Forecast Settings is the account-wide configuration for demand planning: which parts of planning this account uses, when the forecast runs by itself, and the starting values a new stock policy takes. It is one record for the whole account, not one per site.
The switches here are not cosmetic. Turning one off stops those plans being made at all — on the schedule and by hand — and the Planning Cycle says so.
Where to find it: Setup → Demand Planning → Forecast Settings.
What this account plans
The note under the heading reads:
Switching one off stops those plans being made at all, whether on the schedule or from the Planning Cycle. The Planning Cycle shows when a step is switched off.
| Switch | Help text on the form | What happens with it off |
|---|---|---|
| Plan production | Works out what to make, and when, from the demand plan. | No production plan is made. Pressing Generate production plan fails with “Production planning is switched off in Forecast Settings.” Procurement comes from a production plan, so this stops procurement and supplier forecasts too. |
| Plan procurement | Works out what to buy, from which supplier, and when to order it. | No procurement plan is made. Work out what to buy fails with “Procurement planning is switched off in Forecast Settings.” Supplier forecasts come from a procurement plan, so they stop as well. |
| AI insights and recommendations | Suggests actions once a planning cycle, after the production plan is generated. Uses AI credits. | Nothing is analysed, no recommendations are produced, and no AI Summary is written to a plan. The AI recommendations row disappears from the Planning Cycle's Site health list. Recommendations already raised stay on their list. |
All three are on for a new account.
Switching a step off does not delete anything. Plans already made stay exactly as they are; only new ones stop. And because a switched-off step would otherwise leave the Planning Cycle sitting on a step that never moves, the screen carries a warning blocker while it is off, linking straight back here:
- Production planning is switched off — “Production and procurement plans are not made while it is off. Switch it on in Forecast Settings.”
- Procurement planning is switched off — “Procurement plans and supplier forecasts are not made while it is off. Switch it on in Forecast Settings.” Only shown when production planning is on, because otherwise the row above already covers it.
When AI insights are on
One analysis per planning cycle, queued after the production plan is generated — and only while the switch is on and the account still has AI credit. That one call reads the forecast and the demand plan behind the production plan too, so it judges the whole cycle. Earlier releases analysed the forecast run, the production plan and the procurement plan separately, which cost several calls a cycle for several partial views.
It is best-effort and runs separately, so it can never fail or delay a plan: if there is no credit left, or the analysis itself goes wrong, the plan is unaffected and nothing is said on the Planning Cycle. The switch is checked again when the job runs, so turning it off part way through stops work already queued.
Its summary is written to the production plan as AI Summary, and copied to that plan’s demand plan. Regenerating the production plan runs the analysis again, so repeated regeneration does spend credit each time; a suggestion it repeats replaces the open one rather than doubling it. Your credit quota still caps the total spend. See AI Recommendations.
Scheduling
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Scheduled forecast runs | Whether the forecast runs by itself. The help text reads “Runs the forecast overnight (2am your time) on the day below. You can always run a forecast yourself.” This one really does govern the schedule only — Run forecast is never blocked by it. |
| Auto Forecast Frequency | Daily, Weekly or Monthly. Weekly is the usual choice for a business that plans in weeks. |
| Auto Forecast Day | Which day the run falls on. The field changes with the frequency, and disappears altogether on Daily. |
The day is a list, not a number you have to decode:
- Weekly — a weekday: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, in that order.
- Monthly — 1 to 28, or Last day of the month. The form says why it stops at 28: “Days 29 to 31 aren't offered because not every month has them.” Pick Last day of the month if that is what you mean.
- Daily — no day to choose, so the field is hidden.
Changing the frequency keeps a day that still makes sense. A day that does not fit the new frequency is reset to the first option rather than left as something invalid.
What the overnight run actually does
Overnight means overnight where your business is. QTRACA looks at every account once an hour and acts for yours in the hour your own clock reads 2am — so a New Zealand account is forecast at 2am New Zealand time, and a UK account at 2am UK time. Stock alerts follow at 3am your time, after the forecast, so the alerts are judged against the reorder points the forecast has just recalculated.
On the night the clocks go forward, the skipped hour is picked up in the first hour after it, so the run is not lost.
In that 2am pass, in this order:
- Accuracy is scored for every site — any forecast period that has closed since the last time is compared with what actually happened. This happens every day, whether or not a forecast is due, and even when Scheduled forecast runs is off. Forecast Accuracy is therefore current even on an account that only forecasts by hand.
