Product
On hand is only half the number
A reorder engine that only reads the shelf will tell you to rebuy stock that's already on a truck. The fix is counting what's coming, not just what's already arrived.
The reorder you didn't need to make
A stockroom count is a real number, and an incomplete one. It tells you what's sitting on the shelf right now — nothing about what's already left a supplier's warehouse and is on its way to yours. A reorder engine that reads only the shelf sees a stockout coming and suggests enough to cover it, never noticing that a shipment already covers most of that same gap. Follow that suggestion and you've ordered the same stock twice: once from the supplier who already has it moving, once more because your buying tool didn't know the first order existed.
On hand is only half the number
Assisty's Smart Buying Table works from more than a shelf count. Sales velocity projects demand over the cover period you're buying for. Lead time is how long a fresh order actually takes to land with that supplier — it's the gap incoming stock has to cover before a new order could even arrive. On hand is what's physically in the location right now. Incoming from open POs is what's already been ordered and is on its way. The suggested quantity is what's left once all of that is netted against each other.
Assisty computes it like this, for a Classic Mug selling 12 units a day: a 14-day cover period projects demand of 168 units. Subtract the 60 units already incoming on an open PO, subtract the 24 on hand, and the suggested order lands on 84 — not 168. Every suggestion is computed this way, then rounded to case sizes and capped at maximum stock levels, so the number on screen is one you could order as-is. That 168 isn't a shelf-level guess, either — it's the same forecast that flags at-risk items and carries them straight into this table, updating in step the moment you ask "what if sales trend up 20%."
Where "incoming" comes from
That 60 units of incoming isn't an estimate — it's the quantity sitting on an open purchase order. Purchase orders in Assisty are staged from buying decisions in the first place: select rows on the buying table, create purchase orders, and Atlas splits the selection into one PO per supplier, seeded with the suggested quantities, ready to email out and track through to receiving. An open PO is where "incoming" comes from. Once it's out with the supplier, the units on it are already part of the picture the next suggestion is computed from.
That's the link between the two halves of the workflow. The buying table decides what to order; the purchase order carries the decision out to a supplier; the buying table reads that same order back in as stock already accounted for. Nothing needs reconciling by hand — they're reading from the same open POs.
What that changes about the list you work
Netting incoming stock changes more than one number — it changes which rows deserve attention first. The buying table doesn't rank findings by how soon something runs out. It ranks by money at stake: items that will run out before a reorder can land, and capital tied up in overstock. A SKU with a fast-approaching stockout but small dollar exposure can rank below a slower-moving item quietly holding thousands of dollars in inventory, because the second one is the bigger number even when it feels less urgent.
That ranking only holds up if the quantity underneath it is trustworthy, which is exactly what netting incoming and on-hand buys you. A suggested order that already accounts for what's on its way is a number you can act on immediately — not a stockroom count you still have to cross-reference against a stack of open POs before deciding what's real.
And the loop does close. Receive against the PO when the shipment lands, and Atlas syncs the stock straight to on hand — the units that were "incoming" this morning are just there now, counted once, not twice, the next time the table runs the math.