Demand planning is how you manage the orders you place with your suppliers and manufacturers — the "buy side" of your operation. Once set up, Pesto will help you turn your sales forecast into supplier purchase orders, optimise your truck loads, and give your team full visibility on incoming stock.

Before you start, make sure your products are set up in Pesto (see Section 2). Demand planning works by mapping your sell-side SKUs (what you sell to retailers) to your buy-side products (what you order from manufacturers).

Step 1: Setting Up a Supplier

Go to Profiles > Suppliers and click Add Supplier. Fill in the supplier name and address details, then save.

The most important field is the Supplier ID — this is what links Pesto to the correct contact in Xero. Here's how to find it:

  1. Open Xero and go to Purchases > Suppliers
  2. Click on the supplier's name to open their profile
  3. Look at the URL in your browser — find the long string of characters that comes after contact- and before the next /
  4. Copy that string (it'll look something like 6090ab12-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx)
  5. Paste it into the Supplier ID field in Pesto
  6. Click Save Changes

Xero doesn't surface supplier IDs in an obvious place — the URL is currently the only way to get it. Once it's in Pesto, you won't need to do this again.

If you have multiple manufacturers, repeat this for each one.

Step 2: Adding Products to a Supplier

Once your supplier is saved, click the pencil (edit) icon next to their name and go to the Ingredients tab.

Click the green Add Ingredient button and fill in the following for each product you buy from this supplier: