Business Central

Planning and Availability

Learn how to perform your order planning through sales orders and sales forecast in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

This is how Sune explains it …

Sune Lohse, Main contributor to Usedynamics.com – More about Sune Lohse

In this part of our training series on Dynamics 365 Business Central, we’ll go through what might be one of the most complex aspects of Business Central. It’s all about planning in this module!

Planning is the bread and butter of your business and what makes it possible to fulfill any incoming sales orders in the least amount of time. Making your business thriving and your customers happy.
Planning is all about efficiency and making sure that you’re one step ahead.

When you receive an order from your customer you would create the sales order, pick, pack and ship the product. It requires that your products are in stock to begin with. That’s why your long-term purchase planning would be necessary, especially if your purchase items have a long lead time and your vendors are on the other side of the world. A lead time of 3-4 months wouldn’t be uncommon, and obviously, the customers shouldn’t wait for that long to receive their ordered products.

In Business Central, you’re able to do your long-term purchase planning based on your sales forecast and this helps you to purchase the right product mix for the next 12 months. In this way, your purchase department can place the purchase orders with your vendors in due time.

If you’re a manufacturer, you’re able to take it a step further by breaking down your sales order to a complex hierarchy level. This makes it possible to complete your long-term order planning on a component level, to make sure you have the required components in stock, ready for production.

When your long-term and regular purchase planning is done in Business Central, you’re ready to create your purchase orders, production orders and transfer orders as well.