Item variant code on demand forecasts
Important
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| Enabled for | Public preview | General availability |
|---|---|---|
| Users, automatically | 
Sep 1, 2021 |
Oct 1, 2021 |
Business value
Accurate demand forecasting gives businesses valuable insight into their position in the market, which helps decision makers shape their strategies for pricing, business growth, and market potential. The ability to include the right level of detail on item variants in demand forecasts unlocks planning capabilities and reduces lead times for companies that don't have an inflow of sales orders and manage many nearly identical items.
Feature details
Item variants are a great way to keep your list of items under control, especially if you have a large number of items that are almost identical and vary, for example, only in color. Rather than setting up each variant as a separate item, you can set up one item and then specify the various colors as variants of the item.
In this release, you can register anticipated demand not only with respect to locations and dates, but with item variants as well. This unlocks planning capabilities for companies that don't have a steady inflow of sales orders, and operate using large lists of almost identical items.
You can now include item variants in demand forecasts. If you search for Demand Forecast you'll find a new Demand Forecast Entries result. We've added the Variant Code field to the Demand Forecast Entries page, and you can create entries directly, or use the Edit in Excel action for bulk editing. The only setup required for using item variants in demand forecasting is that you turn on the Use Forecast by Variant toggle on the Manufacturing Setup page to plan each variant individually.
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See also
Include item variants in demand forecasts (video)
Create a Demand Forecast (docs)