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A planning cycle is one week's plan for one site. It holds the five records that make up that week — a forecast run, a demand plan, a production plan, a procurement plan and the supplier forecasts — and remembers that they belong together.

The Planning Cycle screen is where you work that week. It shows how far the week has got, the one thing to do next, and what will hold the later steps up if nobody acts. You never have to remember which screen comes after which: the screen tells you, and each step's button takes you forward.

Where to find it: Planning Cycle in the Demand Planning section of the main menu. It is the first item in that section and the screen demand planning opens on.

The words this screen uses

Quick start: run a week

1. Open Planning Cycle. Check the site name beside the title is the site you mean to plan.
2. Press the button in the step panel. There is only ever one.
3. Wait while it reads Working… this usually takes a few seconds. The screen refreshes itself every couple of seconds; you do not have to reload it.
4. Read the preview rows and, if you are happy, press the next button. Otherwise open the record with the View link beside it and work there.
5. Repeat until the screen says This cycle is complete.

Everything on this screen is for your current site. Plans made on another site do not appear here. If the screen looks emptier than you expect, check the site selector first.

Starting the first cycle

Before the first cycle exists, the screen reads:

No planning cycle yet
A planning cycle is one week's plan, worked left to right: forecast, demand plan, production plan, procurement, supplier forecasts. Each step feeds the next. Running a forecast starts it.

Run forecast opens a cycle and queues its forecast in one action. The cycle is named from the Monday of the current week, and the period it plans is adopted from the first forecast that completes — the horizon on the run, which comes from each product's stock policy.

If no site is selected the request is refused with “Choose a site before starting a planning cycle.”

While the forecast is running, the forecast card and the step panel both show a spinner:

The strip of five cards

The strip across the top is the whole week at a glance. The cards are titled 1. Forecast, 2. Demand plan, 3. Production plan, 4. Procurement and 5. Supplier forecasts. Under each title is a headline and a detail line:

The rest of what a card can say:

• A step that has not been reached yet reads after step N — the step it is waiting on.
• A step nothing has been done for in this cycle reads Not started this cycle, or Working… while a job is running — including a forecast that is still calculating, which used to show nothing at all while it ran. Where an earlier cycle’s plan is still the one in force, a second detail line names it: DP-P1000010 still in force. See “Not started this cycle” is not “there is no plan”.
• A finished step carries a tick.
• A step that failed, or one carrying an error from a failed regeneration, carries a warning triangle. Hover it to read the error.
• Cards that have a record behind them are links: click one to open the forecast run or the plan. Cards for steps that are still waiting are not links, because there is nothing to open.

“Not started this cycle” is not “there is no plan”

This is the single most misread thing on the screen, so it is worth one short section of its own.

A card reading “Not started this cycle” beside a live plan reference is not a fault. It is saying exactly what it says: nothing has been done for this cycle at that step. A plan made in an earlier cycle belongs to that cycle, not this one, so this cycle’s card has nothing of its own to show — while that plan is still the plan the site is working to.

Whatever the last cycle produced stays in force until this one replaces it. Nothing expires when a new cycle opens. Generating is what replaces a plan — and only once you activate or approve the draft it produces.

So the screen now answers the question the bare wording used to leave open, in two places:

• On the card, under the headline: “DP-P1000010 still in force”, naming the plan. It appears only where this cycle has no record of its own at that step and an earlier cycle’s plan is still in force.
• In the step panel, as a line of its own: “This step hasn’t been done for this cycle yet. DP-P1000010 (active) stays in force until this cycle replaces it.” — with the plan’s status in brackets, so a draft standing in as the plan in force is obvious.

Where the screen knows a step is not yet done but cannot name a particular plan, the panel falls back to “This step hasn’t been done for this cycle yet. Whatever the last cycle produced stays in force until this one replaces it.” The meaning is the same; only the reference is missing.

What to do about it: usually nothing, until you reach that step. A cycle is a week’s worth of replanning, not an expiry. If last week’s procurement plan is still right, leaving step 4 “not started this cycle” costs you nothing — the plan in force is still the plan in force. Run the step when you want this week’s numbers instead of last week’s.

The step panel

Below the strip, the current step is shown in full. The line above the panel reads Step N of 5. followed by One step left this cycle. or N steps left this cycle. The panel itself is headed STEP N · YOUR NEXT STEP, then the step's name and a sentence saying what it is and why it matters.

Underneath, in this order:

• A spinner reading Working… this usually takes a few seconds. while a job for this step is queued or running. The screen re-reads itself every two seconds until it finishes, so leave it open.
• An error, if the last attempt failed. See When a Generate step fails.
• Up to three preview rows from the records inside the step, so you can sanity-check it without opening the plan. Demand shows the product and quantity · w/c <week>; production shows quantity · date, with overdue added and the row highlighted where the date has passed; procurement shows quantity · order by <date>, plus overdue or no supplier; supplier forecasts show the supplier and the period. Quantities are shown in the product's own stock unit.
• The primary button. One per step.
• A View link to the record itself — View <reference>, or View <step name> where the step has no single reference.
• The next-step line, reading Then: <what the next step is> and why it is not available yet.

