# The buy plan

Source: https://docs.tightly.io/help/finance/buy-plan
Reviewed: 2026-09-07

## The question this page answers

What three company numbers am I declaring, against what the book did, and what sales plan, receipts and cover fall out?

## What you see

### Bring an existing plan into Tightly

Attach a CSV or XLSX workbook in Ask Tightly and ask to import a Finance plan: one row per category, channel and month, every month of the year, values rather than formulas, in the workspace's verified Finance currency. Review the mapping, currency and reconciled totals before confirming a new draft. The Import a Finance plan act has the detail.

### The page

The Merchandise plan sets the company year every commitment draws against: one sales plan, carved into a figure per category and a line per side. The head reads Merchandise plan, with the plan year once a version is live. The basis line reads three terms: Retail, USD and the calendar the book was measured on.

Before a plan is saved, the head carries its figures: Last year, Categories, Sides, Receipts needed and Cover held. Once a version is live the page opens on the months grid, and Plan assumptions and Changes open from the head.

The ceiling section holds a name for the plan, the seed source (Last year, or a blend of the completed years), and three dials, Growth, Margin and Weeks of cover. Last year's margin and the cover the book ran at ride the Margin and Weeks of cover names on hover. No cover dial is drawn until a cover is declared; Declare cover opens it on what the book ran at. Put back steps back one dial move; Back to the pair returns the dials to their seed. Declare opens, in place, the three [finance declarations](../finance/declarations) the plan reads: opening balance, cash floor and carrying cost.

The carve is one table, Category, Last year, Growth applied, Sales plan and Margin, one row per category that opens to its sides. Each growth figure says how it was applied: own trend; company trend, for a category too small for a trend of its own; held flat, where the year before does not cover it. The whole company row says how every row moved to tie back. The section's door opens [Sales performance](../demand/sales) at the side grain, labelled

> Direct vs wholesale

The third section holds the eight measures by year, Sales, Markdown %, Opening stock, Receipts needed, Receipts markup %, Closing stock, Gross margin % and Open to buy, and is titled

> The model

A measure's basis word, declared, read or derived, rides its name on hover, and a year's hover says how it rolled up. A rate nobody measured reads Not measured; a figure the plan cannot yet work out reads Not computed. Pressing a measure opens its months in the grid.

The months grid has one measure control: Revenue, Gross margin, Markdown, Opening stock, Receipts needed, Closing stock and Open to buy. On a saved plan, Revenue is the working plan: Annual target, Allocated and Remaining, Allocate budget, Undo, Save draft, and a Sales performance reading of actuals for completed months and outlook for open ones. On the other measures a completed month cannot be typed, and a cell moved by hand carries a dot. [Open to buy](../finance/open-to-buy) says what that measure is here and elsewhere.

## What to do

Publish plan is the one act on a plan with no live version, with the budget state beside it (Budget not answered, Provisional, Confirmed; nothing is chosen for you). While anything is missing the button is disabled with its reason beside it:

> Still to declare: a name.

The gaps are a name, at least one category to plan, blend weights that total 100% where the seed is a blend, a growth figure and a margin figure. A reader who cannot publish sees that first:

> Publishing the plan needs an approver.

A carve whose lines do not add up is refused:

> The lines do not add up to the company number.

The press creates the plan, then publishes its version, and the receipt renders beside the button: the version is live and the plan now holds its total. A refusal renders in the same place, Not declared or Not published and then the server's sentence. A live plan is not offered Publish plan again; New annual plan starts the next year's plan.

On Gross margin, typing a month writes that cell across the plan's channels and typing the year writes the category total; on Markdown and the stock measures the months are typed one by one. Move, on Gross margin, opens a drawer, Direction, Amount, Months, Categories and Reason, with what the move would do said before its one button, Move it. Changes lists what moved, with Put back, and the plan's versions.

Publishing needs an approver: an admin, or a person named approver for the merchandise plan. Creating and editing need editor access to the plan; reading needs only a seat that can read.

## When it is empty or failed

> Last year’s sales failed to load. No changes made.

A failed read of the book, with Try again.

> No completed year of sales.

> Reading the book.

On the months grid, not published yet stands where no plan is on the book; where the plan could not be read, the grid says so; where the change log did not answer, nothing is marked as moved; and months stay read-only until the plan's channels are read.