Forecast - Stock Item Forecast

Running the report

Report options

What day of the month is payday?

The day most of your customers get paid. Sales are usually busiest in the week after payday and quietest in the week before it, so the report uses payday to find past dates that are in the same position in the month as today. Choose the day that matches your area. If payday falls on a weekend, still choose the calendar day (for example the 25th).

If you choose the 29th, 30th or 31st, months that are shorter than that treat payday as the last day of the month.

The report at a glance

The date line is always today to three days from today: the four days being forecast. The report is not run for a date range. “Today” is your current trading day, so if your trading day ends after midnight, the report still treats the hours after midnight as the previous day.

1. Forecasting method: how the forecast is worked out, in four steps (first page only).
2. Dates analysed: the four past dates used for each forecast day, and how much each one counts.
3. Confidence rating: the colour key for the four forecast columns.
4. Stock item forecast: one line per stock item, grouped by stock category, with your current stock on hand and the four forecasts.

The footer of every page shows when the report was run and by whom, your store ID and the page number. If your trading day does not end at midnight, it also tells you when it ends.

Forecasting method

The top of the first page explains the forecast in four steps:

1. Forecast menu item sales: the report forecasts how many of each menu item you will sell, exactly as the Menu item sales forecast report does, but without rounding.
2. Multiply each menu item forecast by its recipe: every forecast is multiplied by the item's recipe. This includes the stock items inside any sub-recipes, and the ingredients of anything you make yourself (see Items you make yourself). Sit down and take away extras, such as serviettes or a take away box, are counted in proportion to how much of that item you usually sell sit down or take away.
3. Clean the data: everything is added up per stock item. Items your recipes only ever use in whole numbers, such as buns or cheese slices, are rounded up to a whole unit. Everything else, such as mince or sauces, is rounded to three decimals.
4. Assign a confidence score: each forecast gets a colour showing how steady the past sales were (see Confidence rating).

Next to the green information icon is a reminder that menu changes, promotions, public holidays, special events and the weather can all push sales away from the forecast. Use your own judgement on those days.

Dates analysed

For each forecast day the report looks at four past dates on the same day of the week. The first is the date last month that sat in the same position relative to payday; the other three are the same weekday one, two and three weeks after it. The date last month counts the most.

The dates are trading days: a sale made after midnight but before your trading day ends counts to the day that started before midnight, as it does on your other reports.

1 The equivalent day last month

With payday on the 25th, today (Tue 20 Oct 2026) is the last Tuesday before payday. Last month the matching day was Tue 22 Sep 2026, the last Tuesday before payday in September. It counts for 40.0% of the forecast and the following three Tuesdays count for 20.0% each.

2 Store closed

If the store had no sales on one of the dates (closed, or not trading yet), that date shows Store closed and its weighting is shared equally between the other dates. Here the 20.0% for Thu 01 Oct 2026 was split three ways, so the others went up by 6.7% each.

Confidence rating

The coloured bar under the dates is the key to the shading in the four forecast columns.

Confidence rating:

Every forecast gets a confidence score from 0 to 100, based on how far the item's sales on the four dates analysed were from the forecast. The colour blends smoothly from green through yellow to red, so most forecasts land somewhere in between. The Stock item forecast and Menu item sales forecast reports use the same scale, so a colour always means the same thing:

A stock item's colour is the confidence of the menu items that use it, weighted by how much of the item each one uses. Buns that go mostly into steady sellers stay green even if one slower burger is yellow.

Stock item forecast

One line per stock item your forecast sales will use, grouped by stock category (A to Z) and sorted by item name.

The example is for Bob's Burgers Times Square, with a forecast of 40 Classic Burgers, 21 Cheese Burgers and 15 Chicken Burgers today (from the Menu item sales forecast). About 40% of burgers are eaten in and 60% taken away. A burger patty batch makes 20 patties from 3.5 kg mince, and a batch of burger sauce makes 2 litres from 1.2 litres mayonnaise and 0.8 litres tomato sauce. Frozen goods and drinks are left out to keep it short.

1 Current SOH (Theoretical)

How much of the item the system thinks you have right now: your last stock take, plus deliveries received, plus or minus items made and transfers, less what has been sold since. It is the same figure as the Stock on hand report, shown to three decimals. The pale grey zeros keep the decimal points, units, tens, hundreds and thousands lined up in straight columns from one line to the next. They are shaded lightly so they don't clutter the report. The shading shows how long ago the item was last counted: green means counted in the last few days, getting redder the longer it has been, up to 45 days. The Current SOH and Theoretical headings are underlined: click either one to open the Stock On Hand report, which shows the figure for every item and how it is calculated.

