First, go to “Store Transfers > Configure Weekly Run”:
1) Select Store Scope
The first step is to select the scope of stores you would like the system to take into account when creating the store transfer scenario. The selected category must meet two key criteria:
- Contain Subcategories – The category should be structured hierarchically (e.g., Countries → Individual Countries).
- No Overlapping Stores – Each store must belong to only one subcategory.
A good example of this is the Countries category as it includes multiple countries as subcategories and each store is uniquely assigned to a single country so no repeats across countries.
You can also create a manual category and divide the stores by regions as long as each store is placed in only one region (or subcategory).
2) Select Products
For weekly runs it’s only necessary to define a criteria for products to be automatically selected each week according to the previous week's information. You just need to go to Filters and select between:
- Category
- Family
- Season
- Section
ℹ️In case the user would need extra filters by categories created on the platform, they can contact the Nextail team to include them.
The user can also set Advanced Criteria to further restrict the search for products - this includes:
- Sell-through rate
- Stock out rate
- Stock units
- Warehouse scarcity
- Warehouse coverage
- Price range
The advanced criteria is useful in further restricting and tailoring the selection of products to include in the store transfer according to the strategic needs of the business. You can target certain products that are selling well, or that are often running out of stock through the Sell-Through and Stock-Out rates.
You can furthermore target specific products that may be running low in the warehouse through the Warehouse Scarcity and Warehouse Coverage filters, and Stock Units can also be used to target products that have a large number of units sitting in stores that may not be selling very well where they are.
Once the criteria is selected, you will be able to see the current products that comply with the criteria ordered by store subcategory. For each subcategory the mix of products will be different as it depends on the products performances on each group of stores and it will change from week to week.
ℹ️ Keep in mind that this selection of products is just for indicating the system which products to consider for the calculation, but then if they are proposed or not, will depend on the demand, stock and needs of each store, apart from the optimization parameters. This means that, even if 1000 products are selected in this screen, only 200 could be proposed to be transferred.
3) Configure Trips
Once you have your complete selection of products in the top table, select continue to proceed to the Configure Trips Screen. This page allows you to configure the trips that should take place between the stores within the scope of the scenario.
For example, if you only want to allow trips between stores within a geographical area or between a selection of individual stores that you are targeting for store transfer, this can be configured in the Allowed Trips section.
You can search for all store categories within the system or likewise search for individual origin and destination stores. You can set multiple configurations of allowed trips to ensure that you cover multiple possibilities of restrictions on transfers between stores.
Inversely, you can also forbid transfers between specific store categories, or individual stores as well in the forbidden trips section.
This functionality has several use cases, for example:
- To ensure that certain flagship stores or online stores are not included in the store transfer scenario to maintain their stock levels as is.
- To protect stock from newly opened stores.
- To avoid targeting certain stores that are being replenished from the warehouse.
Likewise this can be set for entire store categories or individual stores to exclude them from the scenario. Read more about trips configuration and empty stock here.
4) Calculate Store Transfer
Once you have configured your required restrictions on trips within the scenario, select “Continue” to proceed to the final screen in the process: Calculate Store Transfer. Here you can set the forecast and optimisation parameters that allow you to precisely configure key features of Store Transfers.
The first set of parameters relates to the Forecast - that is basically the Planning horizon to cover with the proposed quantities. We can see that it is divided in two:
- The number of days the units will be in transfer to reach their destinations from their origin stores (an average number for the lead time between all stores).
- The number of days to cover the demand in stores with the units proposed in the scenario.
The user will have to insert the total days, and the days in transfer, and the system then calculates for you the number of days the units will spend in stores as part of the scenario by subtracting the Days in Transfer from the Planning Horizon.
Furthermore you have the set of Optimisation Parameters, which are used to influence the number and quality of trips that will be generated as part of the scenario.
- Min ESI by Trip
- Number of Trips
- Merchandising Weight
- Efficiency Threshold.
- Operational Effort per Unit
Finally, we find the set of Advanced Parameters related to blocks, that allow further capability in setting restrictions on the transfers included in the scenario:
- Apply Replenishment Blocks
- Block recently moved products
- Block recently introduced products
Once you have set all these parameters, select "Calculate" in the bottom right of the screen. That will begin the calculation of the store transfer scenario, from which you can then track its status in the Store Transfers > View Past Scenarios, and review the results once it shows as 
Once everything is set, you need to contact our internal support with the desired moment of the week you want these executions to be run and you will be able to check the executions in the “View past scenarios” screen to be reviewed and submitted.
Note: all of the selected criteria can be modified at any time by following all of the previous steps.
