When operations and IT leaders evaluate an inventory planning tool, the scale question is specific. How many SKUs can it handle? How many locations?
How often does the data refresh, and how long does that take? What happens when the network adds distribution centers and regions?
Here are those answers, with the benchmarks behind them and an honest view of when a larger enterprise suite would serve you better.
In short: Netstock is built for small- to mid-market businesses (SMBs)like yours. Every day, it pulls fresh data from your ERP and recalculates forecasts, safety stock and order recommendations for every SKU at every location, whether you run one warehouse or a network of distribution centers and branches.
Key takeaways
- Daily refresh, every SKU. Netstock pulls data from your ERP at least once a day, typically overnight after ERP posting. Each refresh recalculates forecasts, safety stock and order recommendations for every SKU at every location.
- Fast extraction. Most ERP extractions take 5 to 15 minutes, depending on dataset size.
- Built for multi-location networks. Distribution center planning, regional consolidation and excess redistribution handle networks with multiple warehouses and supply tiers.
- Planning grows in layers. Advanced Forecasting, Demand Planning hierarchies (by location, category, channel and product), multi-level bills of materials and the AI Pack extend the core as complexity grows.
- Access scales by location. Restricted Users get full, read-only or no access per location, so larger teams can work in the same system safely.
- Proven across 2,500+ customers. Netstock’s 2026 Benchmark Report draws on platform anonymized data from more than 2,500 customers. AI recommendation engagement held at 91% of active accounts in 2026.
- Clear fit boundary. Netstock is built for small-and mid-market inventory and demand planning.
How do you know your planning tool can’t keep up?
You rarely outgrow a planning tool overnight. It creeps up on you as friction that gets worse with every SKU, location and planner you add. If any of these sound familiar, your current setup is already under strain:
- Your overnight data load is still running when your planners start work.
- Each warehouse is planned independently, so no one sees the network as a whole.
- You’re adjusting forecasts item by item because you can’t plan at category or channel level.
- One location holds excess stock, while another orders the same item from a supplier.
- Everyone sees everything or nothing because you can’t set access based on location.
The pressure on supply chains is growing. In Netstock’s 2026 Supply Chain Planning Benchmark Report, 55% of SMBs now source from two or more supplier regions, up from 45% in 2024. Every extra region adds suppliers, lead times and freight routes for the same lean planning team to manage. And one in four SMBs sits in a “danger zone”: carrying excess inventory while still missing sales, because the stock is in the wrong mix or the wrong place.
For Metalworks, the breaking point came when the team was managing thousands of SKUs in Excel, with many custom orders that couldn’t afford delays or stock-outs. “There was just no way to stay ahead using spreadsheets,” says Marc Marchese, Assistant Manager, Operations at Metalworks.
How many SKUs, locations and users can Netstock handle?
| Measure | Netstock benchmark |
| SKUs per instance | Over 1 million SKUs per instance |
| Locations per instance | Unlimited |
| Data refresh cadence | Daily, typically overnight after ERP posting; a second daily run (e.g. midday and evening) is optional |
| ERP data extraction time | 5–15 minutes for most ERPs, depending on dataset size |
| What is recalculated each refresh | Forecasts, safety stock, risk and replenishment recommendations for every SKU at every location |
| Supply network tiers | Suppliers → distribution centers → branch locations, plus multi-level bills of materials |
| Forecast planning levels | Item-location level up to custom hierarchies built from location, category, channel and product |
| User roles | Client Administrator (all locations) and Restricted User (full, read-only or no access per location) |
| Users per instance | Up to 50 |
Will our data be up to date every morning?
Yes. Netstock plans from your ERP data and refreshes it on a schedule, so your planners start each day with recalculated numbers. Here’s what happens behind the scenes:
- Extract. A connector on your ERP server runs the data extracts and compresses them. Master data (items, suppliers, locations) is extracted before transactional data (sales, stock, purchase orders) to protect data integrity.
- Transfer. Files move to Netstock’s cloud servers over Secure FTP, encrypted with a 2048-bit key pair. The private key never leaves your ERP server.
- Validate. Netstock checks each file against MD5 validation totals before importing it.
- Recalculate. Netstock regenerates forecasts and recalculates safety stock, risk and replenishment recommendations for every SKU at every location.
- Return. Outputs such as recommended orders flow back to your ERP through the same secure channel.
Most businesses run one refresh a day, in the late evening after ERP posting is complete. If you need more visibility, you can add a second run, for example at midday.
How long processing takes depends on your data volume, integration method and network setup. Large regional consolidations, for example, add time. If your forecasts don’t need to change, your administrator can shorten a refresh by skipping forecast regeneration.
Can Netstock plan across all our warehouses, DCs and branches?
Yes. Whether you run a few branches or a multi-tier network, Netstock gives you three ways to plan it. You can combine them to match how your stock actually moves.
1. If one warehouse supplies the others: plan from the distribution center
Your distribution center (DC) sees the projected requirements of every location it supplies, month by month, offset by transfer lead time. Your DC buyer can then order from suppliers against the full network requirement, not just the DC’s own sales.
When something runs short, the Supply Chain Map lets you trace stock from suppliers and raw materials through each location to downstream locations and customers, so you can see where the problem started.
