MRP dependent forecast for variant products

Hi ​@kyle90 

Forecast consumption in Acumatica works per Inventory ID — sales orders only net against the forecast of that same item, so there's no native way for B–G's orders to consume A's forecast. What you're seeing is expected, not a bug.

One idea worth testing: since the long-lead items are the shared components, skip forecasting at the color/FG level and put the forecast directly on the component. Sales orders for any variant would explode down to that component via the BOM and net against its forecast there.

If that doesn't hold up, the other option is a custom modification to the forecast consumption logic so it groups items sharing a BOM and consumes forecast across the group. That's a meaningful customization touching core planning logic, so I'd treat it as a fallback, not a first move.

Yes - I wouldn’t have described this as a bug, but was looking for thoughts on how to possibly configure  for the scenario

Forecasting at the component level wouldn’t work since 1 - the BOMs are complex, multi-level and shared across an even wider group of items & 2 - we don’t take sales orders for the components, so that doesn’t resolve for having a dependent forecast that’s consumed by sales. In fact, it might be even worse than the current challenge

I’m thinking the best solution is a GI with some custom formulas to net out the differences, but that’s kinda hokey and leaves us without the ability to use inventory planning tools for generating POs/ production which is really unfortunate 

You could introduce a phantom planning item (e.g. ITEM-0) that consolidates the forecast for the entire color-variant group (ITEM-A through ITEM-D).

Associate a Planning BOM with ITEM-0 that contains only the common long-lead components and subassemblies shared by the variants. Optionally, you can also list the finished-good variants themselves as components of ITEM-0 (with the quantities that correspond to the consolidated forecast).

Then configure a business event that fires when a sales order for any of the variants is approved: the event reduces the remaining forecast quantity of ITEM-0 by the ordered quantity. This way the dependent demand for the common components is correctly netted against the single consolidated forecast. You never create a production order for the item-0.