Overview
Dynamic Grouping lets you combine any set of dimension values — departments, categories, vendors, colors, locations, or any other attribute — into reusable custom groups that you can plan and report against as a single unit. It gives you a way to look at and plan your business along lines that don't exist in your native hierarchy, without changing the underlying master data.
For example, you can collapse Hats, Jewelry, and Belts into a single All Accessories group, view a rolled-up sales number for that group, and edit the group total — Toolio will spread the change back down to each underlying department proportionally.
Please contact your CSM if you'd like to enable Dynamic Grouping in Merchandise Plan or Assortment Plan Reporting for your tenant.
Why Use Dynamic Grouping
Traditional hierarchies (department → class → subclass) are fixed and often don't match how merchants actually think about the business. Dynamic Grouping solves this with a flexible, reusable layer on top of your existing data:
Plan along your own lines. Group attributes the way your team reviews them — by vendor strategy, margin tier, launch wave, good/better/best, promotional family, etc. — even when those cuts aren't in the master hierarchy.
Roll up without losing the detail. A group aggregates all of its children's metrics into one row. You get a cleaner view for top-down planning, and the underlying leaves stay intact for bottom-up work.
Edit at the group level, spread to the leaves automatically. When you change an aggregated value (e.g. doubling sales for a group), Toolio distributes the change proportionally across the children based on their current contribution. This is the core planning benefit — you can make top-down adjustments quickly without manually re-splitting numbers.
Hide noise with the
Otherbucket. Unassigned values can be rolled into a singleOthergroup so your report shows only the cuts you care about, without losing their totals.Reuse across plans and reports. A group you define once is available across Merchandise Plan and Assortment Plan Reporting, so the same business view is consistent everywhere.
Change groupings without touching data. Because groups are a reporting layer, you can reorganize, rename, or delete them at any time without affecting your plans or master data.
How to Create a Dynamic Group
Open the Dynamic Grouping menu. Click the
Dynamic Groupingcomponent at the top of the interface.Start a new group. Click
Create. A pop-up window will open.Name your group. Enter a clear, descriptive name — for example, All Accessories.
Choose the attribute to group on. Specify the dimension the group is built from (e.g.
Department,Category,Vendor).Assign values to the group. On the grid, type a Dynamic Group Value for each row. You can copy-paste or drag and drop to manage the list quickly.
(Optional) Group unassigned values under
Other. CheckGroup Unassigned Values Under 'Other'to collect any rows you didn't explicitly assign into a singleOtherbucket. Leave it unchecked if you'd rather those rows be excluded from the view.Click
Add. This confirms the new dynamic group.
You can repeat these steps to create multiple groups at once, each with its own name and assigned values.
In the following example, Department: Clothing and Footwear is grouped into Other Deps.
Editing and Deleting Dynamic Groups
To edit a group:
Open the
Dynamic Groupingmenu.Click the edit button next to the group.
Change the name, add or remove attributes, or update the row assignments.
Save your changes.
To delete a group:
Click the
Deletebutton next to the group in the dropdown.
Editing Metrics on a Dynamic Group
Once a group is applied to a report, it acts as an aggregation dimension:
Metrics for the group are the sum of its children (e.g.
All Accessoriestotals acrossHats,Jewelry, andBelts).Editing a value at the group level spreads proportionally down to each child based on each child's current share of the total.
For example, if you double the aggregated value of Other Deps from 13M to 26M and save, every underlying department inside the group is doubled as well. Removing the Dynamic Grouping reveals the spread:
This is what makes Dynamic Grouping useful for planning, not just reporting — you can drive top-down targets and let Toolio handle the leaf-level math.
Video Walkthrough
If you have any questions, reach out to your support team — we're happy to help!