Open to Buy refers to merchandise budgeted for purchase
during a certain time period that has not yet been
ordered. Open to Buy is also the process of planning
merchandise sales and purchases.
The Open to Buy Option is a merchandise planning
tool that assists you in setting budgets for sales activity
and merchandise inventory levels, and monitoring the
current status of the open-to-buy amount (the amount
remaining to be ordered to meet the budget).
Open-to-buy planning is performed on a classification level,
not at an item number (SKU) level. Merchandise plans
may be established and organized by department and
class, vendor and department, department, or vendor.
Plans may be set up for an individual store or for a
location group of up to 48 stores. Plans may be entered
manually, or automatically rescaled from historical data,
using prior budget or actual figures.
Plans may be budgeted using retail dollars (selling price),
purchase cost, or units (quantity). Each plan is broken
down by classification by month and, optionally, by
store. Plans may be created globally, then split across
multiple stores.
A plan contains budget figures for beginning-of-month
inventory levels, projected sales, receipts, markdowns,
adjustments, and end-of-month inventory levels.
The calculate function integrates the actual figures into
the plan using information from outstanding purchase
orders and merchandise history.
The Open to Buy what-if screen allows you to view
the current open-to-buy situation (a consolidation of
budgets and actuals) and note what effect new or cancelled
P.O.s would have on the open-to-buy status.
A series of user-configurable comparison screens
allow for the presentation of this-year/last-year,
budget/actual, and open-to-buy information expressed
as retail dollars, costs, or units.
User-configurable comparisons allow you to choose
what you view using the following elements:
Sales
Receipts
On order
Markdowns
Adjustments
Freshness %
Gross profit $ or %
Beginning of month inventory
End of month inventory
Open-to-buy amount
Stock-to-sales ratio
Average sales $ per unit
Average cost $ per unit
Markdown to sales %
Figures may be displayed at retail, cost, or units:
This year's budget
Last year's budget
Actual as % of budget
This year's actual
Last year's actual
Actual as % of last year
A user-configurable report provides capabilities similar
to those described for the view screens.
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