2 The four forecast columns

How much of the item your forecast sales will use on each day. Items your recipes only ever use in whole numbers, such as buns, slices or cans, are rounded up to a whole unit: 40 + 21 + 15 burgers is 76 buns, but the burger forecasts themselves are not whole numbers before rounding (39.4 + 21.0 + 14.2 = 74.6), so the report shows 75.000. Items used in part quantities anywhere in your recipes, such as 3.5 kg of mince or 0.035 litres of sauce, are rounded to three decimals instead, so 0.6 kg a day shows as 0.6 kg and not as a whole kilogram. All four columns show three decimals with pale grey trailing zeros, the same as Current SOH. The shading is the confidence rating of the menu items that use the stock item, weighted by how much of it each one uses. Buns go mostly into steady Classic and Cheese Burgers, so they are green even though the Chicken Burger forecast is yellow; Chicken fillet only goes into Chicken Burgers, so it is yellow too.

3 Items you make yourself

Items your store makes, such as Beef patty and Burger sauce, appear with the amount you need to make. Their ingredients are added on top, worked out from the item's recipe and how much one batch makes. 60.4 patties need 60.4 ÷ 20 × 3.5 kg = 10.57 kg of Beef mince, shown as 10.570. This works all the way down, so if your patty recipe used another item you make, its ingredients would be added too.

4 Sit down and take away extras

Recipe lines that only apply to sit down or take away orders are counted for the share of sales that are usually sit down or take away. About 60% of the 74.6 burgers go out as take away, so you need 45 Burger box; the 40% eaten in need 2 serviettes each, so 60 Serviette.

5 A dash instead of a quantity

The item has not been counted in a stock take in the last 45 days, so there is no reliable stock on hand figure for it. Count it in your next stock take.

6 Items inside sub-recipes

Lettuce and Tomato are not on the burger recipes directly: they come from a sub-recipe (a burger garnish) that all three burgers use. Everything inside a sub-recipe is included.

7 Low Stock Warning

A warning triangle shows when the item's Current SOH is less than the four forecast days added together, so it will probably run out before the end of Forecast in 3 days. Cheese slice has 64 on hand but needs 21 + 23 + 29 + 31 = 104, so it gets a triangle; Burger bun has 400 for 363, so it does not. Items with a dash instead of a stock on hand figure never show a triangle, because the report can't tell how much you have: count them in your next stock take.

Low stock: Current SOH won't cover the four forecast days.

–

No current stock on hand: the item has not been counted in the last 45 days.

Grey zeros

Zeros shown in pale grey so that quantities line up in straight columns (decimal points, units, tens, hundreds and thousands) without cluttering the report. 1.500 is one and a half.

Watch the video

A short walkthrough of the Stock item forecast report and how to use it for ordering and prep.

Can't see the video? Watch it on YouTube.

Frequently asked questions

Glossary

Confidence rating

A score from 0 to 100 for how steady the past sales were on the four dates analysed, shown as a colour that blends from green (steady) through yellow to red (jumped around a lot).

Current SOH (Theoretical)

The stock on hand the system calculates from your last count and everything recorded since.

Dates analysed

The four past dates on the same weekday used to forecast each day.

Equivalent day last month

The date last month on the same weekday and in the same position relative to payday as the day being forecast.

Item you make yourself

A stock item your store produces from other stock items using a recipe, for example a sauce, dough or patties. Also called a manufactured item.

Payday

The day of the month most customers are paid. Used to line up busy and quiet days from month to month.

Store closed

A date analysed that had no sales. Its weighting is shared between the other dates.

Sub-recipe

A named group of stock items, such as a garnish, that is added to several menu item recipes.

Trading day

Your business day. It starts when your trading day starts and ends at your close of trade, which can be after midnight. Sales made after midnight but before close of trade belong to the previous day.

Low Stock Warning

A warning triangle next to Current SOH when the stock on hand is less than the four forecast days added together.

Unit of measure

The unit the stock item is counted in, for example Kg, Lt or Each, shown in brackets after the stock item name. Items only ever used in whole numbers are rounded up to a whole unit; everything else shows three decimals.

Weighting

How much each date analysed counts towards the forecast. The equivalent day last month counts 40% and the other three dates 20% each.