Demand forecasting

In 1C:Drive, demand forecasting is the process of determining the quantities of products the company needs to procure to keep up with demand. The future demand is extrapolated from documents that record historical product consumption, such as goods issues.

To manage this process, 1C:Drive offers the Demand forecasting tool.

To open the tool:

Go to Purchases, and under Planning, click Demand forecasting.

Using the tool consists of two steps:

Estimate future demand.
Generate purchase orders based on estimated demand.

It is not recommended that you close the Demand forecasting tool before completing all steps. This would clear all working data so you would have to start over.

For companies that replenish their stock based on actual customer demand, 1C:Drive also offers the Demand planning tool. It calculates demand based on documents that record future demand, such as sales orders.

Estimating future demand

During this step, the Demand forecasting tool determines product demand for a future period based on the average product consumption during a previous period.

To estimate future demand:

Open the Demand forecasting tool.
Fill in or select the following:
- Forecasting horizon (days). The period for which you want to calculate demand. The maximum forecasting horizon is 99 days.
- Base period (days). The past period used to calculate average product consumption. You have the following options:
  - Specify the period start and end dates manually.
  - Select a standard period such as This year or From the beginning of the year. Relevant dates will be filled in automatically. You can view them in the Select period window.
  The base period affects the forecast's Reference period.
You can also use the following filters to narrow down the product demand view:
- Filter by. You have the following options:
  - Supplier. Select a counterparty to calculate demand only for the products that have this counterparty specified as a supplier in their product cards.
  - Product group. Select a product group to calculate demand only for the products that have this group specified in their product cards.
Click Calculate demand.

The estimated demand results appear on the Products tab. The following details are available:

Field	Description
Supplier	Default supplier specified in the product card. To view past consumption and estimated demand for all products that have this supplier specified in their product cards, expand a supplier line.
Product	Product name or short description.
Variant	A variation of the product, for example in color or size, as specified in the product card. It is only available if the Inventory accounting by variants checkbox is selected in Settings > Purchases / Warehouse.
On hand	The product quantity currently in stock for all companies registered in 1C:Drive.
Consumed	The product quantity that was sold during Base period for all companies registered in 1C:Drive. This quantity is determined from posted sale documents, such as sales invoices.
Reference period (days)	The number of days that the product has been (or is expected to be) in stock for any of the companies registered in 1C:Drive during the specified Base period. Consider the following examples: You receive 100 product items on March 1, 2026 and sell 50 items on March 21, 2026. On September 18, 2026, you calculate demand with Base period = From the beginning of this year (in other words, from January 1 to September 18, 2026). In this case, the Reference period is 202 days (from March 1 to September 18, 2026) because the product was in stock during this entire period. You receive 100 product items on March 1, 2026 and sell 50 items on March 21, 2026. On September 18, 2026 you calculate demand with Base period = This year (in other words, from January 1 to December 31, 2026). In this case, the Reference period is 306 days (from March 1 to December 31, 2026) because it is assumed that 50 product items will remain in stock by the end of the year. You receive 100 product items on March 1, 2026 and sell 100 items on March 21, 2026. On September 18, 2026, you calculate demand with Base period = From the beginning of this year (in other words, from January 1 to September 18, 2026). In this case, the Reference period is 21 days (from March 1 to March 21, 2026) because after March 21 the product is no longer in stock.
Average consumption a day	An average number of product items consumed during one day for all companies registered in 1C:Drive.. It is calculated according to the following formula: Average consumption a day = Consumed / Reference period
Demand	The estimated quantity of product items you need to procure to cover the estimated demand during the future period. It is calculated according to the following formula: Demand = Average consumption a day × Forecasting horizon - On hand

To show products that were not consumed during the past period, click the Show zero sales button located to the right.
To hide products that were not consumed during the past period, click the Show zero sales button again.

When done, proceed to the next step, Generating purchase orders based on estimated demand.

Generating purchase orders based on estimated demand

During this step, you select products to replenish and the Demand forecasting tool generates purchase orders for these products based on the demand estimated during the previous step.

Before starting this step, make sure that the Products tab is filled with relevant data.

To generate purchase orders:

On the Products tab, select checkboxes for the products you want to replenish.
To select checkboxes for all products, click .
To clear selection from all products, click .
Click Generate purchase orders.

The purchase orders appear on the Purchase orders tab. Purchase orders with the same supplier are consolidated automatically.

The following details are available:

Column	Description
Document	Name and posting status of a purchase order.
Supplier	A supplier to purchase the products from. This is the default supplier specified in the product card.
Document amount	Total amount to be paid for all products in the purchase order. If Supplier's purchase price is specified in the Counterparty prices section in a product card, that price is prefilled in the purchase order. Otherwise, you need to manually enter product price in the order.

To edit the details of a purchase order, double-click the order line or click pencil . To learn more, see Purchase orders.

To post one or several purchase orders, select their checkboxes and click Post.

To delete one or several purchase orders, select their checkboxes and click Delete.

To select checkboxes for all purchase orders, click .
To clear selection from all purchase orders, click .

To change the order of purchase orders in the list, click and .