Helpers for Lanham Demand Planner

Helpers for Lanham Demand Planner is a Microsoft Business Central app published by Theta Systems Limited. It extends the Lanham Demand Planning app with a collection of enhancements designed to make day-to-day demand planning faster and more intuitive.

The enhancements range from cosmetic improvements — such as promoting commonly used actions onto the action bar — through to practical workflow additions like viewing forecast values as sales amounts, seeding new forecasts from prior-year actuals, and adding supporting administrative reports that can be scheduled in the job queue.

Prerequisite

This app requires the Lanham Demand Planning app to be installed first.

Feature Summary

The table below lists every feature included in this app and describes what it does.

Collaborative Forecasting

Feature	Description
Advanced Forecast Worksheet	A new forecast worksheet page that lets you toggle between viewing forecast quantities and sales amounts. Includes comparison modes (vs. last year or vs. existing forecast), a configurable price date, and period name display options.
Show Value Type on Forecast Customer	Adds a Show Value Type control to the standard Forecast Customer page, allowing you to switch the sub-page between the quantity view and a sales-amount view without leaving the page.
Forecast Price Method	A new setup option on the Collaborative Forecast Setup that controls how unit prices are calculated when displaying sales amounts. Options include using the customer's price/discount, the item unit price with a forecast discount group, or the plain item unit price.
Forecast Discount Group	An additional setup field that lets you nominate a specific item discount group to use for forecast amount calculations, rather than relying on individual customer discounts.
Use Last Year Actual if no Forecast	A setup option that automatically seeds the New Forecast values from prior-year actuals when a new forecast is first generated for an item that has no existing forecast. Can be set to No, Confirm First, or Always.
Update Forecast with History	An action on the Forecast Customer page that runs a report to copy last year's history into the new forecast for any items that do not yet have forecast values, saving manual data entry.
Customer Item Reference on Forecast	Adds the customer's own item reference number as a lookup column on the Forecast Customer Item page and the Advanced Forecast Worksheet, making it easier to match items to customer part numbers.
Last Year Quantity on Forecast Lines	Adds a calculated Total Last Year (Qty.) field and Sales Order Qty. field to collaborative forecast lines, giving side-by-side visibility of what sold last year and what is already on open sales orders.

Procurement Units & Alert Lines

Feature	Description
Item Classification Fields on Procurement Units	Adds lookup columns for Item Summary Code 1–3, Item Category Code, and Inventory Posting Group to both the Procurement Unit list and card, drawn directly from the item record, to support filtering and grouping by item classification.
Manual Bypass Replenishment Visible	Makes the previously hidden Manual Bypass Replenishment field visible on the Procurement Unit card so buyers can set it without customising the page.
Promoted Actions on Procurement Units	Promotes the most-used actions — View Forecast, Location Inventory Roll Up, Item Usage, Usage Ledger Entries, and Vendor Performance — onto the action bar of the Procurement Unit list and card for faster access.
Division Code & Item Description on Alert Lines	Adds Division Code and Item Description lookup fields to the DP Alert Lines page, pulled from the procurement unit and item record respectively, to improve item identification without drilling into each record.
Open Purchase Lines from Alert Lines	Adds an Open Purchase Lines action to the Alert Lines page that navigates directly to outstanding purchase order lines for the alerted item, allowing buyers to check what is already on order without leaving the alert list.
Promoted Actions on Alert Lines	Promotes View Forecast, Location Inventory Roll Up, Surplus List, and Open Purchase Lines onto the Alert Lines action bar.

Item Usage

Feature	Description
Item Usage List Default Sort	Changes the default sort order of the Item Usage list to descending, so the most recent usage periods are shown first.
Promoted Actions on Item Usage	Promotes Adjust Usage, View Forecast, Location Inventory Roll Up, and Usage Ledger Entries onto the Item Usage list action bar.

Vendor Buying Calendar

Feature	Description
Promoted Actions on Vendor Buying Calendar	Promotes the most frequently used actions — including Suggested Order, Create Suggested Order, Create Multiple Suggested Orders, Open Purchase Orders, and related reporting actions — onto the action bar for quicker access.

Role Centres

Feature	Description
Demand Planner Tiles on Business Manager Role Centre	Adds Buyer Activities, Current Inventory Level, and Historical Inventory Value tiles, plus a Demand Planner action group with navigation links to key demand planning pages, to the Business Manager Role Centre.
Demand Planner Tiles on Purchasing Agent Role Centre	Adds Buyer Activities, Current Inventory Level, Historical Inventory Value, and reporting actions (Stocking Decision Review, Inventory Turns, Forecast Accuracy, Surplus and Excess Inventory Value, Customer Forecast vs Actual) to the Purchasing Agent Role Centre.
Processing Errors Cue on Buyer Activities	Adds a Processing Errors cue to the Buyer Activities tile showing the count of errors logged by the demand planning background processor in the last 10 days, with a drill-down to the full processing log.

Production Planning

Feature	Description
Get First Production Date From	A setup option in Inventory Management Setup that controls which production order statuses (Planned, Firm Planned, Released) are considered when calculating the first available production date for an item. Select Location Setup Only to ignore production orders entirely and rely solely on the Production Plan Locked Through date on the location card.

Administration & Background Processing

Feature	Description
Create/Update Vendor Buying Calendars	A report that creates or updates Vendor Buying Calendar entries from procurement units in bulk, with an option to set a Frozen Review Cycle Days value across all matching records.
Update Procurement Units	A report that updates procurement units with replenishment source information derived from purchase order history, useful for correcting records where the replenishment source was missing.
Update Procurement Units from Items	A report that synchronises procurement unit replenishment source settings from the item card, optionally updating the replenishment source type and production group code in bulk.
Periodic Setup Helper	An administration report designed to be scheduled in the job queue. It automatically updates the Production Plan Locked Through date on location cards using a configurable date formula, eliminating the need for manual updates.
Initial Item Ledger Entry Update	A report that backfills historical usage ledger entry date information for locations where advanced forecasting is enabled, typically run once during initial setup to ensure prior-year usage history is correctly reflected.
Vendor Buying Calendar Hotfix	A background event subscriber that prevents null datetime errors when modifying Vendor Buying Calendar records, ensuring Order Create Date and Order Creation End are always populated.