Platform
Smart Buyer Calculator
Should you buy now or wait — and how much should you commit in each of the next twelve months without breaching storage, dropping through safety stock or overrunning the budget? Most teams answer that reactively: stock runs low, so they buy, at whatever the price happens to be that week. The Smart Buyer Calculator turns the 12-month price forecast into a purchasing calendar instead — more in the months the forecast expects to be cheap, less in the dear ones — while treating your own storage limit, safety stock and budget as hard constraints rather than afterthoughts.
What you enter
Your inputs sit down the left-hand side of the screen: pick a commodity, then enter your real operating numbers. Quantities are in the commodity's own trading unit and money is in your currency, so nothing needs converting first. Inputs auto-save in your browser, which means next week's review starts from the numbers you entered this week rather than from a blank form.
| Input | What it means |
|---|---|
| Current stock | What you hold today, before any of this plan happens. |
| Maximum storage | The most you can physically hold — the ceiling the schedule may never cross. |
| Safety stock | The minimum you never want to drop below, so a late delivery does not stop a line. |
| Monthly consumption | How fast you use it — what draws the stock back down each month. |
| Budget | The spend ceiling the whole plan has to respect. |
Beside the inputs, a market-context strip keeps the risk picture in view while you plan: the commodity's current market state — calm or turbulent, rising or falling — its HOLD or DE-RISK action cue, and its worst-case move measures, Value-at-Risk and Expected Shortfall. All three are defined in plain business language in the Analytics Glossary. A riskier read is an argument for buying earlier, or for carrying more safety stock than the schedule strictly requires.
The buying schedule vs the forecast band
The centre column overlays the recommended buy events on the 12-month forecast and its confidence band. Read it as one picture rather than as a list of dates: purchases cluster ahead of the months the forecast expects to be expensive and thin out ahead of expected dips, and the band around the line is the honest range the plan is being timed against. A wide band means you are planning against a range rather than a number — a reason to keep the schedule under weekly review, not a reason to distrust it.
| Schedule column | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Month | Which month of the 12-month horizon the recommended purchase falls in. |
| Quantity | How much to buy that month, in the commodity's own trading unit. |
| Forecasted price | The forecast value the purchase is timed against — a modelled path, not a quote. |
| Cost | Quantity against forecasted price: what that month's purchase is expected to cost. |
| Cumulative inventory | Where stock stands once the purchase lands. This is the column that proves the plan is workable: it should never climb above your storage ceiling or fall through your safety stock. |
The buy-now card
The right-hand column answers the immediate question: should you buy today? The buy-now card gives a yes-or-no recommendation with a suggested quantity and the cost you would expect to incur. Beneath it sit a cost breakdown — total, per month, storage and safety margin — and an inventory gauge showing where today's stock sits between the safety floor and the storage ceiling. Two things to check before you act on the card: whether the suggested quantity matches a delivery your suppliers can actually make, and whether the price it assumes is close to what you are being quoted this week.
Stress-test the plan with the what-if slider
The what-if slider nudges the whole forecast up or down by a percentage, which lets you ask the question the approval meeting is going to ask: “what if prices come in 10% higher than forecast?” Drag it to the worst case you read off the Risk Dashboard rather than to a round number. If the plan still fits inside the budget at that setting, you can commit to it and explain why. If it breaks the budget, you have found the size of the cushion to negotiate for before you sign anything.
Print it for approval
The page is printable, so the output doubles as the approval artefact. Attach the schedule to a purchase requisition and you arrive at the meeting with a specific proposal — buy this much in these months, and here is what happens if prices run higher than forecast — instead of a request to buy whenever stock next runs low.
What the schedule cannot do is price your contracts for you. It works from the published forecast and the numbers you typed, so tiered pricing, minimum order quantities, take-or-pay terms, lead times and anything already hedged are yours to reconcile before the plan becomes a commitment. Treat the output as a defensible starting position for that conversation, not as a guaranteed outcome.
- Pick your commodity — Open the Smart Buyer Calculator from the Procurement section of the sidebar and select the commodity you are planning. If it is not enabled for your organisation, your account manager can arrange it.
- Enter your operating numbers — Current stock, maximum storage, safety stock, monthly consumption and budget. Use figures your team would defend in an audit rather than round approximations — the schedule is only as good as the constraints you hand it.
- Read the schedule and the buy-now card — Take the chart first, for the shape of the plan against the forecast band, then work down the schedule table checking that cumulative inventory stays between your safety floor and your storage ceiling. The buy-now card is the decision for today.
- Drag the slider to your worst case — Set the what-if slider to the worst case you took off the Risk Dashboard and confirm the budget still holds. If it does not, the gap is the cushion to ask for.
- Print the plan and attach it — Print it, attach it to the approval request, and keep it as the record of what you expected at the moment you committed. Next week's review reopens the same inputs.
This is step 6 of the weekly cost review, and the order matters: run it after you have read the 12-month outlook, the worst case on the Risk Dashboard and the market regime, so the slider setting reflects a worst case you actually believe rather than a round number you picked in the meeting.
Every input on this page comes out of the weekly cost review — the routine that decides which commodities are worth planning in the first place.
Read the Procurement Guide