What it is

Under every commitment sits a plan of record: the month by month sheet that says what still has to arrive. It is not the five of the commitment. Availability floor, sell-through pace, margin floor, buy envelope and chase reserve are the promise; the plan's terms are the arithmetic under the promise.

The plan has five terms a planner can type, per category per fiscal month: planned sales, markdown, shrink, the closing stock target, and the level the season's first month opens with. One identity closes on them, worked in cents: receipts needed is planned sales plus the month's cost reductions plus the closing stock target, less the level the month opens with. The cost reductions are the planned shrink, or one cost write-off figure where a row was typed that way; a price markdown changes revenue, not the cost of stock, so it is recorded beside the identity and never added to receipts. What is still to place is receipts needed less what is placed for that month, signed, so a month ordered past its need shows as negative. The month is what is typed and signed; the week is what the ledger reads, so each month is phased onto its Sunday weeks and the weeks always sum back to the month.

How Tightly decides it

Every cell says where it came from, in one word. A cell nobody typed reads the forecasting engine's own curve and moves with it. A typed cell stops moving, which is the point of typing it, and keeps the engine's figure at the moment it was typed over, so the override is a number Tightly can score later rather than a disagreement nobody recorded.

Seed fills only empty cells and never replaces a typed one: sales from the demand forecast, markdown from last season's own realised rate by position in the season, closing stock from what was counted at the close of last season's months, and a markdown rate or cover target from the company's own declaration where it has made one. Shrink is never seeded, because nothing on the platform measures it. Markdown and shrink are held apart, since one changes revenue and the other the cost of stock; each is typed as money or as a rate of the month's planned sales, with the other form derived and served beside it. A closing target typed as weeks of cover is turned into a level by the planned sales of the weeks that follow, and the conversion is named rather than written into the declared cell.

All terms or no figure. A receipts figure worked out from part of the plan would command a buy nobody planned, and markdown typed without shrink leaves the reductions leg unsaid, and the levels telescope, so a missing closing target breaks the chain forward as well as its own month. The reason names the missing terms in the identity's own order. Lock the budget freezes the whole grid as a version; the live grid is the forecast and keeps moving, so the forecast against the budget is a figure and not an impression.

The words on the face

The source word under a cell or under a column's title:

Declared · Demand forecast · Last season · Analog · Price scenario · Order book

The last is the accounts' leg read from what the account has booked, said so rather than passed off as a forecast. The sentences that stand where a figure cannot:

A markdown nobody planned is not a markdown of nothing.

Shrink is not measured anywhere on this platform, so last season cannot supply it. It stays a figure somebody types.

No budget has been locked for this commitment, so there is one plan line here and it is the forecast. A budget is the plan as it stood when somebody signed it.

What you can do about it

On Declare the plan, type a cell or a whole row in one write, press Seed the empty cells to fill what is empty, and Lock the budget when the plan is signed. Clear a cell to have the engine's figure back. Open to buy reads receipts needed and what is still to place off the same terms, the desk's money line carries the plan's need as its own stop, Plan need, and the cash gate draws what is still to place before a purchase order exists. A lock is never undone; a new lock is a new version and the old one stays.

Glossary line

The five terms of a plan are planned sales, markdown, shrink, the closing stock target and the opening level, typed or seeded per category per month with a source word each; the receipts identity closes on them in cents, with markdown recorded beside it rather than added.