November's open-to-buy

The assignment

“Set our open-to-buy for November by category. Plan sales at last November plus 10%, aim to end the month with eight weeks of cover, and take off what we have on hand and on order. Where are we over-bought, and what should we cut from the open orders?”

What it used

• Last November's sales by category — the units, the net sales and the cost of goods for November 2025, read as a custom window.
• Last month's sell-through by style, over 30 days — today's cover, read and not planned.
• The stock on hand today, by style.
• The styles and the categories, so every style's sales and stock land in its own category.
• Every open order with its lines, and the variant, the product and the style behind each line.
• 61 report pages, 6 list walks and 245 calls in all, every one through the connector.

The budget rule is the assistant's arithmetic, not a platform report. Planned sales are last November's units plus 10 percent. The closing stock is 8 weeks of cover at that rate — 56 days over a 30-day month. What is on hand and on order comes off. What is left is the open-to-buy, at last November's average unit cost.

The proposal

Harbourline is over-bought in every category it planned. The stock on hand already covers November's plan and the closing stock, with months to spare. The open-to-buy for November 2026 is C$0.00: buy nothing new, and cut what the desk can cut. The first example filled gaps position by position; the open-to-buy looks at each whole category, and the whole is deep.

Three names stand twice in the catalogue — Knitwear, Outerwear and Trousers & Denim. The sales report shows one line per name, so the plan reads each pair as one row. Measured against last month's sales, the stock on hand runs from 199.8 days of cover in Youth 8-14 to 486.2 days in Bags.

What the platform can do with an open order is narrow by design. An issued order is cancelled whole, or closed short when it is received. A partly received or acknowledged order is not cancelled from the desk. A partial cut is a word with the supplier, not a platform act. There were no draft orders to trim, so no line was reduced or removed.

The orders to cancel — every line on each is over-bought stock:

The orders it leaves standing — past issue, so the desk has no cancel for them:

In all: 10 orders to cancel and 7 left standing; 303 units that would otherwise still arrive; 0 draft lines reduced and 0 removed. Every cancel was rehearsed through the connector — 10 rehearsals, none confirmed.

The follow-ups

“Hold knitwear as planned, but trim outerwear so November's buy stays under C$40,000.”

There is nothing to trim. The buy is already C$0.00, under the C$40,000.00 cap, before any trim. The assistant trimmed 0 units from Outerwear. Its plan stands at 1,491 units and its closing stock at 2,784; its open-to-buy is -C$874,581.60, over-bought, not a buy. Knitwear is held as planned: 1,472 planned units against 12,039 on hand and 12 on order. November's buy after the follow-up is C$0.00, under the cap.

The exceptions

• Every category with sales last November was planned; no sales row was left out for its currency or its name. 0 stock rows and 0 sell-through rows matched no style; 0 styles had no category.
• No category has an open-to-buy above zero, so November's buy is C$0.00 before the follow-up and C$0.00 after it.
• 7 open orders touch over-bought stock and cannot be cancelled from the desk: they are past issue. Any cut there is a word with the supplier.

What stayed the merchant's call

The assistant wrote nothing. Every cancel above was rehearsed through the connector and shown with its confirmation token; none was confirmed. The open orders stand as they were. The open-to-buy is a recommendation, not a budget on file. The uplift, the weeks of cover and the cap are the assistant's arithmetic over the platform's figures; the merchant can change any of them. The owner's own session, with these prompts put to the assistant, follows.

Where every figure comes from

Every figure on this page is read from the run file at the render. Each one is a call’s answer by its number, or a figure derived from the answers by the formula beside it. Nothing is typed.

The tool calls

• whats_next — 1 call
• run_read · me — 1 call
• org_layout — 1 call
• run_read · reportRun — 13 calls
• report_run · sell_through — 28 calls
• report_run · stock_on_hand — 19 calls
• run_read · styles — 7 calls
• run_read · categories — 1 call
• run_read · orgVendors — 1 call
• report_run · open_purchase_orders — 1 call
• run_read · purchaseOrders — 4 calls
• get_record · PurchaseOrder — 17 calls
• get_record · Variant — 107 calls
• get_record · Product — 34 calls
• run_write · cancelPurchaseOrder — 10 calls