Can I lock the safety stock manually?

Yes. Lock at the item level with a reason. Locked items show a small padlock in suggestions so a purchaser knows the number is intentional, not calculated.

How fast does it react to lead-time slips?

Lead-time variance updates as receipts post. A persistent slip from a supplier raises the calculated safety stock at the next reorder review, not three months later.

What about seasonality?

Safety stock is recalculated every day. It scales continuously with the current forecast — higher heading into peak, lower coming out of it — so you carry the buffer that matches today's demand profile, not last quarter's.

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 then turns the whole picture into concrete, explainable 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 demand chart with historical, future and forecast curves

Functionalities · 10

Advanced tier

uPurchase · Safety Stock & Service Level

Safety stock from first principles, not a flat number.

Set a service-level target. Let the system compute the safety stock that achieves it given your demand variability and your supplier's lead-time variability. See the carrying cost on the same screen — so the tradeoff is visible, not buried.

Statistical safety stock

Computed from demand σ and lead-time σ, not a static days-of-supply. Items with steady demand carry less. Items with flaky suppliers carry more. The math is shown.

Service-level dial, visible cost

Move a target from 95% to 98% and see the inventory cost increase before you commit. Move it back if the cost is not worth the avoided stockouts.

Lead-time variability feeds in

A supplier who slips two days in three drives more safety stock than a supplier who is metronomic. The system uses your actual delivery history, not the agreed lead time.

What you see

The dial that costs money.

A service-level target is a money decision. Going from 95% to 99% can double the safety stock on a high-variability item. uPurchase shows you the cost on the same screen as the dial — in EUR carrying cost per year — so the choice is made by people who can see the price tag, not by a default set in 2019.

Per-class and per-item service-level targets
Carrying cost shown in EUR per year, recalculated on every change
Stockout history fed back: did we achieve the target we set?
Override per item with a recorded reason (e.g. customer commitment)
Locked items: safety stock you set manually that the system will not overwrite

uPurchase predicted inventory against safety stock and reorder point

When this matters

Signals you'd reach for this.

Days-of-supply is your only lever

"Hold ten days of safety stock" treats all items the same. Items with low variability are over-stocked; items with high variability are under-stocked. Both cost money.

Service level is a hope, not a number

If nobody can tell you what service level you actually achieved last quarter, you are not managing it.

Supplier slip is not in the math

When a supplier slips, lead time grows — and safety stock should grow with it. Static reorder points do not.

Carrying cost is invisible

Inventory ties up cash and warehouse space. If nobody sees the cost when they tune a parameter, the parameter gets cranked up.

FAQ

The questions everyone asks first.

Still wondering? Ask us directly →

Because a flat "two weeks of cover" gives you too much on stable items and not enough on erratic ones. The right safety stock depends on demand variability, lead-time variability and the service-level target — three things that differ per item. Holding the same buffer everywhere quietly wastes capital on the calm SKUs and stocks out on the volatile ones.

See uPurchase in a 30-minute demo.

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

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