Operating inventory planning

With write access, a connected assistant can work with Inventory Planning much as you do in the app: create inventory commitments, sales plans and launch plans, move them through their statuses, adjust their products, create orders from them, and keep your calendar of promotional events. This page explains what each plan type covers, what the guardrails are, and what you’ll see in Logistified afterwards.

What the assistant can do with plans

Read every plan of every type: the lists with their filters, a plan’s products and quantities at each location, its curves, linked orders and attached documents, and how it compares with actual sales. See What the assistant can read.
Create inventory commitments, sales plans and launch plans. Each new plan starts as a Draft with its own plan number (IC-…, SP-… or NP-…).
Edit a plan’s details and products while it’s Draft or Confirmed.
Move a plan through its statuses: confirm, lock, release, complete, reopen, move back to Draft, or cancel.
Include or exclude a commitment or launch plan from the forecast.
Add or remove locations on sales plans and launch plans, and bring back products that are missing at one location.
Create orders from a plan: purchase orders and a transfer order from a commitment, purchase orders from a launch plan.
Manage promotional events: add them, set their dates and uplift, measure past years, switch them on or off, archive and delete them.
Maintain the planning options: your demand types, reason codes and sources.
Attach and remove documents on an editable plan, or delete a plan.

Planning never touches stock in Shopify. Changing a status, a quantity, a target or a curve only changes what Logistified plans and, where the plan feeds it, your forecast. An order created from a plan is a draft: nothing reaches your supplier or Shopify until the order is sent.

What it takes

Write access is opt-in. The assistant needs either:

an API key created with write scope; see API keys, or
a web chat connection that was granted write access when it was linked; see Connect a web chat.

A read-only connection can still read your plans, their analytics and your promotional events, but it cannot make any of the changes described here.

What you can ask

You can ask in your own words. For the common planning tasks the assistant follows ready-made guides, so it does the steps in the right order, works through long product lists in batches, and shows you what it found before it completes plans or replaces your edits. A few examples:

Inventory commitments: “Plan the wholesale order for these 120 SKUs for 5 December.” “Raise every quantity on IC-00052 by 10 %.” “Order the stock for this commitment from each supplier.”
Launch plans: “Plan a launch for these new tees at Berlin and Munich and order the stock.” “Split the new hoodie by size like last year’s.” “Three weeks after launch, switch the size split to what’s actually selling.”
Sales plans: “Set next year’s sales targets for the summer range, 10 % up.” “Set the Munich targets for these products 20 % above last year.” “How is the spring sales plan doing against its targets?”
Promotional events: “Add Black Friday and measure last year’s uplift.” “Skip our summer sale this year.” “Leave the Christmas event out of my wholesale forecast view.”
Keeping plans current: “Complete the plans that are over.” “Which drafts haven’t been touched in months?” “Which plans include this product?”
Locations: “Add the new Hamburg store to my sales plans.” “Bring back the products that are missing at Munich.”

Two things make long lists quick:

A whole list of products at once. Give it a list of SKUs or barcodes, and the assistant looks them all up in one go. It tells you which ones it couldn’t find, or which match more than one product, instead of guessing.
Many products of a plan in one step. Changing quantities or targets for many products of a plan is a single change: either all of it is saved, or, if one product can’t be changed, none of it is and the assistant tells you which one.

Each plan type keeps its usual requirements, and a read-only connection can still look things up but not change them; see What it takes.

Inventory commitments

An inventory commitment records demand you know is coming. The assistant can:

Create a commitment with its products in one step, each with an estimated quantity and, if you like, its own location. If one of the locations doesn’t exist, nothing is created. A product that doesn’t exist is left out and reported, and a product listed twice is added once.
Set the details: name, a single Target date or a date range (the demand is then spread evenly across it), the probability, demand type, reason and source, justification, notes and the recipient. The recipient is for your records only; it never changes the forecast.
Change products: estimated quantity, location, a date or date range of its own, probability and notes. Clearing a product’s own date or probability makes it follow the commitment’s again.
Add and remove products.
Exclude the commitment from the forecast, or include it again, also while it’s Locked, the same as Exclude from forecast in the app.
Create orders from it; see Ordering from a plan.

A commitment plans one quantity per product, so the assistant can’t give a commitment product a day-by-day curve. Create sales order (the Shopify draft order for the recipient) stays in the app.

The assistant can attach files up to 2 MiB to an editable commitment, sales plan or launch plan, list their names and details, and remove an attachment. Locked, Completed and Cancelled plans keep their documents read-only. Removing a planning attachment through the assistant removes it from the plan; it does not promise permanent erasure of the stored file.