- Scheduled forecast runs is checked. If it is off, nothing more happens.
- The frequency and day are checked, in your own time zone. If today is not the day, nothing more happens and the next check is tomorrow.
- The forecast is produced for each of your sites.
What a scheduled run does to the planning cycle
A planning cycle is a week. The schedule is what moves the week on:
- If the open cycle belongs to an earlier week (weeks start on Monday, in your time zone), the scheduled run starts the next cycle — closing the old one and opening a new one, then forecasting into it.
- If the open cycle belongs to this week, the run joins it and refreshes the week's numbers, exactly as a person re-forecasting mid-week does. That is also what a Daily frequency does for the rest of the week: it refreshes, it does not advance.
- A second scheduled run on the same local day in the same cycle is skipped, and no record is created. A run you start yourself is never skipped.
A new forecast replaces the week's numbers, which sends the demand plan step back to the beginning. What that means for the plans already made is set out in What a re-forecast does to the plans below it.
Scheduled forecasting only happens for accounts that hold Demand Planning, or are on an older arrangement that keeps it. Without it, nothing is scheduled whatever this screen says.
Defaults for a new stock policy
The note under the heading reads:
Starting values for a product's stock policy. Changing them here does not alter policies that already exist — edit those on the policy itself.
| Field | What a new policy takes from it |
|---|---|
| Default Forecast Method | Moving Average, Weighted Moving Average, Exponential Smoothing or Seasonal Decomposition — the method the forecast uses for that product. |
| Forecast Horizon (weeks) | How far ahead each forecast projects. Must be greater than zero. |
| History Used (weeks) | How much past demand the forecast is built from. Must be greater than zero. |
| Safety Stock Days | The buffer expressed as days of cover. On a Dynamic reorder point method this is what drives the calculated safety stock quantity. |
| Lead Time Days | The site's own replenishment lead time, used when a supplier states none. |
These are starting values only. The new stock policy form opens pre-filled from them, and the value you leave in a field is the value that is saved — a figure you type always wins, even if it happens to match the default. Fields you never touch are filled in from here.
Saving, and what it tells you
Press Save Settings. The screen says what happened rather than leaving you guessing:
- On success, a green line reads “Settings saved.”
- On a server refusal, a red line reads “Could not save:” followed by the reason it gave.
- Where a figure is wrong, nothing is sent at all and the red line names the fields — for example “Check Forecast Horizon (weeks), Safety Stock Days.” Each offending field also turns red underneath with what it wants: “Enter a whole number of at least 1.” for Forecast Horizon and History Used, “Enter a whole number of at least 0.” for Safety Stock Days and Lead Time Days.
The four numbers are whole numbers. Half a week of history and a third of a day of lead time mean nothing to anything that reads them, so a decimal is refused rather than quietly rounded.
They have no effect on policies that already exist. To change one of those, open the policy. See Stock Policies.
Availability and permissions
- This screen needs the Demand Planning module and the demand planning permission. See Module requirements and availability.
- The settings are held once for the whole account. There is no per-site version, so a change affects every site you plan.
- A site is not a security boundary. The site selector decides which site’s planning data you are looking at and working on, and it keeps another site’s out of your way. It is a working scope, not a wall: a user who can open this screen and change site can read that site’s figures. The real boundary is the account — nothing belonging to another account is reachable at all. Do not use sites to keep figures from a colleague; use roles.
Things to know
- Saving does not re-run anything. Existing forecast runs and the plans built from them are unaffected. Press Save Settings and the next scheduled pass uses the new values.
- You can always run a forecast yourself. Run forecast on the Planning Cycle, and Run Forecast on the Forecasts screen, ignore the schedule entirely — and ignore the Scheduled forecast runs switch.
- The other two switches are not like that. Plan production and Plan procurement gate the feature, not the schedule: with one off, pressing Generate yourself fails with the message above. That is deliberate — an account that does not do procurement planning should not get a plan out of pressing a button.
- Per-product settings are not here. Safety stock quantities, reorder points, order multiples, shelf life and waste thresholds belong to each product's stock policy. Only the starting values for a new one live on this screen.
- Days are your days. “Monday” and “the last day of the month” are worked out in your account's time zone, not the server's.
- One scheduled forecast per cycle per day. A retry or a repeated hour cannot produce two, and nothing is recorded for the one that was skipped.
- A monthly schedule still plans weeks. The frequency only says how often a forecast is produced; a planning cycle is always one week.