Enhanced Planning Worksheet Setup

The Enhanced Planning Worksheet Setup page controls how the Enhanced Planning Worksheet evaluates supply, demand, inventory availability, and purchase planning.

Use these settings to determine which types of demand and supply are included when reviewing planning information and when calculating a purchase plan.

Extended Purchase Planning

The Extended Purchase Planning setting controls whether the Calculate Purchase Plan action is available from the Enhanced Planning Worksheet.

Available options are:

• Enabled: Enables the Calculate Purchase Plan action.
• Disabled: Prevents users from running the extended purchase planning calculation from the worksheet.

The default value is Enabled.

Sales Demand Evaluation

The Sales Demand Evaluation setting determines which sales orders are included as demand in Enhanced Planning Worksheet calculations.

Available options are:

• All Demand: Includes sales-order demand regardless of whether the sales order is Open or Released.
• Released Only: Includes demand only from Released sales orders.

The default value is Released Only.

Use Released Only when sales orders should not affect purchasing requirements until they have been released.

Include Service Demand

The Include Service Demand setting determines whether outstanding service demand is included in purchase planning calculations.

Available options are:

• Never: Excludes service demand.
• Open: Includes open service demand.
• Released to Ship: Includes service demand that has been released to ship.

Use this setting when service operations consume inventory that should be considered when determining replenishment requirements.

Include Sales Returns

The Include Sales Returns setting determines whether outstanding sales return orders are treated as incoming supply.

A sales return represents inventory expected to come back from a customer. When included in planning, the outstanding return quantity increases the available supply considered by the Enhanced Planning Worksheet.

Available options are:

• Never: Excludes all sales return orders.
• Open: Includes sales return orders with an Open status.
• Released: Includes sales return orders with a Released status.
• All Demand: Includes both Open and Released sales return orders.

The default value is Released.

For example, if an item has a shortage of 10 units and there is a Released sales return order for 4 units, selecting Released causes those 4 units to be considered incoming supply. This can reduce the quantity that needs to be replenished.

Sales return quantities are included only for the applicable item, variant, and location.

Include Purchase Returns

The Include Purchase Returns setting determines whether outstanding purchase return orders are treated as demand.

A purchase return represents inventory that is expected to leave your inventory and be returned to a vendor. When included in planning, the outstanding return quantity increases demand rather than available purchase supply.

Available options are:

• Never: Excludes all purchase return orders.
• Open: Includes purchase return orders with an Open status.
• Released: Includes purchase return orders with a Released status.
• All Demand: Includes both Open and Released purchase return orders.

The default value is All Demand.

For example, if 5 units currently appear available but a purchase return order will send 3 units back to the vendor, including the purchase return causes planning to account for those 3 units as outgoing inventory.

Purchase return quantities are included only for the applicable item, variant, and location.

Expired Inventory Handling

The Expired Inventory Handling setting determines whether expired inventory is considered available when calculating planning availability.

Available options are:

• Include Expired: Includes inventory without excluding quantities based on expiration date.
• Exclude Expired: Excludes qualifying expired inventory from the available quantity used for planning.

Use Exclude Expired when inventory that is expired, or will expire before it can satisfy demand, should not reduce a suggested replenishment quantity.

When Exclude Expired is selected, the Expired Inventory Lead Time setting determines the cutoff date used to evaluate expiration dates.

Expired Inventory Lead Time

The Expired Inventory Lead Time setting specifies a date formula used with the Business Central work date to calculate the inventory expiration cutoff date.

For example:

• A blank value uses the current work date as the cutoff.
• <1W> sets the cutoff approximately one week after the work date.
• <1M> sets the cutoff approximately one month after the work date.

When Expired Inventory Handling is set to Exclude Expired, positive inventory quantities with expiration dates before the calculated cutoff date are excluded from planning availability.

This allows purchase planning to account not only for inventory that is already expired, but also inventory that may expire before it can reasonably satisfy upcoming demand.

How the settings work together

The Enhanced Planning Worksheet combines these settings when determining supply, demand, and replenishment requirements.

In general:

• Sales orders contribute demand according to Sales Demand Evaluation.
• Service requirements can contribute demand according to Include Service Demand.
• Sales returns can contribute supply according to Include Sales Returns.
• Purchase returns can contribute demand according to Include Purchase Returns.
• Inventory contributes available supply, subject to the Expired Inventory Handling and Expired Inventory Lead Time settings.
• Extended Purchase Planning determines whether users can run the Calculate Purchase Plan function.

These settings affect Enhanced Planning calculations and related supply/demand displays, helping ensure that purchasing recommendations reflect the types of transactions your organization considers relevant to planning.