Tether moves supply planning off spreadsheets without a long implementation

Tether moves supply planning off spreadsheets with an implementation that typically takes mere weeks. Tether's team handles the data migration and mapping for you, and no data cleaning is required. Once you are live, Tether tracks stock by state and drafts purchase orders that respect your supplier minimums and lead times.

Spreadsheets stop working as the business grows

Spreadsheets work for a supply plan until SKU counts, channels, and warehouses grow.

Our earlier post on why food and beverage brands need demand planning covered where spreadsheets fall short. Spreadsheets work when brands have a small number of SKUs, one primary channel, and a straightforward warehouse setup. Past that point the logic is buried in complex formulas known only to a few people. New SKUs, channels, or warehouses require major template surgery. Spreadsheets also make it difficult to enforce consistent MOQs and pack rules. They concentrate institutional knowledge in a few "Excel owners" and that creates risk.

The deeper problem is that a spreadsheet only changes when someone edits it. Sales, stock, and supplier dates keep moving, so a manual file is always catching up. In Tether, your forecast updates on its own when a shipment slips.

A real supply plan draws on many kinds of data

Supply planning draws on several kinds of data at once. In a spreadsheet, every planning cycle turns into a manual copy/paste exercise.

Here is the data Tether works with in place of those tabs:

• Demand planning pulls sales from Shopify, Amazon, EDI, ERP, or data warehouses like BigQuery and Snowflake.
• Sales orders flow in from Shopify, Amazon, TikTok, and wholesale EDI and are routed to the right warehouse.
• Tether connects to the warehouses and 3PLs you already use.
• Tether tracks stock as on hand, sellable, committed, unsellable, in production, and in transit.
• Tether respects MOQs, lead times, batch sizes, and pallet counts for each supplier.
• Tether syncs purchase orders with your ERP and shows how incoming stock affects your forecast.
• Tether supports multi-layer BOMs for semi-finished goods and kits.

Sales numbers update near real-time with lightweight delta syncs. The supply planning page covers the supplier settings in more detail.

The move itself is a quick turnaround

The move typically takes mere weeks.

Every plan includes a dedicated Slack channel or email for support and optional weekly 30-minute calls during onboarding. Use those calls to walk Tether's team through how your team plans today.

After go-live you plan in a system built for supply planning

Once the move is done, your team plans in Tether instead of the spreadsheet.

Tether predicts the stockout date per SKU per warehouse. Purchase order drafts appear the moment your coverage hits your reorder point. Coverage is the days of stock you have left. Each draft already respects your supplier minimums, lead times, and preferences.

You get flagged the moment a delivery date slips, long before it becomes a stockout. You can base every reorder on what suppliers have actually delivered rather than guesswork.

The PO management page shows how Tether follows every order from draft to delivery.

FAQ

Is there a fee to get started?

Getting started adds no fee of its own. Tether charges no usage fees, no per-user fees, no data fees, and no onboarding fees.

Can we keep our ERP, 3PL, and WMS?

You can keep the systems that run your operations today. Tether can run as a planning layer on top of the ERP you already have, replace an ERP you have outgrown, or serve as the foundational system for a brand with no ERP yet. Your 3PL or WMS still runs the floor.

What support do we get after go-live?

Support does not end when onboarding does. The dedicated Slack channel or email that comes with every plan stays your line to Tether's team after go-live.