Sales plans

A sales plan sets sales goals and never feeds the forecast. The assistant can:

Preview targets for a set of products and locations before anything is saved.
Create a sales plan for one or more locations (or all locations) and a plan window of up to 1,100 days. It can add products in the same step: each product’s target at each location is seeded from that location’s own sales one year earlier, times the growth you ask for. Or it creates the plan empty and adds products later.
Add products later, seeded the same way. Where a product didn’t sell at a location last year, its target there starts at 0 and the assistant is told so. Sales at other locations are never borrowed.
Change growth for every product, some products, or one location, from -100% to +900%. Targets scale with the growth, so hand edits keep their proportions. A target at 0 has nothing to scale and is seeded again from last year’s sales.
Change a target: a new unit total (the seasonal shape stays), a full day-by-day curve, or a revenue of its own. Clearing that revenue goes back to units × price.
Move the plan window. Targets are built for the plan’s dates, so on a plan with products a new window rebuilds every target from last year for the new dates, replacing hand edits and typed revenue. The assistant has to confirm this explicitly; without that, the date change is refused. See Changing the plan window.

A sales plan’s products belong to its locations and its window. The assistant can’t move one product to another location (it adds or removes the location instead), give one product its own dates, or set a probability. More on targets and growth: Products, growth & targets.

Launch plans

A launch plan forecasts a product you haven’t sold yet from the sales of similar products. The assistant can:

Preview a launch curve from similar products, and look at one similar product’s sales history, before anything is saved.
Create a launch plan: its launch date, its horizon (up to 180 days), its launch locations (or all locations), and its new products, each with its similar products and volume or with a curve of its own. Products can launch on different dates.
Add products later. On a plan with several locations, each new product is planned at every launch location.
Change a product: its similar products, volume, launch date or location. Changing the similar products, volume or launch date rebuilds its curve. It can also replace a curve outright.
Rebuild every curve from its similar products, which discards manual tweaks, like Rebuild forecasts in the app.
Remove a product.
Change the plan: launch date, horizon, volume, Feed into forecast and Stop feeding on first real sale.

How launch curves are built: Similar products & the launch curve.

Size groups

On a launch plan, a size group plans the sizes of one product together. The assistant can:

Suggest a split from the similar products’ sales by size, the same suggestion as Suggest from history in the app, without saving anything.
Create or change a size group: its similar products, volume and horizon, and its sizes with each one’s share of the split.
Remove a size group together with its sizes.
After launch, read the group’s actual sales mix next to the split you planned, then switch the remaining weeks to the actual mix, back to the pre-launch split, or to a split you give, at one location or at every location with its own actual mix. It can work out the change first without saving it, and the result includes the previous split, so the change can be undone.

How splits behave:

The split always adds up to 100%. When the assistant sets one size’s share, the other sizes share the rest in proportion. A size added to a group without a share gets an even one, and a removed size hands its share to the others.
Hand-edited weeks are a choice. When a group is saved again, sizes with hand-edited weeks keep them unless the assistant is asked to replace them. Switching to the actual mix replaces their remaining weeks unless it’s asked to keep them, the same choice as Keep my edits in the app.
After launch, changes apply from today. The days before today keep their values, so Plan analytics still compares with what you planned. Only replacing a single curve outright rewrites its past days too, so a careful assistant sends those days back unchanged.
The actual mix needs enough sales: at least 14 days and 30 units since launch. Below that, switching to it is refused and nothing changes.

Plans at several locations

Sales plans and launch plans can cover several locations. The assistant can:

Add a location. On a sales plan, every product is seeded there from that location’s own sales last year. On a launch plan, every product and size group is planned there, with curves rebuilt from that location’s history.
Remove a location together with its products. The last location can’t be removed. On an All locations plan, removing one turns it into a plan with a fixed list of locations, so a later sync never brings the removed location back.
Sync locations on an All locations plan, adding the locations you’ve created since.
Add missing products at one location: it brings back the products the plan has at other locations but not there. Running it a second time adds nothing.

Commitments have no location list of their own: each product carries its own location, which the assistant sets product by product.

Ordering from a plan

Orders created from a plan are drafts and are linked to the plan, the same as the order actions in the app.

From a commitment (see Ordering from a commitment):

Purchase orders, one draft per supplier (each product’s primary supplier), received at a location you choose, for the planned quantity or the probability-weighted one. Products without a supplier are left out and listed. This works in every commitment status, and again later for a top-up.
A transfer order between two different locations. A commitment has one transfer order: while it exists, creating another is refused and the assistant is pointed to the existing one.

From a launch plan (see Ordering for a launch):

Purchase orders for a coverage window: one per launch location or one combined, covering from the launch or from today (then the stock on hand and on order is taken off), optionally for a supplier you name. The assistant can preview the quantities first. Ordering works while the plan is Draft, Confirmed or Locked.

If something fails partway

Creating several orders happens one order after another, and a later one can fail after earlier ones succeeded. Orders that were created are kept and linked to the plan, and the assistant gets a list of what was created, what failed and why. It follows the same rules as the app’s dialog (If only some orders are created):

A created order is never created again. The assistant retries only the suppliers (or locations) whose orders were not created.
An order created with a warning exists, but some of its lines may not have been saved. Open it and check its lines.
An order whose details didn’t come back exists too. Look for it in your purchase orders before ordering again; it’s never part of a retry.
An order that couldn’t be linked to the plan exists but doesn’t show on the plan. Don’t create it again; contact support to relink it.
After an unexpected error or no answer, an order may still have been created. These requests have no built-in protection against running twice, so a good assistant checks the plan’s linked orders before it tries again. If yours offers to “just run it again”, ask it to check first: “Check the plan’s linked orders before retrying.”

