The inverse of your Days of Cover, your 'Safety Stock' is the minimum threshold (in days) of stock you’d like to hold at any time and is designed to ensure that you are never stockout on any products. As soon as your stock levels dip below this number, the system will notify you (in the “Stock Health” section of the Buying Table), that your product needs to be reordered so that it does not run out of stock. A bit like the warning on a fuel gauge in a car, the safety stock should be seen as a buffer amount to hold in reserve in case there are issues with the production or delivery of this product.
Setup
The safety stock can be set in two places, either at an account level or per individual SKU. To set at an account level, head to the Days of Cover section of your Settings. Please note that the default settings is 30 days.
To set at an individual SKU level, head to the Buying Table and follow these instructions. Please note that the safety stock column is hidden by default and so you will need to go the 'Manage Columns' option and add this to your table view.
FAQs
If you change the safety stock of a SKU in the Buying Table this will then become locked from any changes made in the default settings. E.g the default number in the settings is 30 days however, in the Buying Table you override several products to 60 days. If you then change the default number in the settings to 45 days, the previously edited SKUs in the Buying Table will remain with a safety stock of 60. If you want to override this number from 60, you will need to change these manually or bulk edit them in the Buying Table.
The safety stock is measure in days and this is visible in the Buying Table as the 'Days Left' column (if this isn't visible, select the Manage Columns option to add into the Buying Table.) The Days Left is calculated by dividing the Stock by the QTY Daily Plan.
The safety stock is measured in days (not units) and this calculated using the QTY Daily Plan. Why? Because if you set your Days of Cover based on units you will have to constantly update them if you have any seasonality. As in June 100 units may last you for 30 days but in November 100 units will last you only 5 days. Therefore, we make sure to base it on days of cover to keep your supply operations under control.