Introduction
Effective demand planning depends on accurate forecasts and clear visibility into future inventory needs. While NetSuite provides standard Demand Planning capabilities, many organizations find that real-world forecasting, especially at the customer and item level, still relies heavily on Excel for flexibility and ease of use.
When forecasts must be manually aggregated outside the system, inventory burndown visibility suffers, and purchasing decisions become reactive rather than proactive. This blog outlines how a custom NetSuite solution bridged that gap by embedding Excel-style forecasting directly into the platform and automating a rolling 12-month inventory burndown, delivering real-time insight without manual intervention.
Challenge
Our client sought to implement Demand Planning in NetSuite to improve their forecasting and inventory management processes. However, after extensive configuration, the standard Demand Planning module was unable to produce a satisfactory inventory burndown report. Specifically, their goals included:
- Creating an intuitive forecasting tool within NetSuite that mirrors their current practice of managing unit sales forecasts by customer and item using Excel.
- Generating a 12-month rolling inventory burndown report by item, aggregating the forecasts to determine when additional stock purchases would be necessary.
The existing Demand Planning functionality lacked the flexibility to seamlessly integrate customer-level forecasts and translate them into actionable burndown reports without extensive manual work.
Approach
We began by conducting a comprehensive analysis of their existing Excel-based forecasting workbooks, which included:
- Customer-item-month level forecast inputs.
- Aggregated calculations to estimate projected inventory depletion by item.
- Rolling summaries that informed purchasing and replenishment decisions.
Our goal was to replicate the ease of use and visibility that Excel provided while embedding the entire process within NetSuite to eliminate manual data handling, reducing error risks, and increase forecasting agility.
Solution
We designed and implemented a custom solution within NetSuite tailored to their unique forecasting needs:
Custom Record for Forecast Management: We built a custom record to manage inventory unit sales forecasts by customer, item, and calendar month, enabling simple import of data from Excel or direct entry into NetSuite. This record design mirrored the format and layout users were accustomed to, ensuring quick adoption without additional training overhead.
User-Friendly Forecast Editing: Standard list views were developed to display forecast data in an Excel-like grid format, allowing planners to edit forecasts by customer, item, and year across months intuitively and easily.
Regular Updates without User Intervention: An automated script was created to compile the current inventory counts broken down visually into different buckets and applied these inventory counts against the summarized item unit sales forecasts to generate the rolling 12-month burndown. This logic mimics having a summary sheet in Excel to do this work offline.
Automated Rolling 12-Month Inventory Burndown: We engineered a scheduled Map/Reduce process to aggregate forecasted unit sales, combine them with current inventory balances, and calculate an accurate rolling 12-month burndown forecast for each item. This process runs automatically every few hours, ensuring planners always have real-time visibility into when inventory will deplete based on current forecasts.
Seamless Reporting Integration: The resulting burndown data is surfaced in an Analytics Workbook, where planners and executives can:
- View forecast and burndown details side-by-side.
- Identify items approaching reorder points proactively.
- Make purchasing decisions with confidence, backed by live data that updates without manual intervention.
Results
Enhanced Forecasting Accuracy: Forecasts can now be entered at the customer-item level directly in NetSuite, eliminating the need for manual consolidation in Excel.
Real-Time Inventory Visibility: Automated burndown calculations keep planners up to date, enabling timely purchasing decisions.
User Adoption & Efficiency: The intuitive design mirrored Excel workflows, resulting in rapid adoption with minimal training.
Eliminated Manual Aggregation: The team no longer needs to manually merge forecast data to generate burndown reports, freeing up critical planning resources.
Conclusion
This implementation demonstrates how NetSuite can be extended beyond standard demand planning capabilities to support real-world forecasting workflows. By embedding familiar, Excel-style planning logic directly into the platform, the solution bridges the gap between usability and system-driven automation.
Rather than relying on manual aggregation or external tools, planners now operate within a unified forecasting and inventory framework that: Aligns customer-level demand with item-level inventory planning, continuously translates forecasts into forward-looking inventory signals, supports proactive purchasing decisions without manual intervention, scales as forecasting complexity and data volume increase.
The result is not just improved visibility, but a sustainable planning foundation; one that adapts to the business rather than forcing the business to adapt to rigid, out-of-the-box tooling.
About Us
We are a NetSuite Solutions Provider with 30+ years of combined experience. We specialize in implementation, optimization, integration, rapid project recovery, and rescue, as well as custom development to meet any business need. Although every business is unique, with 40+ NetSuite clients over the last 6 years, our NetSuite Consultants have most likely seen your challenge or created a similar solution. If you would like more information on NetSuite or just have questions on your project, feel free to contact us Here.