Promotional events

Promotional events lift the forecast around holidays and sales. The assistant can:

Find your events, and search the built-in holiday list.
Add an event from the holiday list (it follows the holiday’s date rule; the name and length can be changed), or create your own with its category, date rule or dates, length, uplift and uplift source (Fixed % or From past years, for your whole shop or for each product variant).
Switch an event on or off for forecasts, edit it, archive or restore it, or delete it.
Manage its years: store or change a year’s dates, skip a year, or remove a stored year. Removing a skip brings the projected year back.
Measure the uplift: analyze one past year, analyze dates it names (they’re stored as that year), or analyze the last three past years in one go, like Analyze past years. Each result is saved and updates the event’s measured uplift.
Leave an event out of one forecast view by changing that view’s settings; see Operating reports, notifications & forecast views and Promotional events in the forecast.

The same limits as in the app apply:

The uplift is 0 to +1,000%. An event can’t lower the forecast.
The stored years of one event can’t overlap, and a stored year is at most 350 days long.
A year can only be analyzed once it has ended and wasn’t skipped. The dates it names are at most 350 days long (a year stored earlier: 366). The comparison period is 7 to 365 days before the event.

Planning options

The assistant can list, add, edit and remove your demand types, reason codes and sources: their name, color, description and order. Each name can be used once per list. A plan keeps the name it was given, so renaming or removing an option never changes existing plans. When the assistant creates a commitment or a sales plan, it picks names from these lists so they match your dropdowns.

Guardrails

The assistant follows the same lifecycle rules as the app (Plan statuses & lifecycle), enforced strictly:

Only valid status moves. A Draft can be confirmed or cancelled. A Confirmed plan can be locked, completed, moved back to Draft or cancelled. A Locked plan can be released, completed or cancelled. A Completed plan can only be reopened, and a Cancelled plan is final. A refused move names the moves that are allowed.
Completed is not Cancelled. A plan that played out is completed and can be reopened. A Completed plan can’t be cancelled directly; it has to be reopened first. Cancelling is for a plan that didn’t happen.
Confirming needs a date and products. A Draft without products can’t be confirmed, and neither can a plan without a date (the same goes for reopening a Completed one); the assistant is told to set the date first. While a plan is Confirmed or Locked, its last date can’t be removed.
Locked, Completed and Cancelled are read-only. Details, products, targets, curves, locations, size groups and documents can’t be changed. A Locked plan has to be released and a Completed one reopened first; a Cancelled plan stays as it is. Two things still work: including or excluding a Locked plan from the forecast, and creating orders (from a commitment in any status, from a launch plan while it’s Locked).
Each product is in a plan once. A product that’s already in the plan, at any location, or that’s listed twice in one request, is skipped and reported instead of added again, so repeating a request is safe. The one exception is creating a launch plan: a product listed twice refuses the whole create. It’s never added at a location where it’s missing; Add missing products does that. Moving a product to a location where it’s already planned is refused. See Adding products to a plan.
Plans have a maximum size. A plan can hold a limited number of product-location rows and daily values. A change that would go past it is refused, nothing is written, and the assistant is told how many products fit. Launch curves are at most 180 days, and a sales plan’s window at most 1,100 days.
Deleting is for plans you don’t need. The assistant can delete a plan in any status, like Actions › Delete in the app. Orders created from it stay. To keep a record of a plan that didn’t happen, ask it to cancel the plan instead.
Every refusal is guidance. When an action is blocked, the assistant is told which rule applied and, where there is one, what to do instead.

What you’ll see in Logistified

Plans in their lists. A plan the assistant creates appears right away on its list (Inventory Commitments, Sales Plans or New Product Planning) and among the hub’s recent plans, as a Draft with its plan number.
Activity. Each change shows on the plan’s Activity tab, as if it had been made in the app: status changes and edited details, products added, changed or removed, growth changes and re-seeded targets, locations added or removed, size-group changes and rebuilt curves, and every order created, by its number. See Exports, documents & activity.
Linked orders. Orders created from a plan show in the plan’s linked-order bars and its Actions menu (View purchase order, View transfer order), and in your purchase-order or transfer-order list as ordinary drafts. Sending and receiving them works as usual; see Operating purchase orders.
Your forecast. A plan changes the forecast only as described in Plans in the forecast: a commitment while it’s Confirmed or Locked and not excluded, a launch plan while it’s Confirmed or Locked with Feed into forecast on, a sales plan never, and a promotional event only while it’s switched on.
Promotional events appear on the Promotional Events list, with In forecasts reading Off until they’re switched on.

Safety & audit

Every call the assistant makes is logged per API key or connection, and access can be revoked at any time; see Managing access & security. Write access is opt-in and scoped to your single store; read-only connections see none of these actions.