Preview rows disappear once a step is done. Their job is to help you decide, not to summarise history.

The five steps, and what “done” means

Each step shows one button at a time: first the one that creates the record, then the one that commits it. Review supplier forecasts is the exception — it is a link, not an action. It opens the Supplier Forecasts list filtered to this cycle's procurement plan, with a chip naming the plan that you can dismiss to see everything.

The step after the current one always says why it cannot be done yet:

When a Generate step fails

Generating is a background job. When it fails, the step panel says so and quotes the reason, and the card in the strip gets a warning triangle. The wording depends on whether anything was in force already:

• Could not generate. <reason> — nothing existed for this step, so the step failed.
• The last regeneration failed. <reason> — a plan is already in force and stays in force. Only the attempt to replace it failed.

On a failed step the button reads Try again rather than the usual label. Fix the cause first: pressing it again with nothing changed produces the same failure.

What each message means

Refusals you meet by clicking twice, or out of order

These are answers to the request rather than job failures. They appear as a message under the step panel and nothing is created:

If the screen itself cannot load, it shows the error and a Try again button. While a reload has failed, the buttons are disabled: what is on screen may no longer be true, and QTRACA would rather stop you acting on it than let you approve something twice.

A newer draft beside the plan in force

Generating a plan again never throws away the one in force. The new plan arrives as a draft, and the step stays done. The draft is offered in the Needs attention panel:

A newer draft (DP-P1000005) is ready to activate
Demand plan · the plan in force stays until you do.

The button beside it reads Activate DP-P1000005 (or Approve… for a production or procurement plan) and acts on the draft, not on the plan in force. It asks first, and the confirmation names exactly what it replaces — the same wording as on the plan screen itself, so it does not matter which one you act from:

• Demand plan. “DP-P1000005 becomes the demand plan in force. DP-P1000004 is superseded and cannot be activated again.” Activating is also the only way to replace the plan in force: it cannot be archived, so a site is never left with none.
• Production plan. Approving never fails because of another plan. Every other approved or in-progress plan on the site is resolved in the same step — cancelled if nothing is being made from it, completed if something has finished and nothing is running, and otherwise trimmed: its unstarted works orders are cancelled, the batches already running carry on, and it completes itself when they do. The confirmation lists each one: “PP-P1000005 keeps 2 works orders already in production; its 10 unstarted works orders are cancelled.” Their procurement plans that have not raised purchase orders are superseded with them.
• Procurement plan. Approving a newer draft supersedes the previously approved one and archives that plan’s draft supplier forecasts. Approved and sent forecasts stand. This one is still refused where the earlier plan is executing or completed — those purchase orders exist.

The old production refusals, which asked you to complete or cancel an in-progress plan before you could approve a new one, are gone. They left the site working to a plan nobody had approved; real production is never taken off the floor by a replacement.

Approving a newer plan resets the steps below it: the later steps go back to waiting, because they were built from numbers that have changed.

What a re-forecast does to the plans below it

Running the forecast again mid-week is normal: new orders have arrived and the week's numbers should reflect them. It does not start a new week. A manual run — from this screen or from Run Forecast on the Forecasts screen — joins the open cycle, opening one only if there is none.

While the new run is going, or if it fails:

• The newest completed run stays in force, with the demand, production and procurement plans hanging off it. Nothing disappears.
• The forecast card shows a spinner, or a warning triangle carrying the new run's error.

Once the new run completes, it replaces the numbers. From that moment:

• The demand plan step becomes current again, offering Generate demand plan — because the active plan you had was built from the older run.
• Every step after it goes back to waiting, even though the plans themselves still exist and are still active or approved. They are stale, not deleted: the strip stops crediting them, the records stay on their own list screens, and any batches or purchase orders already created from them are untouched.
• Work forward again: generate a demand plan from the new run, activate it, and the newer draft/approval rules above retire the older plans as you go.

If you did not want to lose the week's progress, do not re-forecast. A re-forecast is the right move when demand has genuinely changed. It is the wrong move if you only want to look at the numbers — open the existing run instead.

The scheduled forecast behaves differently: it starts a new cycle only when the open one belongs to an earlier week. A scheduled run later in the same week joins the cycle, exactly like a person re-forecasting. See Forecast Settings.

Blocking later steps

The sidebar section headed BLOCKING LATER STEPS lists what will spoil a step further along. Critical rows are the ones that will leave something out of the plan; warnings are things that are wrong but will still produce a plan. Every row links to where it is fixed.

On a cycle that is complete the same list is headed “Worth checking”, because nothing is being blocked any more — every step is done. The rows and their links are the same; only the heading changes, so a finished week does not read as a week full of problems.

