The standard planning worksheet and MRP planning in Business Central give you only one way to plan. You select either Master Production Schedule or Material Requirement Planning, decide whether to respect planning parameters, and choose whether to use forecast. That is the full extent of the setup, and it leaves you with little control over what you actually plan.
Reverse Planning replaces this with a template-based approach. You can define as many planning templates as you want, set them up with detailed parameters, and reuse them across your company. This lets you build an agile planning routine where you handle the most critical items first and work through less critical items as you go.
Templates can trigger on safety stock, reorder point, or zero on-hand inventory. You can exclude inventory from a calculation to plan order-to-order. You can limit a template to items with actual demand to speed up planning when you have many item numbers. You can create vendor-specific templates with their own planning parameters. Reverse Planning ships with predefined templates, including forecasting templates that break sales forecasts down into purchase items.
The limitation of standard planning in Business Central
When you work in the standard planning worksheet or requisition worksheet in Business Central, your options are limited. You choose between Master Production Schedule (MPS) and Material Requirement Planning (MRP). You decide whether to respect planning parameters and whether to use forecast. That is essentially all the setup available.
The result is a planning process that isn’t very flexible. You cannot sit and define exactly what to plan with. For many companies that need different planning approaches for different situations, this single fixed method becomes a constraint.
How planning templates in Reverse Planning work
Reverse Planning takes a different approach with predefined templates. We ship many different templates out of the box, and you can define your own. You can set up as many templates as you want, configure them in detail, and select between them depending on what you need to plan.
For example, you can create a template that calculates critical items triggered on zero on-hand inventory, reorder point, or other conditions. You might set up one template to find items below safety stock at all levels. Each template comes with a card where you can see and change every setting, or build your own template from scratch.
Controlling what each template includes
Each template gives you control over what goes into the calculation. A few of the things you can configure:
- Actual demand only: You can choose to plan only items that have actual demand. If an item doesn’t appear on a demand line somewhere, the template skips it. This makes planning much faster. If you have 50,000 item numbers, you don’t necessarily want to include every sales line and every purchase line in every run.
- Purchase and sales lines: You decide which sales lines and purchase lines to include, and which purchase dates to consider.
- Inventory: You can choose whether to include existing inventory. If you aren’t allowed to use existing inventory in a particular calculation, you can deselect it, which behaves a little like planning order-to-order.
- Production orders: You decide which kinds of production orders to include.
- Trigger conditions: You set whether the template triggers on safety stock, zero, or reorder point.
Calculating across all low-level codes
You can run a template across all low-level codes. When you select calculate all low-level codes, the template suggests quantity to order using a quantity-to-order template, then carries out the action automatically. It calculates low-level code zero, puts the result in the reverse planning worksheet, then calculates low-level one, puts that in, and continues down through the levels.
This lets you calculate the full level code structure in one pass. The trade-off is that you don’t get to modify the orders manually as you go along. If you want manual control, you can instead set a filter so the template plans only on specific low-level codes, for example one, two, and three.
Item and SKU filter templates
Each planning template can have its own item filter template and SKU filter template, which you define as needed. This is where vendor-specific planning becomes practical.
Suppose you want a template that calculates normal items below reorder point for a specific vendor. You copy a template, set it to vendor 87000, and now you have a template called Vendor 87000. If that vendor is your biggest supplier, you might want special planning parameters whenever you plan from them. You set those parameters once, and the template is ready to use whenever you need it.
To support this, you create a new item filter template, for example Vendor 87000, and set a filter on it: block no inventory, vendor number must equal 87000. Once that filter template exists in your system, you simply attach it to the planning template and define exactly which parameters to use.
Predefined templates and forecasting out of the box
Reverse Planning comes with a set of predefined templates. The most obvious starting templates sit at the top, and there are folders for different triggers such as safety stock, reorder point, and zero, along with production orders on different levels.
Some of the additional templates are set up to run automatically, carrying out one step and then selecting the next template. There are also forecasting templates out of the box. If you want to break a sales forecast down into purchase items, we’ve prepared templates for that.
If you have good ideas for templates that should be part of the out-of-the-box product, send them to us. The goal is to build in as much best practice as possible so it’s as easy as possible to get started with planning.
Building an agile planning routine
With multiple flexible templates, you can structure your planning around priorities. On Monday morning you start with the most critical items, then move on to less critical items as you go through the week. The flexibility means you can run many different planning approaches depending on what you’re working on at any given moment.
Q&A
What are the planning options in the standard Business Central planning worksheet?
In the standard planning worksheet or requisition worksheet, you choose between Master Production Schedule (MPS) and Material Requirement Planning (MRP), decide whether to respect planning parameters, and choose whether to use forecast. There is no way to define in detail what to plan with, which makes it inflexible.
How does Reverse Planning differ from standard MRP planning?
Reverse Planning uses predefined and user-defined templates instead of a single fixed planning method. You can set up many templates, configure each one in detail, reuse them across your company, and select the right template for each planning situation.
How can I make planning faster when I have many item numbers?
Set the template to include only items with actual demand. If an item doesn’t appear on a demand line, the template skips it. With tens of thousands of item numbers, this avoids processing every sales and purchase line and makes planning much faster.
Can I plan order-to-order without using existing inventory?
Yes. You can deselect inventory in the template so the calculation ignores existing inventory. This behaves like planning order-to-order, which is useful when you aren’t allowed to use existing stock in a particular calculation.
Can I create planning templates for a specific vendor?
Yes. You copy a template, set it to the vendor (for example vendor 87000), and create a matching item filter template with a filter on that vendor number. This lets you apply special planning parameters whenever you plan from that vendor, set up once and reused as needed.
How do I calculate across all low-level codes?
Select calculate all low-level codes. The template suggests quantity to order using a quantity-to-order template and carries out each level automatically, from low-level code zero upward, placing results in the reverse planning worksheet at each step. The trade-off is you can’t modify orders manually as it runs.
Does Reverse Planning include forecasting templates?
Yes. There are forecasting templates out of the box, including templates that break a sales forecast down into purchase items.