The question this page answers

What annual sales plan, receipts and cover should the company work towards?

What you see

Bring an existing plan into Tightly

In Ask Tightly’s attachment menu, choose Finance plan and upload CSV or XLSX. Use one row per category, channel and month with values, not formulas. Review currency, fiscal calendar, mapping and totals before confirming a draft. See Import a Finance plan.

Import monthly financial data

Choose Upload costs in Finance → COGS. Map categories, brands and scopes; classify months as actual, forecast or unconfirmed. Review totals before saving. Source workspaces preserve undeclared revenue. Saved costs stay separate from actual sales; only confirmed forecast costs can be explicitly applied to existing plan cells.

Build the company year

Commitments draw against the Merch plan, split by category and side. Choose Last year, Last year exactly or a blend. Blend weights must total 100%; 0% excludes a year.

Adjust Growth, Margin and Weeks of cover. Hover on Margin and Weeks of cover for last year’s measurements. Declare cover fills a missing cover assumption. Put back reverses one dial move; Back to the pair restores the seed. Declare opens finance declarations.

Category table shows last year, growth, sales plan and margin. Expand a category for sides; Sales performance compares them.

Review current figures refreshes; Plan actions → Original starting point shows source years. Changed history needs review.

Choose Revenue or Units, then Performance or Working plan. Month opens detail without discarding edits.

Performance by Category opens on the Table, with the column chooser and marked month. Heat shows the gap to plan: blue above, amber below with an arrow, shaded by the gap as a share of the cell's plan. Review sales keeps category, actual period and all channels; Ask about variance opens a draft. Open forecast workspace keeps plan channels. Partial outlooks retain DTC forecasts and recorded sales. Connect approval shows future totals as unknown. Commercial products use Review in Connect; DTC uses Adjust demand.

Annual figures load before supporting evidence.

Plan actions → Plan lines opens Gross margin, Markdown, Opening stock, Receipts needed and Closing stock. Open to buy opens receipt capacity; Review outlook opens annual outlook.

Revenue grid shows Annual target, Allocated and Remaining, with budget allocation, Undo and Save draft. Sales performance shows actuals for completed months and outlook for open months. Other measures protect completed months; a dot marks manual changes. See Open to buy.

Compare commitments

In Performance, choose Commitment. Top-down vs bottom-up compares assigned revenue targets with sales outlook and gap. Missing or ambiguous assignments remain unavailable. This comparison is separate from unit planning and survives reopening.

Choose Units for unit contributions. Unassigned and ambiguous units stay separate; revenue targets are not unit targets. Category views retain their unit scope.

In a commitment’s contribution review, Compare submitted plans opens independent saved proposals without changing demand or annual targets. See Connected planning for reuse and reconciliation.

Buying at cost compares approved receipt budgets, placed orders and budget left. A commitment review shows its declared buying budget, placed and draft orders, reserve and budget left when its full window is selected. Partial cuts do not take the whole envelope. Known periods stay visible when another period lacks approval. Review budget & receipts opens the native receipt plan; Review buy plan opens the owning buying task.

Review opening stock

Before creation, choose Review opening stock. The planned opening balance at cost uses current stock value, committed receipts and forecast cost of sales through the day before the plan starts.

Adjust each category by percentage or amount with a reason. An uncalculated balance needs an explicit amount. Reset adjustments restores the calculation; Refresh projection rereads inputs. Saved opening assumptions do not silently refresh or alter actual inventory.

Change one category’s target

An unpublished plan opens on its working figures. In Allocate annual budget, select a category and an amount or percentage change. Update company target preserves other categories. Redistribute existing budget preserves the company target.

Locked and past months stay fixed. An allocation that cannot fit the editable months is refused. Apply allocation changes the working figures; Save draft persists them.

What to do

Publish plan creates and publishes the version. Choose its budget state: Budget not answered, Provisional or Confirmed. Missing names, categories, valid blend weights, growth or margin prevent publication. Lines must reconcile to the company total.

Plan actions holds New annual plan and Start from targets for existing plans; otherwise these stay in the header. Review FY… plan opens an existing year.

In Plan lines → Gross margin, edit a month or category year total. Markdown and stock measures are edited monthly. Move opens an adjustment by direction, amount, months and categories, with a reason and preview.

Changes lists edits, Put back and versions. Assumptions beside a version shows its saved values; older versions without a snapshot do not take current settings. Plan actions → Cash impact opens that annual plan’s estimated receipt payments, with a return to the Merch plan.

Publishing needs an admin or merchandise-plan approver. Creating and editing need editor access; reading needs a permitted seat.

When it is empty or failed

Failed reads preserve the saved plan and identify unavailable figures. Historical starting points require a completed sales year. Missing change history does not mark figures changed. Months stay read-only until channels load.

Performance shows Loading outlook while reading. Unavailable outlooks offer View plan. Stored dates and qualifications follow outlooks into detail and Ask.