Locations are an important component to data actualization and planning workflows. Even if you are not reporting or planning explicitly at the location level, your locations serve as the linkage to classify your data and plans at the channel or region levels. Please see below for a detailed walkthrough of how to import and manage locations in Toolio
Importing Locations
To import your locations, simple navigate to your Toolio Settings > Imports. You can click 'New Import' and select Location:
You can find a sample Location import here which can be used as an import template. You can also find documentation around the required fields here.
Once your import is completed, you can view and manage your location settings under Master Data > Location.
Managing Locations
If you've already imported your location data, you can manage your existing locations directly in Master Data > Location:
Here, you can directly make changes to your location settings by:
Renaming values such as 'Location Name' and 'Location External Id'
Simply click on any cell and type in the new value, making sure to save your changes when prompted
Changing 'Is Source Location' to True/False
Click on the cell and select from the dropdown, making sure to save your changes
Managing source locations
Right click on any location line and select 'Manage Sources' - you will see all Source locations (locations where 'Is Source Location' = True) populate below:
From here, you can assign the following:
Location Eligibility - Indicates whether the destination location is able to receive inventory from a source location
Lead Time (Days) - The duration in days for inventory from the source location to be received and available to sell at the destination location
Priority - The prioritization of the source location, i.e. if Source Location 1 has priority 0 and Source Location 2 has priority 1, Source Location 1 will be the preferred source
Please see here for more details around how Locations & Source locations are used when generating Receipts in Item Plan.
Supply Chain Management
You can manage the Supply Chain for Locations by using the Location > Toolio - Supply Chain view. Below are the key attributes to fill in while doing Supply Chain Management.
Is Allocation Allowed
To define locations that are eligible for allocation, a flag is available in the location master data to define the whether locations are allowed to be included in allocations. simply set the flag to TRUE for any store that is allowed to receive allocations of inventory including the Online location. The source locations do not specifically need to be selected as TRUE as they will automatically be included as required. This setting reduces the number of locations that shows up in the curves and location lists.
Location Source Setup
To drive allocation source and destination relationships, the supply chain must be defined to provide the allocation engine with the priority of sources and lead time from source to destination location.
Navigate to Master Data > Location
Right click on a location and select Manage Sources
Select the source location and enter the lead time (including picking/processing time) to transfer stock from the source in question to the destination location. Note that you can specify multiple source locations but a priority needs to be established.
Demand & Clustering Inputs
For Automated Clusters, there are few key concepts:
Is Selling Location: whether a location should be considered a selling location, i.e. included, for clustering. Any Store or E-commerce location should have this field set to True and warehouses should have this be set to True
Selling Location: which Selling Location to group non-selling locations under. For example, if warehouse-1 and warehouse-2 hold inventory for Ecomm, these should have their selling location be set to Ecomm.
Like for Like Locations
Below is further information on setting these up:
After making changes to Location attributes, make sure to go through re-generating clusters and taking snapshots. Please follow the instructions here.
Is Selling Location
This is a Location attribute that determines whether a Location should be included in clustering and Rate of Sale calculations.
To Configure
Go to Configuration > Organization Settings > Locations (or cmd+k locations)
Move to "Toolio - Like for Like Locations" view, or ensure that your view includes the `Is Selling Location` attribute.
Set
Is Selling Locationfor the locations that should be considered for clustering to: True
Selling Location
Used to group warehouses under one Is Selling Location. A typical example is as follows
Location | Is Selling Location | Selling Location |
Warehouse-Web | True | Ecomm |
East-Coast-Web-DC | True | Ecomm |
West-Coast-Web-DC | True | Ecomm |
Store-1 | True |
|
Store-2 | True |
|
Location-to-Ignore | False |
|
Selling Location is a single select, and to manage the different Options it can take, go to Settings > Options , select Selling Location and update it's values. Below is a screenshot.
Like for Like Locations
Toolio allows setting Like for Like Locations for new Locations and comp factor to anticipate future sales for New Locations. You can read more about setting like for like stores here.
FAQs
How does Toolio Allocation support multiple warehouses?
Toolio natively supports multiple warehouse allocation. For that, each store needs to be configured with the list of sources it can pull inventory from. You can set this up in Manage Sources setting explained here.
For each Destination Location, the following information would be provided:
Which source it can pull from and the priority pertaining to the source
Lead time from each of the sources
This can also be imported in data integration as can be seen in this example where Store-1 can be fulfilled from Warehouse 1 and Warehouse 2.
Once you have each source configured for a destination, Toolio's allocation algorithm generates the transfer from the higher priority source if possible, and then moves to the lower priority stores, while keeping the Lead Time from each source in consideration.
Related Articles
Using and Configuring Clusters