Reorder what Amazon will actually store.
The quantity your sales require and the quantity your FBA account can take in this month are two different numbers. Octuno calculates both – and shows you where they diverge, before the purchase order is with your supplier.
- Forecast from sales history and seasonality
- Lead time per supplier
- Checked against your FBA capacity limit
- Suggestions grouped by supplier
Why a reorder can go wrong in two directions
A purchase quantity has to satisfy two conditions that are rarely checked together: it has to last until the next delivery – and it has to be allowed into the Amazon warehouse. Calculate only the first and you will sooner or later hit one of the two failures.
- Ordered too little
- The forecast was cautious, the lead time longer than planned, the peak arrived earlier than last year. FBA stock drops to zero, the listing loses visibility and rank, and rebuilding it regularly takes longer than the gap itself lasted.
- Sent in too much at once
- Amazon assigns every account a storage limit, measured in cubic metres per storage type. Once it is used up, the shipment can no longer be created as planned. The goods then sit in your own warehouse or at your prep centre: paid for, but not sellable – tying up exactly the capital the next order needed.
- The mistake happens weeks earlier
- You decide the quantity at the supplier; Amazon decides whether it can be stored at delivery. Between the two lie production and transport, easily two months by sea freight. Checking the limit when you create the shipment means checking it too late.
- A spreadsheet only knows one side
- Sales, coverage and lead time are things a spreadsheet handles reliably. What it lacks is the free volume in your seller account, which changes every month – and the volume of your cartons, which decides how many units fit into that allowance at all.
Which is why the restock suggestion in Octuno calculates not only when and how much you need, but also how much of it will actually get into the warehouse this month.
How the suggestion is built
Five steps that build on each other. Each one is traceable and can be overridden at any point – the suggestion is a proposal, not a black box.
- 01
Demand forecast per SKU and channel
Octuno reads the sales history from your connected channels and turns it into a 12-month forecast, set against last year and the year before. Seasonal patterns – Q4, Prime Day, a product's own cycle – therefore sit in the numbers instead of in your gut feeling. FBA and FBM are forecast separately, because the two channels behave differently.
If you know better, overwrite the value by hand and lock it against the next automatic update.
- 02
Coverage and the latest order date
Forecast and current stock produce the stock projection: the curve that ends where stock hits zero. The date of that zero point is the out-of-stock countdown per SKU. The latest order date sits exactly one lead time plus buffer before it – and only that date decides whether a product is on today's list.
The buffer is configurable; the default is 14 days.
- 03
Lead time per supplier
Lead time is not a constant but a chain: production time at the supplier, transport on the chosen route (sea, air, rail, road), goods-in at your own warehouse, prep and inbound, then storage at Amazon. A manufacturer with 30 days of production and sea freight gets a completely different order date than a wholesaler with three days of delivery – at identical sales.
That is why every product is calculated against its own supplier rather than an average across the catalogue.
- 04
Checked against the FBA limit
This is where the suggestion parts ways with a plain demand calculation. Octuno knows your stored master box dimensions, converts the suggested quantity into volume and holds it against the free storage allowance. If not everything fits, the order is not cut – the inbound shipment is split: what fits now goes now, the rest stays as a planned shipment.
The limit governs when you send in, not how much you order – that still follows demand.
- 05
Bundled into supplier orders
One suggestion per SKU is not yet an order. Octuno groups the due quantities by supplier, so that many single lines become a few purchase orders – with the stored contact details, production times, contract and packaging requirements. Confirm one and it becomes a process you can follow all the way into the warehouse: production, deposit and balance payment, freight with ETD and ETA, goods-in, FBA inbound.
Packing list, invoice and certificate of origin come out of the same data instead of being typed twice.
What you see – and what you decide
The suggestions tab is a list of products that are due, not a warning light. Every row carries the numbers the decision needs: suggested quantity, SKU, countdown to the zero point. The decision itself stays with you.
