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Inventory allocation

Allocate available stock across channels by demand priority. Pull inventory, forecasts, and orders. Calculate fill rate and ship the allocation plan to operations.

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The prompt

I want to allocate available inventory across channels based on demand priority. Can you build me a flow that pulls stock from NetSuite and demand forecasts from Excel, joins them with Shopify and Amazon Seller Central order data by SKU, applies priority-based allocation logic, and outputs a fill rate and allocation plan by SKU and channel?

Just copy and paste the prompt into a new Parabola flow to get started.

What Parabola builds

A workflow with seven steps you can edit:

1. Pull available stock. From NetSuite or your ERP. On-hand by SKU and warehouse, with reservations and damaged stock excluded.

2. Pull the demand forecast. From Excel, your planning system, or a forecast spreadsheet the planner maintains. Demand by SKU and channel for the upcoming period.

3. Pull live orders. From Shopify and Amazon Seller Central. Open orders, pre-orders, and confirmed wholesale POs.

4. Standardize the SKU. Trim, uppercase, strip prefixes, map between code systems. Same SKU across systems lines up on the same row.

5. Apply the allocation rules. Priority order across channels, minimum reserves per channel, max allocation per cohort, customer-tier overrides for wholesale.

6. Calculate fill rate. Per SKU, per channel, with the gap surfaced where demand exceeds available stock.

7. Output the allocation plan. A table per channel with the allocated units, the fill rate, and the gap. Plus an alert for SKUs where the gap is over the threshold.

Why teams stop doing this manually

Allocation is the kind of decision that nobody wants to make in a workbook. There are usually three channels asking for stock, two warehouses with the supply, and one operations lead trying to keep everyone whole. The rules exist in someone's head. The decision lives in a tab that gets emailed around on Friday afternoon.

The manual version is fine when one channel dominates. The second the brand sells through wholesale, DTC, and Amazon at meaningful volume, the workbook becomes a part-time job. Every week, the planner re-pulls inventory, re-pulls forecasts, re-pulls open orders, and re-runs the allocation by hand. When demand changes mid-week, the workbook does not change, and the channel that loses out finds out by stockout.

The judgment in allocation is the policy. Wholesale gets priority during a retail launch, DTC gets priority during a brand push, Amazon gets a minimum reserve. The policy is a conversation. The math is a flow. Separate the two and the policy stops being shaped by whatever the workbook can do.

How it works

Step 1. Paste the prompt.

Open Parabola, paste the prompt in section 2, and let it ask follow-up questions about your channel mix, your priority rules, and how strict the channel minimums need to be.

Step 2. Connect your data.

NetSuite, Shopify, Amazon Seller Central, and the forecast spreadsheet. Plus the priority table and the channel master.

Step 3. Run it weekly, or daily during peak.

The flow refreshes against the latest stock and orders, recalculates the allocation, and posts the plan to ops.

Related prompts

FAQ

Does this work for brands that sell across DTC and wholesale?

Yes. The priority table handles channel mix natively. Wholesale customer tiers can override the default rules for key accounts during a launch window.

What if my forecast is at category level and my orders are at SKU level?

The flow rolls up or breaks down to match. Forecast by category gets distributed across SKUs by historical share. SKU-level orders aggregate into category before comparison if your reporting needs that view.

Can the flow write the allocation back to the channel or the WMS?

Yes. Once operations approves the plan, the allocation can push to the WMS as fulfillment instruction or to a channel as a reserve. Most teams keep human approval before any write-back.

How does it handle short-shipped POs from suppliers?

Available stock is recalculated on every run. When inbound shipments slip, the allocation flexes automatically and surfaces the new gap.

How is this different from running the allocation in Excel?

Excel works for stable demand and one channel. It collapses across three channels with daily changes. The flow refreshes against live data, applies the rules consistently, and shows the decision logic so the planner can audit each call.
Let the policy decide the allocation, not the workbook.
Paste the prompt, point it at your stock, forecast, and channel orders, and let the allocation refresh on its own.
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