Updated: June 2025
Toolio now supports exclusion of specific product-location combinations, giving teams greater control over where specific products, styles, or categories can or cannot be allocated or planned. This guide walks you through how to configure, manage, and apply location exclusions across Assortment Planning (AP) and Allocation workflows.
Why Location Exclusions?
There are many reasons why users may need to exclude specific products from being planned or sent to specific stores, such as:
Supplier restrictions based on location proximity.
Country-specific regulations (e.g., restricted imagery or materials).
Store-level eligibility constraints (e.g., fabric, region, category).
Brand guidelines (e.g., premium SKUs only available in flagship stores).
Manual overrides for one-off planning needs.
Rather than managing these cases through manual cluster edits or complex rulesets, Toolio now centralizes these capabilities for visibility, consistency, and scale.
Key Concepts
Exclusion Types
Toolio supports exclusions via:
Manual Rules: Defined centrally through filters using Choice and Location attributes.
Imported Lists: Uploaded via a standardized import file.
Manual Flags: Enforced manually within AP and Allocation modules.
All exclusions ultimately reduce the number of eligible locations for a given product and affect clustering, ROS weighting, and allocation strategies.
Managing Exclusion Rules
You can manage product-location exclusions under:
Settings → Intelligence → Location Exclusions
What You’ll See:
A tabular view of all currently excluded Choice/Location and Actual Choice/Location combinations.
Whether the exclusion came from an import or a user-defined rule.
The user who created the rule and optional comments.
Filtering and grouping options by choice or location attributes.
Actions You Can Take:
Create Rules using filters on Choice/Location attributes.
Add Comments to provide context on exclusions.
Import Exclusions directly using Actual ChoiceId, LocationId pair.
Creating Rules
To define a new exclusion rule:
Go to
Settings → Intelligence → Product Exclusions.Click Add Rule.
Define your rule using filters:
Example: Exclude all denim from web store. (Filter: Department=DENIM, Location: Web)
Save the rule with a comment if needed.
Note: Future enhancement may support start dates for exclusions.
Importing Exclusion Lists
Toolio supports the bulk import of product-location exclusions via a dedicated import template.
How to Import
Navigate to:
Settings → Import → New Import → Choice Location ExclusionUpload your file containing:
Actual Choice Id(the actual Choice Identifier)Location Id(the internal ID of the location)
Both Actual Choice Id and Location Id are required. These must be actual IDs, not names or descriptions.
What Happens After Import
Once the file is successfully imported:
The actual exclusions will be visible under the:
Actual Choice Location Exclusion tab — showing excluded Choice-Location pairs as imported.
Choice Location Exclusion tab — where associated Choices and their matched locations (from rules or imports) are listed together.
Rule tab — an entry will be created for the import job itself, showing the origin of the exclusions, and creator.
This consistent logging provides full transparency into the source of every exclusion and allows users to track and audit imported data alongside rule-based exclusions.
Application in Assortment Planning (AP)
Exclusions affect the clusters in the Assortment Plan.
When Do Exclusions Apply?
When assigning an automated cluster to a Choice.
When editing or refreshing clusters.
After importing exclusion lists or creating rules.
What Happens?
In the Manage Exclusions menu (
Choice->right click->Manage Exclusions), excluded locations will:Be marked as “Rule Exclusion”.
Be uneditable in the UI.
You can also manually deselect non-rule-excluded locations.
Location count and Weighted ROS are adjusted accordingly.
After exclusions are updated, make sure to "re-run forecasts/Refresh Locations&ROS" on affected Choices to reflect the new location makeup.
Application in Allocation Strategies
Location exclusions also impact Allocation Strategy Overrides.
How It Works:
Toolio checks exclusions when:
Assigning location lists.
Editing rules or Choice attributes.
Importing exclusion files.
If a location on the exclusion list exists in a strategy, it is automatically removed.
An additional column in overrides indicates if a “Rule Exclusion” applies.
As in Assortment Plan, users cannot override or re-select excluded locations in allocations.
Reminder: After changes, you may see a message:
"You've updated an exclusion rule — please run forecasts on the affected choices to apply changes to clusters and allocations."
Dynamic Rule Re-Evaluation
Why It Matters
Since exclusion rules are defined using Choice attributes, a change to those attributes—or the creation of new Choices—can affect whether a Choice is eligible for an existing rule. For example:
A newly created Choice may now match an exclusion rule.
A modified Choice (e.g. with a different Category or Supplier) may no longer match a rule it was previously subject to.
To ensure the exclusion logic remains accurate, Toolio provides a built-in method to re-evaluate Choice eligibility against current rules.
Reloading Exclusion Eligibility
Function: Reload Choice Location Exclusion Index
Where: In the Assortment Plan, via right-click on one or more Choices.
This function allows you to:
Refresh eligibility of selected Choices against existing exclusion rules.
Apply new or removed exclusions based on up-to-date Choice attributes.
Use this function:
After editing Choice attributes like Category, Supplier, Style, etc.
After adding new Choices that may match existing rules.
Anytime you want to validate or update exclusion logic without re-importing.
It is recommended to rerun this after bulk Choice edits to ensure AP and Allocation modules are reflecting accurate exclusions.
FAQs
Q: Can I exclude a product from a location temporarily?
Not yet. Future versions may support start dates or effective date ranges.
Q: Can I filter by attributes like Category, Fabric, or Country?
Yes. Rules support filters based on all available Choice and Location attributes.
Q: Can I import exclusions at the SKU level?
Not yet, exclusions can be specified by Actual Choice Id and locationId pairs.
Q: Will exclusions affect forecasts?
Yes. Exclusions change the number and weighting of eligible locations, so forecasts should be re-run to apply the latest setup.