Overview
In your planning process you might want to plan for carryover products differently from your new products. Reasons for this might be:
In your seasonal planning you only buy new inventory, i.e. plan purchase orders, for new products
Clearance products might have a different AUR, markdown % and discount % compared to your non-clearance products.
To handle products that are in different stages of their lifecycle, first start with adding a new planning attribute called lifecycle. Potential options for lifecycle should be:
New
Carryover
Clearance
Make sure to add the same attribute to your product / variant.
Attributing Master Data
Make sure that your master data reflects the correct value for the Lifecycle, i.e. all clearance items are attributed properly, etc.
Merchandise planning workflow
In the MP module, make sure to plan your sales, inventory and purchase orders by lifecycle. Below is a rough guideline to plan each of these attributes:
Lifecycle: New
This will be all the sales that you're expecting from your new products. Most likely these products will be selling at full price (or low markdowns), you will have zero starting inventory for these products and you will be bringing in receipts according to your sales targets.
Lifecycle: Carryover
These products will be remnant inventory from your previous buys, but likely selling close to full-price
Lifecycle: Clearance
These are products that you're trying to clear either through allowances (i.e. markdown & discounts). Most likely you will have lower AUR on these products than before.
Assortment planning workflow
You will need to create all your new assortments with the Lifecycle: New attribute. If you need help adding this attribute to your assortment plan, please ping your customer success manager.
By focusing your line planning on Lifecycle: New, you will make sure that your Assortment rollups are aligning with your Merchandise Plans for the Lifecycle: New attribute.