Toolio always rounds a recommended transfer quantity to a whole unit or order multiple before sending it. Rounding Protection is the safeguard that keeps that rounding from accidentally leaving a store projected to run out of stock before its current order cycle ends.

When Toolio calculates a transfer quantity, it rounds that quantity to a whole unit (or to the item's order multiple, if one is set). Normally this rounding is harmless — it's the nearest whole number either way.

But occasionally, rounding down can leave a store projected to run out of stock (0 or negative units on hand) before its current order cycle even ends — not because true demand wasn't met, but purely as a side effect of the rounding math. Rounding Protection checks the store's projected inventory position against the end of that order cycle (in days or weeks depending on how your tenant is configured), and if rounding down would send it negative, Toolio rounds up instead — so the store has enough stock to last until the shortfall is resolved.

Toolio doesn't recommend transfers on a fixed calendar schedule. Each day or week (depending on whether your tenant uses Day Level or Week Level Allocations), it checks whether a store's projected on-hand inventory has dropped to (or below) its safety stock level, and recommends a transfer when it has a need. Under a steady, flat sales pattern that reorder point tends to get crossed roughly once per order cycle — but it's not an enforced cadence. Because the trigger is inventory position, not the calendar, the actual spacing between recommendations shifts with real demand.

This matters most for slow movers. When the ideal (unrounded) quantity needed in a cycle is a small fraction of a unit, rounding it down to the nearest order multiple can land on zero. Without a safeguard, that could repeat cycle after cycle and never correct itself — the store stays at or below its safety stock level indefinitely. Rounding Protection breaks that loop by shipping at least a minimal quantity instead. It only kicks in when skipping the round-up would otherwise create a stockout within the current order cycle — it isn't a general rounding-up rule.

For example, say a store's order cycle is 7 days and its safety stock is 14 days. If rounding the transfer quantity down would leave the store at 0 or negative units by day 7, Rounding Protection rounds up instead, so the store has enough stock to make it through the full cycle. Safety stock covers the days after that, but it isn't part of what Rounding Protection checks.

Setup: a store sells 0.3 units/day (about 2/week), has an order cycle of 7 days and a safety stock of 1 day, transfers in whole units. Demand over the cycle is 0.3 × 7 = 2.1 units, and the safety stock target is 0.3 × 1 = 0.3 units.

The contrast case shows this isn't a blanket round-up rule: with 1.2 units on hand instead of 1, the day-7 projection is already positive, so Toolio ships the strictly-rounded quantity and Rounding Protection stays out of it.

Rounding Protection is on by default. It can be turned off if you'd rather have strict rounding rules apply even when that occasionally leaves a store projected to run out before its next order cycle. This behavior is controlled by the feature flag isRoundProtectionTurnedOff — set it to true to disable Rounding Protection, or leave it false (the default) to keep it on. See Feature Flags in Toolio for more information on feature flags. To request a change, reach out to your Customer Success Manager.