Always on Time.
Before the Peak.
Octuno analyzes historical sales data and seasonal trends. So you know weeks in advance what to send – before Halloween, Christmas, or Prime Day hit.
- ✓Season-based shipment suggestions
- ✓Configurable lead time (default: 14 days)
- ✓FBA limits are considered
- ✓OOS countdown per product
- ✓Create shipments directly from suggestions
Four decisions per row
- Take the quantity or change it
- The suggestion is a number, not a checkbox. You can accept it, round it to a carton size, adjust it to a minimum order quantity or overwrite it completely.
- Send in now or later
- The countdown shows how much time is left. Ahead of a peak you pull forward; with a tight allowance you push back. Both are deliberate decisions, not error messages.
- Split the shipment
- If the limit does not cover the full quantity, you decide which products get the free space. An item with eight days of coverage is more urgent than one with fifty.
- Discard the suggestion
- Variants being phased out, remainder stock, a product leaving the catalogue: not every calculated gap is meant to be closed.
What happens next without a detour
- Turn a confirmed suggestion into an FBA shipment in two clicks
- Print labels or download them as a PDF, carton dimensions come from the product record
- Create a DHL or UPS shipping label straight from Octuno
- Track the inbound plan and its status until the goods are sellable
What Octuno deliberately does not do here
A recommendation is worth as much as the things you do not trust it with. These five are deliberately left to you.
- It does not order on its own
- No suggestion reaches a supplier without your confirmation, and no shipment is created automatically. Octuno calculates and proposes; you are the one who triggers it.
- It does not know the future
- The forecast extrapolates from history and seasonality. A launch, a viral moment, a competitor going dark – none of that is in yesterday's sales. For new SKUs without history your own estimate is the better starting point, which is exactly what the lock function is for.
- It does not negotiate with Amazon
- Amazon sets the capacity limit monthly, based among other things on your IPI score, sales history and its own demand forecast. Octuno calculates against it and plans around it – it cannot raise it.
- It does not replace talking to your supplier
- Minimum order quantities, free production capacity, holidays such as Chinese New Year: you settle those with your manufacturer. What you learn belongs in the system as production time and supplier requirement – and the suggestion will use it from then on.
- It is in closed beta
- Octuno currently runs with a maximum of 30 testers. The building blocks described here exist, the feature set keeps growing, and feedback from the beta changes it.
Short answers
Where do the sales figures behind the forecast come from?
From the connected channels: Amazon (all EU marketplaces and Amazon.com), eBay, Kaufland, TikTok Shop and Shopify. They all run on one shared inventory, so a sale on one channel reduces it for the others too. That is precisely why average daily sales have to be built across all channels – calculate them for Amazon alone and your coverage looks too optimistic.
What happens when the FBA limit caps the suggestion?
The recommendation stands and the inbound shipment is split. You see which part of the quantity can be stored now and which part waits. You do not have to cut the purchase order for that: stock in your own warehouse is inconvenient, but still better than stock that never existed.
Does this apply to FBM and self-fulfilled orders?
Yes. Forecast and stock projection are kept separately for FBA and FBM, because the two channels have different routes and different constraints. The storage limit only affects the FBA side; lead time affects both.
Does that mean I can drop my spreadsheet?
For restock planning, yes: a spreadsheet knows neither your free storage allowance nor your current stock across all channels, and it has to be reworked by hand after every change to the catalogue. Accounting and tax are explicitly not something Octuno replaces.
Is restock planning a paid add-on?
No, it is part of the system. Octuno is a flat rate per account rather than per user, tiered by monthly order volume. During the closed beta it is free, followed by three free months.
See your first suggestion in your own account
Connect your channels, add suppliers with their production times, enter master box dimensions once – after that the first suggestion is there, with quantities, dates and the limit check.
Octuno is in closed beta: a maximum of 30 testers, free of charge, with onboarding and three free months once the beta ends.