Latent demand: what the customer asked for and did not get

Where to find it

In your account menu, in Latent demand, when the screen is turned on for your company. Without it, what the customer asked for and did not get stays on the Future demand tab of each quote.

The reach comes from the server: a seller sees their own portfolio, an administrator sees the organization. There is no filter on the screen that widens that.

The three reasons, and why the screen separates them

Each line is there for one of these reasons, and the action each one calls for is different:

• Stock shortage: the store sells the item, it just did not have it at the moment.
• Not in catalog: the code is not in the catalog. It was saved on purpose, to become an order when it comes in.
• Saved for later: there was stock and the sale was postponed by the seller's decision (credit, freight, the customer's own request). The commercial reason is recorded and does not go out in the file the customer receives.

The first two are impossibilities; the third is a decision. That is why each one has its own tab, next to All.

How an item gets into latent demand

A good part of the list fills itself, without anyone clicking anything:

• When the order is confirmed, lines whose code is not in the catalog and that stayed on the order are saved as Not in catalog, already Outstanding. At the same moment, in a store that reads stock from the ERP, whatever was short on stock becomes Stock shortage.
• When you discard a line without a product, Vendria saves what the customer asked for as Tentative. It shows up on the quote's Future demand tab, for you to confirm whether that was a real request or just cleanup.
• By hand, on a line whose code is not in the catalog, the Save for later button opens the window of the same name: check the Quantity ordered, write a Note (optional) and choose Save and remove the line or Save and keep the line. ⚠️ If you keep the line, it stays without a product and keeps blocking the confirmation until it is resolved.

Each order line generates at most one record: saving again updates the quantity, it does not duplicate.

"Trade show balance": the old name for Not in catalog

People who work trade shows call a request for a code the catalog does not have yet a trade show balance: the sales rep writes it down, the product is about to come in. On the screen this case is called Not in catalog, and the button that saves it is Save for later. It is the same record: look for it on the Not in catalog tab.

What you can do with the list

When you select lines, the selection bar shows up with Generate quote: it builds a quote from what you checked and opens the quote created.

The selection has to be from a single customer and a single store. Mixing is refused with "The selection has more than one customer. Generate one quote per customer." (or "…more than one store…"): generate one quote per customer. The quote-created notice counts what was lost along the way: lines that went in still without a catalog product and lines left out because of an unreadable stock reading.

On the line itself sit the one-at-a-time actions:

• Notify customer, which only exists when the customer is identified in the records; without a record there is nowhere to send the notice.
• Dismiss, for the line that is not going to become anything.
• Reopen, which brings a dismissed line back to the list.

Export CSV takes the list as it is filtered, up to 2.000 lines; when it hits the ceiling, the file warns you. Above that, narrow the filter before exporting.

Above the table sit two summaries (Most requested products and Customers with the most demand), calculated with the same filters as the table. Change the filter, and both change with it: they never describe a different set from what is listed below.

The statuses of a line

The status filter opens on Outstanding; All statuses shows everything.

• Outstanding: live demand, waiting for someone to act.
• Customer notified: the line has already been announced. ⚠️ This status is also used when the automatic stock or catalog notice reaches you: in that case the customer has not received anything yet.
• Became a quote: it went into a quote generated by Generate quote.
• Resolved in the quote: the source quote itself ended up fulfilling it.
• Dismissed: someone decided it is not going to become anything.
• Tentative: saved when a line was discarded, waiting for confirmation.

When the item comes back

You get a notice in the bell when an item in your demand becomes available:

• Item that was missing is back in stock: the stock in the ERP started covering the whole shortage. This only happens in a store that reads stock from the ERP.
• Requested item is now in the catalog: a Not in catalog code started to exist in the store's catalog.

The notice's Open brings this screen already filtered to the lines notified. See The bell notifications: what reaches the seller.

When it goes wrong

Dismissed a line and want to undo it? The screen opens filtered on Outstanding, so the dismissed line drops out of view and Reopen only shows up when you find it again. Change the status to All statuses. A line that vanished right after an action is usually this, not a loss.

An empty list with a store filter chosen is usually a narrowing, not an absence: set the filter back to all stores before concluding there is no demand.