New products

A product that has just been listed has no sales history, but it still gets a forecast: Stockful estimates automatically from similar products you already sell, and you can point it at a specific product if you know exactly what it resembles.

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Automatic estimates

When a new product appears, Stockful looks for at least three comparable products in your own catalogue - the same product type and vendor at a similar price, or sibling variants of the same product - measures how those sold in their own first four weeks, and projects the launch at a typical rate among them. No setup needed. If your catalogue has no comparable products, the new product simply waits for its own sales, exactly as before.

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Sells like another product

On the new product’s inventory detail page, open Forecast overrides and set Forecast basis to Sells like another product. Choosing is two steps: pick the product it resembles, then - if that product has more than one variant - pick which one. The preview shows exactly what you chose, down to the SKU. Stockful measures how the chosen product sold in its own first four weeks and projects the new product at that rate. Within a minute of saving you get a projection, a projected stockout date, a reorder point and a recommended order quantity - so a launch can appear in reorder recommendations before its first sale.

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Borrowing a seasonal pattern too

Choosing a product to sell like also borrows its season, not just its rate, when that product has enough history to have one - around ten months of trading. This matters most for a product listed outside its own season. A garden game added in March has no history saying it sells through spring and summer and goes quiet by November, and its first few weeks of sales say the opposite. Pointed at a comparable product you have sold for a year or more, the new one is forecast on that product’s shape: quiet months stay quiet and the season is built towards rather than discovered late. The rate and the pattern are borrowed separately, so a comparison product with less than a year behind it still lends its launch rate - it simply has no season to lend yet. Automatic estimates never borrow a season, only a rate, because products matched on type, vendor and price are not necessarily products that sell at the same time of year. As the new product accrues its own sales the borrowed rate hands over, and once it has traded through a full year Stockful fits the product’s own seasonal pattern and stops borrowing one.

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Estimated, and clearly marked

A borrowed forecast is an estimate, and Stockful says so everywhere it is used:

• The forecast chart carries an Estimated badge, and its summary names the product the projection is based on
• The Forecast basis row on the detail page shows the source product
• Rows in reorder recommendations carry the same Estimated badge

Only the forward projection borrows. Units sold, revenue and lost sales always report the product’s own actual numbers.

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Handing over to real sales

The borrowed rate is a starting point, not a permanent setting. As the new product accrues days of real selling, its own rate takes over: after about a week of in-stock sales the forecast is an even blend, and after about four weeks it runs entirely on its own history and the Estimated marker disappears. If early sales turn out very different from the comparison product, the handover happens faster - real signal always wins.

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Choosing a good comparison

Pick something that sells to the same kind of customer at a similar price - the previous season’s version of the same item is ideal. The comparison product needs around two months of sales history so its own early weeks are measurable; if it has too little history, the forecast stays empty until the new product earns one of its own.

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The other basis options