Seasonal Ordering Walkthrough
This is a walkthrough for seasonal ordering — the larger buys you place ahead of a season ramp-up, when the question isn't "what ran low this week?" but "what do we need to be stocked through the season?" It strings together reports you may already use one at a time: read the demand signals first, then run Order Planning with seasonal parameters, then turn the results into purchase orders.
For week-to-week, in-season reordering, see the Buyer's Guide — the two guides are companions.
The flow has four steps:
- Read the demand signals — what's moving, how much runway you have, what's trending, what customers are waiting for
- Run Order Planning with an ETA and a stock period that match the season
- Triage the results — biggest gaps first
- Build the purchase orders
Step 1: What's moving right now
Start with current sales velocity against what's on the shelf.
- Reports → Ordering → Units Sold by Period shows each item's on-hand and on-order position alongside its unit sales period by period, organized by department — a quick read on what's selling against what's on hand.
- Reports → Ordering → Order Recommendations flags items that have dropped below the Order Points set on their item pages.
What to look for:
- Selling faster than stock — an item that sold more in the last month than you have on hand will stock out before a seasonal order arrives.
- Accelerating pace — if recent weeks are outselling the month's average, the ramp-up has started; don't plan from the slow-season average.
- Dead stock — items with inventory but no recent sales. A seasonal order is a good moment to decide on markdowns instead of reordering.
Step 2: How much runway you have
Reports → Ordering → Weeks On Hand converts inventory and sales pace into weeks of stock per department — the cleanest single number for "how urgent is this?"
As a rule of thumb: under 2 weeks of stock in a department is urgent; under 4 weeks means order soon, especially if vendor lead times are long in season.
Step 3: What's growing year over year
Seasonal buys lean on history, so check the trend before trusting last year's number.
- Reports → Sales → Departments PTD vs compares each department's sales against the same period in a prior year — a quick read on which categories are growing or shrinking.
- You don't need to build item-level year-over-year comparisons by hand: Order Planning already weighs up to five years of history per item, with recent years counting more.
Two cautions:
- One-year spikes — if an item sold well in exactly one year, treat its average skeptically.
- New items — anything in its first season has no history, so Order Planning will have no demand signal for it. Plan those from recent velocity and your own judgment.
Step 4: What customers are waiting for
The Wish List is committed demand — someone asked for the item and is waiting. Review it before a seasonal buy so known requests make it onto the order.
Order Planning counts these automatically: they appear in its Wished For column and are added to the suggested quantity.
Run Order Planning with seasonal parameters
Reports → Ordering → Order Planning does the math: it projects demand for your stocking window from weighted sales history, subtracts what you have and what's already on order, adds customer requests, and suggests a Qty To Order per item. The Order Planning page documents every column and the calculation — this section is just about choosing seasonal inputs.
| Input | For a seasonal buy |
|---|---|
| ETA | The date the vendor says they can deliver. For seasonal bookings this can be months out. |
| Stock Period | The date you need to be stocked through: 2 weeks out for a fill-in order, 3–4 weeks for the peak-season rush, 6–8 weeks (or a full season) for a large seasonal buy. |
| Departments | Just the departments you're buying for. Run categories separately rather than one giant report. |
| Vendors | Filter to one vendor when you're ready to build that vendor's PO — you'll see the items whose Primary Vendor is that vendor, plus any you have received from them or recorded a part number for. |
Triage the results
Work the biggest gaps first:
- Sort by Cost To Order to see where the real money is. High-cost items dominate by dollars even at low unit counts; high-volume items dominate by units — check both views before finalizing.
- Large Wished For quantities — committed demand; prioritize these so waiting customers get served.
- Negative on-hand — already oversold; these need the earliest possible delivery.
- Negative Qty To Order — you're overstocked relative to projected demand. Skip the reorder and consider the item for promotion instead.
Build the purchase orders
From Order Planning you can adjust the suggested quantities and add items directly to a purchase order — no re-entering by hand. From there:
- The Order Page is where the PO lives — review, adjust, and submit it there.
- If the vendor sends an availability list you want to load wholesale, see Importing POs.
- Before committing the season's dollars, sanity-check the total against your budget with Open to Buy.
Before you trust the numbers
Order Planning's projections are only as good as the underlying data:
- Inventory accuracy — wrong on-hand counts mean wrong suggestions. A cycle count of the departments you're about to buy for is worth doing before a big seasonal order.
- Sales history — first-season items show no demand signal and will look overstocked. Use recent velocity and judgment for those.