-on for Unleashed Software. We deliver advance inventory forecasting, commerce analytics and pricing optimization. Lokad is an app, like Unleashed, with a monthly subscription. Unleashed-powered merchants typically get started with Lokad to optimize their inventory, that is, increase service levels while reducing inventory levels in the same time. Don't hesitate to request a free demo; while we strive to make Lokad as simple as possible, optimizing inventory tends to be inherently complex.

The data from Unleashed Software can be imported in just a few clicks into Lokad thanks to a native integration that leverages the Unleashed API. In this page, we details how to make the most of this native Unleashed integration.

Unleashed API setup

In order to import your Unleashed data into Lokad, you need a Lokad account. If it's not already done, you can get one at no cost in 60s. Then, when you log into your Lokad account for the first time, you will be proposed to establish a connection with multiple data sources, Unleashed being one of them. In particular, this wizard page will ask you for your API Id and your API Key. You can get those credentials from your Unleashed API Access page. Copy and paste those credentials into the Lokad wizard page, and you're done.

Two remarks:

• our data retrieval logic is read-only. Your Unleashed data will not be modified in any way by Lokad. In the future, if Lokad were to add write capabilities for Unleashed, we will make it very explicit whenever your are about to change anything within Unleashed.
• your company remains the sole owner of your data. By default, we treat this data as if an NDA was in place between your company and Lokad. If you want an actual NDA to be signed, just drop us a message.
  

Unleashed concepts vs Lokad concepts

Unleashed offers the notion of products which represents the entries of your catalog. Each product can be stored in multiple warehouses. Lokad has the concept of inventory items where items can be used to reflect SKUs, barcodes or products depending on the situation. In the case of Unleashed, Lokad performs its analysis at the SKU level, that is, the combination each product for each warehouse.

Setup of the inventory settings

The inventory forecasting logic of Lokad requires two settings to be provided, namely the lead times (in days) and the service levels (in percent). At this point of time Unleashed Software does not support yet the possibility to create custom properties for products, thus, Lokad cannot retrieve this information from Unleashed Software. Lokad offers the possibility to define default values, but this is crude and provides no differentiation among variants.

Thus, Lokad offers an alternative path to manage those settings within your Lokad account. The process consists of creating a settings Excel sheet. This sheet becomes the repository of the inventory settings that should drive your inventory forecasting report. Through this sheet is becomes possible to adjust the inventory settings down to the product level.

Data retrieved from Unleashed

Lokad retrieves extensive data from Unleashed which include:

• All products with the product group, the supplier, the stock on hand, the selling price.
• The sales order history with the quantity, the net amount, the tax amount, the client.
• The purchase order history with the quantity, the net amount, the delivery date, the supplier.
  

Those data are pushed into 3 flat files named Lokad_Items.tsv, Lokad_Orders.tsv and Lokad_PurchaseOrders.tsv within your Lokad account.

File Lokad_Items.tsv

The file contains the following columns:

• Id: a synthetic identifier combining Ref and Loc
• Ref: the product code
• Loc: the warehouse code
• Name: the product description
• StockOnHand: the stock on hand
• StockOnOrder: the stock on order
• StockAvailable: the stock available for customer
• CurrentReorderPoint: the reorder point
• SupplierLeadTime: inferred from the purchase orders
• OrderingLeadTime: inferred from the purchase orders
• LeadTime: inferred from the purchase orders
• IsForecasted: boolean flag true for all non-obsolete products, false otherwise.
  

File Lokad_Orders.tsv

The file contains the following columns:

• Id: a synthetic identifier combining Ref and Loc
• Ref: the product code
• Loc: the warehouse code
• Date: the order date
• DeliveryDate: the received date
• Quantity: quantity ordered for the line
• NetAmount: the amount without tax for the line
• TaxAmount: the amount of tax for the line
• Currency: the currency code
• Channel: the source identifier
• OrderStatus: the order status
• Client: the identifier of the client
• OrderId: the order number
  

File Lokad_PurchaseOrders.tsv

The file contains the following columns:

• Id: a synthetic identifier combining Ref and Loc
• Ref: the product code
• Loc: the warehouse code
• Date: the order date
• DeliveryDate: the received date
• Quantity: quantity ordered for the line
• Received: the quantity received
• NetAmount: the amount without tax for the line
• TaxAmount: the amount of tax for the line
• Currency: the currency code
• Supplier: the identifier of the supplier
• OrderId: the order number