The two “switched off” rows are the only blockers shown when there is no cycle at all. Everything else is worked out from the records the cycle resolved to, so a blocker only appears once the plan that would suffer from it exists.

Needs attention

Above the blockers, Needs attention collects two things that have nowhere else to appear:

• Newer drafts waiting to be activated or approved, with the button that does it. See A newer draft beside the plan in force.
• Errors on steps that are already done. A step whose regeneration failed is not the current step, so its error would otherwise only be a tooltip on the strip. Each row shows the step's name and the error, and links to the record.

Site health

The sidebar ends with SITE HEALTH: four figures for the current site, each labelled with the window it covers so the number cannot be read as “this week” when it is not. Every badge and figure in Demand Planning uses one colour scheme — green for what is in force or done, blue for what is committed and moving, amber for what needs a look, red for what has stopped or failed, and plain for what has not started or has been replaced — so a status means the same thing on every screen.

A fifth row, AI recommendations with N new, appears only when AI insights are switched on and there are pending recommendations for the site. It opens AI Recommendations.

N/A is not zero. Accuracy reads N/A until some forecast period has closed and been scored; stock health reads N/A when the site has no active stock policies, or when none of them has a measurable on-hand. Reporting 0% in those cases would say “catastrophically bad” where the truth is “nothing to measure yet”.

The waste rate is coloured against your own limit. It uses the strictest Waste Threshold % set on any of the site's active stock policies: green up to half of it, amber up to it, red above. If no policy sets a threshold, the figure is shown without a colour rather than judged against a number nobody chose.

Starting the next cycle

When every step is done, the panel reads:

This cycle is complete
Every step is done for <cycle name>. Starting the next cycle closes this one and runs a fresh forecast.

Start next cycle closes the open cycle and opens the next one in a single action, then queues its forecast. From the complete panel it happens straight away.

There is also a Start next cycle button in the header, available whenever a cycle exists. It is there so you can abandon a half-finished week — a week where the plan went out of date before you got to the end. Because that loses the rest of the week's work, it asks first, naming the steps you have not done:

Start next cycle
This week's cycle isn't finished: steps 4 and 5 haven't been done. Starting the next cycle closes it; its plans are kept but it won't be shown here any more. Start next cycle?

Answering Start next cycle closes the old cycle. Nothing is deleted: its forecast run and plans stay on their own list screens, and anything made from them — batches, purchase orders, sent supplier forecasts — is untouched. The cycle simply stops being the one this screen shows.

Cycle names come from the Monday of the week the cycle opened, so a cycle started twice in the same week at the same site would share a name. The second and later ones are numbered instead: Week commencing 14 Sep, then Week commencing 14 Sep (2). Only cycles opened since that Monday count, so the same week a year ago does not affect the numbering.

Availability and permissions

• This screen needs the Demand Planning module, which in turn needs Manufacturing and Orders. See Module requirements and availability in Getting started with Demand Planning.
• Access is governed by the demand planning permission, granted through roles. Without it the whole Demand Planning menu section is hidden.
• The actions use the same permissions as the screens they stand in for: running a forecast, creating a plan, and activating or approving one. A user who cannot approve a production plan on the Production Planning screen cannot approve it from here either.
• Everything is scoped to your current site, and a cycle belongs to one site.
• A site is not a security boundary. The site selector decides which site’s cycle you are running, 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 and run that site’s cycle, subject to the same role checks. 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

• One open cycle per site. You cannot run two weeks side by side, and there is no way to plan a “what if” scenario cycle.
• A new cycle expires nothing. “Not started this cycle” means this cycle has done nothing at that step, not that there is no plan. Last cycle’s plan stays in force until this one replaces it, and the card names it. See “Not started this cycle” is not “there is no plan”.
• The strip and the step never disagree. Both are drawn from the same answer worked out on the server, so the card that carries the tick and the step the panel offers are always consistent.
• A step is current, or it waits. Everything after the current step waits even if a record for it already exists, because a change further up makes what is below it stale. That is deliberate, not a missing link.
• Generating never commits. Every generate action produces a draft. Activating and approving are always a separate, deliberate press — and they are what replaces what came before.
• Nothing here creates purchase orders. Purchase orders are created from an approved procurement plan with Create purchase orders on that screen, and they are drafts. Creating them is not a sixth step of the cycle. See Procurement Plans.
• Review supplier forecasts opens the list, not a wizard. Approving each forecast happens there, from the row or from the forecast itself.
• Leave the page open while something is generating. It polls every two seconds and stops as soon as nothing is busy. If you navigate away, the job still finishes — come back and the step will have moved.
• Site health is not “this cycle”. Accuracy looks back 12 weeks and waste 90 days, whatever week you are planning.
• Dates and days are your account's. Run dates, cycle names, “overdue” and “already late” are all worked out in the account's time zone, not the server's.