Allocation - Supercycle

Allocation is how Supercycle decides which of your items goes out on a cycle. Every new booking runs through it. It packs bookings onto as few items as it can, which leaves the longest unbroken free periods on the rest of your stock, so future customers see the widest possible dates and more of your inventory earns.

How it works

Allocation is run by Ally, a that maximizes the space between bookings on each item. Given the same set of rentals, the difference is visible on the item timelines: unoptimized, every item carries a few bookings with short unbookable gaps between them. Allocated, the same bookings sit on fewer items and whole items stay free.

Two item timelines for the same SKU over 16 days, the first with 10 rentals spread across all 4 items leaving short gaps, the second with the rentals packed onto 2 items and 2 items left free — The same 10 rentals across 4 items, before and after allocation

Buffers and cutoffs

Allocation reads your logistics buffers when it measures the space between bookings, so two cycles are never placed so close together that your team can’t get the item restocked, prepared, and back out in time.

Membership cycles

You can’t know when a member will send an item back, whatever your policy says. Allocation treats membership cycles as having no end date, so no other cycle can be booked against that item until it’s received.