Guides
When the supplier's minimum is bigger than your need
A minimum is a constraint on the order, not on the SKU that tripped it — so clear it by widening the order, not by deepening one line.
A minimum is a floor on the order, not on the item
A minimum order quantity is a term of trade, not a property of a product. Suppliers set them because setup, production runs, and freight carry fixed costs they will not absorb below a certain volume, and they express that floor in units or as a minimum order value. Either way, the unit it applies to is the order.
The way a minimum surfaces is what misleads. You go to reorder one item, the total lands under the floor, and the shortfall arrives attached to that item. The obvious repair is to fix it where you noticed it: raise the quantity on the trigger SKU until the number clears. That reads the constraint one level too low. Nothing in the term says the extra volume has to be the same product — only that the order has to be bigger. Which items make it bigger is your choice, and that choice is where the cost sits.
Two ways to close the gap, and they carry different risk
Both routes clear the same floor, and both cost the same cash today. The difference is what you own afterwards. Deepening the trigger SKU converts the shortfall into extra weeks of cover on one product — a bet that its forecast holds for longer than you were originally willing to commit to. Widening the order spreads the same money across items you had already decided to buy inside your next cycle. You are not extending a forecast; you are advancing a date.
| Closing the gap | Buy more of the trigger SKU | Add SKUs due soon |
|---|---|---|
| What the extra cover bets on | One product's demand holding further into the future than you first committed to | Nothing new — items you had already decided to buy this cycle |
| If that forecast is wrong | The whole overage is stranded in a single SKU | Each item is still wanted; only the timing was early |
| Effect on the other SKUs | None — they still need their own order, and may trip the floor again next time | Their next order is absorbed into this one, so the floor is cleared once |
| What you're buying | Depth on one line | Breadth across the supplier's catalogue |
| Obsolescence exposure | Concentrated — one product carries all of it | Distributed, and bounded by how soon each item was due |
The asymmetry is the point: one route concentrates the risk of the fill on a single demand curve, the other spreads it over decisions you had already made.
Suppose a supplier's minimum order value is $500 and the item that triggered the reorder only needs about $180 of stock. Clearing the floor on that line alone means buying roughly 2.8× what the forecast asked for — all of it riding on one product. Adding two other items from the same supplier that were due in about three weeks clears the same $500 while every unit still matches a quantity you had already planned to buy. (Illustrative numbers.)
Which SKUs earn a pull-forward
The candidates for a pull-forward are the items you were going to order from this supplier anyway, just not today. Rank them by days of cover — projected demand against what is on hand and already inbound — and work down from the shortest.
Inventory theory has a name for ordering several items together to share a fixed cost: joint replenishment. The standard mechanism is a can-order policy. Each item carries two thresholds — a must-order point, the level at which it triggers an order on its own, and a higher can-order point. When any item hits its must-order point and forces an order, every other item at or below its can-order point joins it. The must-order point is the item's ordinary reorder point; the can-order point is a deliberately looser line meaning not urgent, but close enough that riding along on this shipment beats paying for its own. A minimum order value is exactly the fixed cost that policy was built for.
The price of pulling forward is carrying it early
Pulling an item forward does not reduce what you buy over the year. It moves the purchase earlier, and you pay for the gap in holding cost — capital, shelf space, insurance, and the risk that the item stops selling before it clears.
So bound the window. A candidate that would have been ordered inside the next reorder cycle is cheap to advance. One that is three cycles out is a different decision wearing the same clothes, and should be argued on its own merits, not smuggled in under a minimum.
Two categories fail this test regardless of days of cover. Filler goods — items added only because they were cheap enough to close the gap — turn a supplier's fixed cost into your dead stock. So do SKUs near end of life, seasonal tail, or planned discontinuation: pulling those forward buys inventory you were deliberately running down.
And before optimizing the fill, check the floor itself. Minimums are commercial terms, not physics. They are frequently negotiable against volume, a longer commitment, or a track record, and a supplier whose floor you clear awkwardly every cycle has a reason to move it.
Building the order that clears the minimum
In Assisty, the minimum lives where the rest of the supplier's rules live. Min Order Value sits in each supplier's Reorder Parameters panel alongside Lead Time, Reorder Cycle, and Min Stock Cover Days — set once, and the buying table's suggested quantities use them automatically. Where one product differs, override it per variant: supplier SKU, cost, minimum order quantity, case quantity.
That gives the candidates honest sizes. Every suggestion in the buying table is computed from your sales velocity, lead times, and incoming stock, then rounded to your case sizes and capped at your maximum stock levels — which is the point: those inputs describe the item's own schedule, not the total you are trying to reach.
| Step | What Assisty does |
|---|---|
| Store the minimum | Min Order Value sits in the supplier's Reorder Parameters, beside Lead Time, Reorder Cycle, and Min Stock Cover Days (suppliers.html) |
| Feed the suggestion | Those supplier rules — plus order minimums and maximums, and per-variant overrides for MOQ and case quantity — are used automatically by the buying table's suggested quantities. They size each item; comparing the order's total against Min Order Value stays yours (suppliers.html) |
| Size the candidates | Each suggestion is computed from sales velocity, lead times, and incoming stock, then rounded to your case sizes and capped at your maximum stock levels (buying-table.html) |
| Watch the total | As you select rows, the selection shows items selected, units, and order value (buying-table.html) |
| Commit | The selection splits into one purchase order per supplier with a delivery location, or stages on the Purchase List priced with each supplier's tax and currency (buying-table.html, purchase-orders.html) |
Comparing the selection's order value against the supplier's minimum is your call; Assisty holds both numbers, not the judgment between them.
Nothing commits until you say so. Every change shows a was-to-now chip with per-row undo, and the order does not exist until you create it.
One distinction worth keeping: fit-to-budget is a ceiling tool, deferring the least-urgent items to bring a plan under a number. Clearing a minimum pushes the other way — a decision about what you are willing to own early.