2. If branch demand is volatile, pool it in a region
A region combines sales history, stock on hand and, optionally, forecasts from several locations into one virtual planning location. It calculates its own safety stock and risk from the combined demand. That smooths volatile branch-level demand and usually lowers the total safety stock you need to hold.
You choose how regional forecasts work:
- Sum of locations: adds up branch forecasts for a consolidated view.
- Disaggregate: forecasts at region level, then splits the forecast back to branches by each branch’s share of sales.
- Recalculate: forecasts at region level only, for strategic planning.
Regions work best when you can move stock between locations quickly and cheaply. If your transfers are slow or costly, the distribution center model is the safer choice.
3. If one location has excess and another is short, redistribute before you buy
Before you place another supplier order, Netstock checks whether another location holds stock it doesn’t need. A location only releases stock above its safety stock, replenishment cycle and a configurable buffer, so a transfer won’t trigger a new supplier order at the source. You rank source locations by preference, and a minimum stockout duration stops transfers that would arrive too late to help.
More businesses are turning to this. The share of SMBs using redistribution to clear excess stock rose from 27% in 2024 to 34% in 2026, according to Netstock’s 2026 Benchmark Report.
As your team grows, control who sees what
Your administrators give each Restricted User full, read-only, or no access per location. Your planners work only in the locations they own, while administrators keep control of policies, classifications and region setup.
What happens when our planning gets more complex?
You don’t need all the software features everything on day one. Start with the core features, then add capability as your SKU counts, channels, and locations grow.
| Capability | What it adds as you grow |
| Core inventory planning | Daily SKU-level risk, classification, stocking policies, dashboards and replenishment recommendations for every location |
| Advanced Forecasting | Forecast adjustments for many items at once (by supplier, category or product class), forecast downloads and uploads, disaggregation, and group seasonal profiles for new or low-history items |
| Demand Planning | Forecasting by custom hierarchies built from attributes such as location, category, channel and product. Changes made at a higher level are distributed proportionally to the items below. Forecasts move from a statistical Computer Forecast to a refined Working Forecast and an approved Final Forecast |
| Advanced Supply Chain | Regions for pooled planning, and multi-level bills of materials that turn finished-goods forecasts into raw material orders |
| Excess Redistribution | Recommended transfers between locations before new supplier orders |
| AI Pack | Dashboard and item analysis, safety stock explanations, data troubleshooting and draft emails to suppliers and customers |
| Stock Projection | A 12-month forward view of inventory value, fill rate, stock turns, demand and supplier spend, based on your current stock and policy settings. You can test whether your policies will deliver the outcome you want before you commit |
| Container Builder | Turns order recommendations into container-ready supplier orders in minutes, packing multiple containers by volume and weight and optimizing for cost, margin or efficiency |
That means your planning team can handle more forecasts as you grow, without editing every SKU one by one.
When should we choose an enterprise suite instead?
Enterprise planning suites are built for large, global organizations with mature planning teams. Capabilities vary by vendor, but they typically center on:
- Constrained supply planning: optimizing production and distribution plans against material and capacity constraints, often across multiple tiers of suppliers
- Production scheduling: detailed scheduling down to the shop floor
- Near-real-time replanning: recalculating the full plan as conditions change, with a control tower monitoring live events across the network
- Multi-ERP consolidation: one plan built from several ERP systems across global entities
These suites usually need dedicated internal resources and external consultants to implement, and take longer to deliver value than lighter planning tools. For a large manufacturer coordinating a global network, that investment can pay off.
For SMB and mid-market businesses focused on improving inventory performance and connecting demand and inventory planning, it usually isn’t necessary. Netstock gives those businesses the planning capabilities they need, helping them reduce excess stock, avoid stock-outs and free up working capital, without the cost and implementation demands of an enterprise suite.
Is there evidence Netstock works at scale?
Yes, and it comes from Netstock’s own customer base. The 2026 Supply Chain Planning Benchmark Report draws on anonymized platform data from more than 2,500 customers, plus a survey of 150+ SMBs with revenue under $250M. The same platform plans inventory for thousands of businesses across manufacturing, wholesale and retail, in North America, Europe, APAC and Africa.
Three findings matter if you’re planning for growth:
- Daily, SKU-level visibility is the first response to disruption. 60% of SMBs say their first move when disruption hits is to review inventory and identify at-risk SKUs. Netstock recalculates that risk for every SKU at every location on each refresh.
- Heavy use goes with strong results. Netstock customers with both high stock turns and high fill rates also tended to use the platform more heavily. The report is clear that this is a correlation, not proof of cause.
- AI recommendations are used across the customer base. Engagement with Netstock’s AI-powered recommendation tool held 91% of active customer accounts in Q1 and Q2 2026, while average usage per account increased.
The gap between top and bottom performers shows what’s at stake for your business. Top-performing SMBs (“Stars”) turn inventory 7.9 times a year with a fill rate of 93.0% of demand. The bottom quartile (“Stragglers”) turns inventory 2.5 times, with a fill rate of 74.7%.
Planning across more SKUs and locations?
We’ll show you where the risk sits across your SKUs and locations and what Netstock recommends you do about it.
