Business Insights
Demand Forecasting Software for Small Business
Demand forecasting software uses past sales data and seasonality to build a statistical model of future product demand. Learn how it works and where Qoblex fits.
13 min read
Inventory Reporting and Forecasting
Most stock questions are not hard, they are slow. What sold last month, what has stopped moving, what is about to run out, which products actually make money. The answers are already inside the orders your team entered, and getting them out usually means exporting three lists and joining them in a spreadsheet, which is why nobody does it until something has gone wrong. Qoblex reads those questions off the same records the rest of the system runs on, so an answer is a screen rather than an afternoon.
The numbers you would otherwise rebuild by hand
Sales, purchases and inventory, each from the documents that created them. Filter, group and sort the report, save the view you built, and export it when somebody outside needs it.
What you hold, and what it is worth
Stock on Hand shows quantity and value for every variant against the live position, with unit cost beside it. Finding out what your inventory is worth is a screen you open, not a file somebody rebuilds at month end.
What is about to run out
Reorder Inventory lists every product that has fallen to its reorder point, and raises the purchase orders or stock transfers straight from the report. It is the one report that fixes what it found.
Stock that has stopped moving
Inventory Aging buckets your stock by how long it has been sitting there. From the report you can set a new retail price on the slow lines, which is how ageing stock gets dealt with rather than noticed.
Which products actually make money
Sales by product gives volume, value, cost of goods sold, order count and margin, for a period you choose. Best seller and best earner are often different products, and this is where that shows.
Who owes you, and how late
Customer aging sorts unpaid invoices into age buckets, so chasing starts from a list rather than from memory. Supplier aging does the same for what you owe, on the purchases side.
What you bought, and what turned up
Purchases reporting covers purchased products, goods received, supplier bills and supplier balances. It is where a supplier who is consistently short or consistently late stops being a feeling and becomes a figure.
How fast your money turns over
Inventory turnover and stock movement show how quickly stock converts to sales. Every computed figure in reporting has its formula written down, so a number you are about to act on can be checked rather than trusted.
Build the view once, keep it
Filters, grouping, sorting and visible columns save as a named report and come back as a tab. The Monday morning report stops being something you reconstruct every Monday morning.
Send it to whoever asked for it
Export the report as you are looking at it, filters and all, as a CSV for a spreadsheet or an accountant. What leaves is what you saw, rather than a raw table somebody has to rebuild the view from.
We needed to centralise our inventory as we simply could not keep up anymore. So glad we stumbled across Qoblex… After trailing the app it did exactly that and even opened up a pandora’s box of other features that we are now utilising and saving us even more time.
Frequently asked questions
The reports, where the numbers come from, forecasting and exporting.
Where do the numbers come from?
From your own documents: sales orders, shipments, invoices, refunds, purchase orders, goods receipts, bills, transfers and adjustments. Nothing is entered twice for reporting, which is why a report cannot disagree with the screen the data came from.
How does forecasting work?
Forecasting predicts demand from your own sales history so you can hold enough stock without holding too much. You choose the period to base it on and the period to forecast, and the module computes from the orders already in the system rather than from an estimate somebody typed in.
Does it handle seasonality?
You control which history the forecast reads. To plan this summer, point it at last summer rather than at the last ninety days. A business with a season in it is exactly the case where a rolling average tells you the wrong thing.
Can Qoblex tell me my best sellers?
Yes, and it will separate best selling from most profitable, which are often different products. The sales by product report gives volume, value, cost of goods sold, number of orders and margin for any date range, and can be grouped and exported.
Can I save a report I use regularly?
Yes. Save the filters, grouping, sorting and columns as a custom report and it comes back as its own tab on Sales, Purchases or Inventory. Rename, update or delete it later.
Can I export reports?
Yes. Any report exports as a CSV with the filters and grouping you currently have applied, so the file matches the screen. Hidden columns stay out of the export.
Is reporting available on every plan?
Starter carries the core operational reports but not the advanced work: grouping by dimension, custom layouts and the more analytical views come with Business and above, and so does forecasting. See pricing for what each plan includes.
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