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A Worked Scenario — Covering an Order Shortfall

The best way to understand Demand Planning is to follow one order all the way through. Here's a single, realistic example from the moment a customer orders more than you have to the moment the covering documents go out. Every number below is made up to keep the story clear.

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Availability depends on your plan and your role.

The situation​

A customer places an order for 100 units of one of your products. You check the shelf: you have 30 units in stock.

You accept the order anyway — you know you can cover the rest. Here's what happens next, step by step.

Step 1 — The order splits into "covered" and "short"​

The moment you accept the sales order, Bizconnekt does the arithmetic for you:

  • 30 units are covered straight from stock — set aside for this customer so nothing else can take them.
  • 70 units can't be covered. That's the shortfall.

On the order line you see a plain coverage picture: 100 needed, 30 ready from stock, 70 short. You don't have to work anything out — the 70 is already waiting for you.

Step 2 — The 70 appears in Demand Planning​

That shortfall of 70 units now shows up in Demand Planning as demand — a clear piece of work that says 70 of this item, for this customer's order, still needs covering.

Nothing has been ordered yet. This is just the honest gap, sitting where you can act on it. You open it up to decide how to cover it.

Step 3 — You add it to a basket​

You gather this demand into a basket — your working list of what you're about to act on. Think of it like a shopping trolley: everything you drop in is a decision you're preparing, and nothing is committed until you check out.

With the 70 in your basket, you now make the real decision: how do you want to cover it?

See Building a basket for the full detail — here we'll keep moving through the story.

Step 4 — You decide buy vs make​

You choose to split the 70 units two ways:

Buy 40 units — and you split that across two suppliers:

  • 25 units from Supplier A, shipped to you as normal, to go into your stock.
  • 15 units from Supplier B, drop-shipped — Supplier B sends them straight to your customer instead of to you. The goods never touch your warehouse, but the order is still tracked, and it's still tied to your customer.

Make 30 units — you'll produce these yourself. This turns into a job that runs through the item's own production route, pulling the materials it needs and giving you 30 finished units at the end.

So one shortfall of 70 becomes three covering actions — two purchases and one production run:

Cover thisHowQuantity
Part of the shortfallBuy from Supplier A (to your stock)25
Part of the shortfallBuy from Supplier B (drop-ship to customer)15
Part of the shortfallMake through the production route30
Total covered70

Step 5 — You preview and confirm the prices​

Before anything is raised, Bizconnekt shows you a preview of exactly what it's about to create — every supplier, every quantity, and the price on each line. You check the rates, adjust anything that isn't right, and confirm.

This is your last look before it becomes real. Nothing goes out to a supplier until you're happy with what's on this screen.

Step 6 — You raise the basket​

You click raise, and Bizconnekt turns your basket into real documents in one go:

  • A purchase order to Supplier A for 25 units, coming to your warehouse.
  • A drop-ship purchase order to Supplier B for 15 units, going straight to your customer.
  • A work order for 30 units to make the rest.

Every one of these is linked back to the original sales order. Anyone looking at that customer's order can see exactly how each part of the shortfall is being covered — 25 on the way from A, 15 drop-shipping from B, 30 in production — and each covering document points back to where its demand came from.

Because you raised them all together from one basket, the 70 units are covered once and only once. There's no risk of ordering the same shortfall twice from two different screens.

What you've got at the end​

From a single order that you couldn't fill from stock, you've ended up with:

  • 30 units already reserved from stock for the customer.
  • A purchase order to one supplier for your warehouse.
  • A drop-ship purchase order to another supplier, straight to the customer.
  • A production job for the units you make yourself.
  • A clear thread linking every one of those back to the order that started it.

That's the whole point of Demand Planning: it turns "we're short" into a handful of the right documents, raised together, with nothing double-ordered and nothing lost.