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Open to Buy Sub Dept

Open to Buy Sub Dept is the sub-department version of the Open to Buy report. Where Open to Buy budgets at the department level, this report answers the same question one level down: for this sub-department (and optionally one brand), how many dollars should I commit to orders in each upcoming month or week? It projects cost of goods sold from your sales history (up to the last three years), accounts for what you already have on hand and what's already on order, and shows the remaining dollars you're "open to buy" for each period.

Find it at Reports → Ordering → Open to Buy Sub Dept.

Running the Open to Buy Sub Dept forecast

  1. Open Reports → Ordering → Open to Buy Sub Dept.
  2. Pick a sub-department from the first dropdown. Entries are listed as Department/Sub-department; choose All Departments to forecast across every department at once.
  3. Enter your supply window — the number in the months supply (or weeks supply) field. This is how much supply you want on hand at the end of each period, and it's usually driven by how fast the category turns: a category you want to sell down every 6 months gets 6 months supply; annuals that turn in a month get 4 weeks.
  4. Choose Monthly or Weekly from the frequency dropdown. Switching to Weekly changes the supply field to weeks.
  5. Optionally narrow further:
    • All Divisions — limit to one sales division (only shown if your company uses multiple divisions).
    • All Brands — limit the forecast to a single brand within the sub-department.
    • All Stores — checkbox (only shown if your company has more than one store). Unchecked, the report is for the store you're logged into; checked, it combines all stores into one company-wide view. The store scope appears next to the report title.
  6. Click View.

The forecast runs 24 periods (months or weeks) into the future.

Reading the Open to Buy Sub Dept columns

Each row is one upcoming period (a month or a week, depending on the frequency you picked).

  • Month / Week — the period the row forecasts.
  • COGS — the cost of goods you're projected to sell in that period, based on the same period's sales in prior years (up to the last three). Click the number to open a Historical COGS popover showing the actual COGS for that period in each prior year. For the current (first) period, only the remaining portion of the period is counted.
  • Ending Cost — the inventory cost you should end the period with: the projected COGS of the next supply window (your months/weeks supply entry). Shows - for late rows where the supply window runs past the forecast horizon.
  • Starting Cost — the inventory cost you're projected to start the period with. The first row is your actual current inventory cost (minus slow-selling inventory — see below); later rows carry forward the prior row's Ending Cost.
  • On Order — the cost of inventory already on purchase orders estimated to arrive in that period. Click the number to open an Orders popover listing each PO number, estimated delivery date, and cost. POs without an estimated delivery date (pending orders) are not included.
  • Open to Buy — the dollars left to commit for that period: projected COGS + target Ending Cost − Starting Cost − On Order. When a period comes out negative (you're over-bought), it shows blank with the overage in gray parentheses, and that negative amount is carried forward to reduce the next period's Open to Buy.

Slow-selling inventory and the starting cost

Below the Open to Buy Sub Dept table you may see a note like:

$1,234.56 in slow-selling inventory not included in Aug 2026 starting cost (not sold in 2 years or received in 11 months).

Inventory that hasn't sold in 2 years and hasn't been received in 11 months is treated as "dead" and excluded from the first period's Starting Cost (the row is marked with a *), so stale stock doesn't suppress your buying budget for product that actually moves. Click the dollar amount to open the Items Not Selling report with the same brand and store scope. Items Not Selling filters by whole department rather than sub-department, so pick the matching department there to list the items behind the number.

Open to Buy Sub Dept vs. the other Open to Buy reports

  • Open to Buy — one department at a time, period by period.
  • Open to Buy Sub Dept (this report) — one sub-department at a time, with brand and all-stores options.
  • Open to Buy - All — every department at once in one view.
  • Open to Buy - Items — breaks a department's open-to-buy dollars down to the item level.

All versions are budget-level guardrails: they tell you how many dollars to spend, not which items to buy. Pair them with the Order Planning report for item-level quantities.