Does it really consider freight cost?

Yes, when you give it freight thresholds. We won’t invent a freight model for you, we’ll use yours. Most customers configure it per supplier, per origin.

What is the carrying-cost number based on?

A global default (typically 18 to 25% of inventory value per year) overridable per item. It includes capital cost, warehouse cost, obsolescence risk and insurance, and your finance team picks the components.

Can I optimise across multiple items going to the same supplier?

Yes, that’s the consolidation view. Pick a supplier and the system shows every open suggestion for that vendor, the combined freight tier, the combined MOV, and the items you can add or drop to land cleanly on a pallet or a container. One basket, one PO, no manual juggling.

Inventory & Purchasing

uPurchase

Demand forecasting and purchasing, in one screen.

uPurchase is the demand-forecasting and inventory-intelligence layer Business Central never had. It classifies every SKU, forecasts demand by location, sizes safety stock against a chosen service level, applies supplier calendars and lead times, weighs carrying cost against stockout risk, and turns it all into purchase suggestions. Every recommendation answers the question “why” before you have to ask it: the forecast, the safety stock, the lead time and the current position all live on the same row as the quantity. Edit any number and the projected stock curve updates before anything is committed to Business Central. Purchasers get to challenge the numbers instead of trusting them blind, and controllers see service level, stockouts and excess as daily KPIs rather than monthly autopsies.

uPurchase inventory chart with current and simulated inventory, safety stock and lead time

Functionalities · 10

Advanced tier

uPurchase · Order Optimization

Order quantities that respect physics and economics.

Minimum order quantities, pack sizes, pallet rounding, container fills, economic order quantity. uPurchase rounds suggestions to what your supplier and your warehouse can handle, and shows the tradeoff in carrying vs ordering cost.

MOQ and pack rounding

Round up to the nearest pack, case or pallet, per supplier and per item. The system shows the rounded quantity, the raw quantity, and the implicit days-of-supply gained.

Container and freight thresholds

When a consolidated order is 92% of a 40ft container, the system suggests filling the remaining 8% from the same supplier, and tells you which items you'll need to buy next.

EOQ with sensible bounds

Economic order quantity from carrying cost and ordering cost, kept between the MOQ and a maximum you set, so the math never recommends a year of stock.

What you see

The cheapest quantity is not always the suggested one.

Small, frequent orders cost more to place. Big orders cost more to hold. EOQ finds the balance, within what your supplier will sell you and what your warehouse can hold. uPurchase shows both numbers, so you know what you’re changing if you override it.

Per-supplier MOQ, MOV (min order value), and pack-size constraints
Pallet and container rounding with configurable thresholds
EOQ calculation with per-item ordering and carrying costs
Consolidation view: bundle items by supplier to hit MOV or freight thresholds
Inbound calendar so you can avoid stacking receipts on the same day

When this matters

Signals you'd reach for this.

Buyers round up in their heads

Hitting a pallet is a known constraint. Doing it manually wastes hours and is inconsistent across buyers.

Container space goes wasted

A 92% container is a 100% freight charge. Filling the last 8% intelligently is real money.

You order weekly because you always have

EOQ may say bi-weekly is cheaper. Without showing the math, “we always order weekly” wins by default.

Freight rounding is invisible

Buy six cases, pay for a half-pallet anyway. Buy a half-pallet, the next case is nearly free. Without showing the freight curve, purchasers leave money on the floor every week because they’re optimising the price per unit and missing the landed cost.

FAQ

The questions everyone asks first.

Still wondering? Ask us directly →

In the supplier-item record (which uPurchase reads from Business Central). Updates flow back into rules and suggestions instantly. No re-sync needed.

See uPurchase in a 30-minute demo.

A real screen-share with someone who built it. No slides.

The uTools suite