What it is
The terminal stock ceiling is the most stock, valued at cost, a boxed commitment may still be holding when its window closes. It is a ceiling, not a floor: the promise is to finish clean, with no more than this left. A boxed commitment may declare it beside the five, and only a boxed one: a rolling commitment has no close and so has no terminal stock, and a ceiling declared on one is refused.
How Tightly decides it
Declare does not set it today. Its Finish clean row is a different promise, a percentage per channel that Declare reviews and then tells you is not kept on the record. Where a ceiling has been declared, Amend carries it through exactly as declared and adds none. Tightly does not suggest one: the close reading measures money and units, not a sell-through share, so the ceiling is money at cost. Undeclared is unknown, never zero. A floor read as zero would be met by everything; a ceiling read as zero would be the strictest promise the system could hold and would breach every commitment that declared nothing, so an absent ceiling is not scored, and what is left is still measured and reported.
It is the one declared number scored only after the window has passed its end, which is the only moment a terminal figure can honestly be measured. Until the window has passed its end, each week reads not applicable yet, with the close date named in the reason. After the close the verdicts engine reads the same close reading the close preview and the close receipt use, so a verdict and a receipt cannot disagree about what is left: the variants on hand, their units and their value at cost, with unknown stock and unknown cost counted separately rather than folded into a total. Over the ceiling is a breach, because stock nobody could value can only add to the pile; under it with any unknowns present reads not measured, because a promise is not marked kept on stock nobody valued. Stock on styles that never sold still counts against the ceiling and is disclosed beside it, never deducted. A pile that stays over the ceiling three weeks running turns urgent.
The plan of record's monthly closing stock targets are the same term one grain finer. The two compose: the header's ceiling for the season, the months' path to it, and the lock refuses a plan whose last month closes above the promise.
The words on the face
| Word | Where | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Finish clean | Declare | A percentage per channel reviewed on Declare and not kept; it does not declare this ceiling |
| Left at close | Close the book | The name the close gives the ceiling, read against what is left |
| not applicable yet | The weekly verdict | The window has not closed; the close date is named in the reason |
| not measured | The weekly verdict | No ceiling is declared, the scope is a channel, or unknowns keep the pile from being shown under it |
Where the scope is a channel, the variants cannot be listed and what is left is unknown rather than zero; the row says so in a sentence.
What you can do about it
Once the window has passed its end, the weekly verdicts score it every week. Close the book says whether what is left at close crossed it. Close asks where the residue goes, carry over, evergreen, markdown or return to vendor, and a carry over or evergreen must name the commitment that takes it; no stock moves. Work the buy reads the declared ceiling while the season is still being bought.
Glossary line
The terminal stock ceiling is the most stock at cost a boxed commitment may still hold when its window closes; a ceiling scored only after the close, and unknown rather than zero when undeclared.