Dealing with Ingredients, On and Off Season

Each season brings its own harvest. Summer is filled with strawberries, blueberries, and avocados. Fall brings pumpkins and sweet potatoes. Spring has rhubarb and asparagus. While, many fruits and vegetables are available year round, their increased price often makes them cost prohibitive. Other ingredients, such as certain fish and meats, are completely unavailable.

Many food manufacturers contract ingredients that are only available during specific months of the year. It doesn’t matter if they run out or need more, the manufactures are unable to order more after or before the specified months.

If ordering excess at the beginning of the year and freezing the product is an option, then PlanetTogether recommends scheduling the crop as a resource and creating a calendar based on when the crop is available. This allows PlanetTogether to pull the crops before they become unavailable, thus allowing you to have the crops needed by ordering early. 

Maybe the ingredient must be fresh, prohibiting its use during off-seasons. While this situation is highly frustrating PlanetTogether’s tools and functions makes it a little simpler. In PlanetTogether you can specify that more purchase orders may not be created and preload the purchase orders in for the dates and quantities you will be able to purchase. This way existing purchase orders will be loaded for visibility in the plan, and PlanetTogether will not create any new ones that can’t be satisfied anyway.