The Merchandise Planning module allows you to build out a merchandise plan to help meet the financial targets of your organization.
The video below gives a high level overview of this module and covers the following:
How to access the Merchandise Planning module
The core capabilities of the Toolio Grid
Ability to see the metrics and the time periods
Where to locate the Views, Filter, Group and Time Period capabilities
How to make edits, top-down spreading and saving your edits
*Please note the Financial Planning module has since been renamed Merchandise
Planning
Out of the Box Views in Merchandise Planning
To help get you started, all modules in Toolio come preconfigured with Out of the Box views. These views serve as useful templates to help structure your planning and reporting workflows. Out of the box views are always prefaced by “Toolio” and locked by default. You can easily save a copy of these views and adjust them to fit your workflow.
In Merchandise Plan, you will find Out of the Box views in both the Plan and Pivot sections:
Plan Views
View | Description | Suggested Workflow |
In depth sales, inventory, and receipts metrics to support your pre-season planning workflows | Pre-season merchandise and financial planning | |
Detailed comparison of in-season actuals vs planned values | In-season performance evaluation and plan adjustments | |
| Displays detailed inventory and purchase order metrics to drive Open to Buy values | In-season inventory and PO planning |
| Shows actual metrics from your imported Sales, Inventory, and Purchase Order data | Post Import Data Validation during your Merchandise Plan Onboarding |
| High level financial overview highlighting differences between in actual, planned, and last year performance | In-season and pre-season financial reporting |
Pivot Views & Reports
View | Description |
| Multi-level report to hone in on your category performance and WOS |
| Multi-level report to hone in on your category performance and ST% |
| Shows the impacts of discounts and returns on your sales and margin |
| High level choice (# of products) planning by product hierarchy |
| In-season financial reporting focusing on % to total and % variance to last year's performance - broken down by product hierarchy |
As mentioned above, you can easily create a new view using any of the above as a starting point. Navigate through the view selector > View Options > Save As. You can then rename the view and make any edits to the metrics, variants, filters, and grouping options according to your workflow. Please read more about using views in Merchandise Plan here.
Using Views in Merchandise Planning
Using Toolio's Views capability, you can create custom views of your data to support different roles and planning workflows within your organization. The video below covers the following:
What you should use Views for
How to view and switch between different Views
How to turn on / off specific Metrics
How to turn on / off specific Variants
How to create, update and delete Views
*Please note the Financial Planning module has since been renamed Merchandise Planning
Time Frame Selection in Merchandise Planning
The below video gives a high-level overview of the Time Frame Selection in the Merchandise Planning module and covers:
Selecting the plan year
Specifying time groups (e.g. weeks, months, quarters) to look at
Specifying the time frame to filter on
Once you have made changes on these Time Frame Selections, you can save that in the View to make that your default view.
Show Date Ranges for a Time Periods
If you want to see the date range for any Time Period on the Toolio grid, you can just click on the three dots on the Time Period header. Once you click there, the Date Range will be available on the Context Menu.
View Formula for a Metric
To view the Formula for how a Metric is calculated, you can simply right click on the Metric name. Upon doing so, the Formula will be displayed within the Context Menu.
Please note that if the Metric is not derived by a fixed formula, 'Merchandise Plan' will be displayed in this section in place of a formula.