Buy Plan module

    Budget-Driven Retail Buy Planning

    Turn a monthly or seasonal buying budget into a 12-month purchase plan by category and month, in units and dollars, that lands inside the budget. It works even when most of what you buy has never sold before.

    Built forBuyers, merchandise planners and finance teams at franchisees and multi-banner retailers held to a periodic buying budget.

    12 mo
    Planned by category and week/month/quarter
    ~7%
    Better planning accuracy
    $1k
    Flat per month, any store count
    MONTHLY BUY PLANJUNJULAUGSEPOCTNOVAPPARELFOOTWEARACCESSORIESHOME$210K$215K+2.4%$222K+3.3%$235K+5.9%$255K+8.5%$310K+21.6%$150K$153K+2.0%$158K+3.3%$167K+5.7%$180K+7.8%$218K+21.1%$95K$97K+2.1%$100K+3.1%$106K+6.0%$114K+7.5%$140K+22.8%$120K$122K+1.7%$126K+3.3%$133K+5.6%$143K+7.5%$170K+18.9%+22% NOV
    Buy Plan: Category by month, inside budget

    Buying budget → Category/month plan → Units + dollars

    1. Step 1

      Buying budget

      Your monthly or seasonal budget, set once for the whole plan.

    2. Step 2

      Category × month plan

      Split by each category's seasonality, holidays and promotions, per banner.

    3. Step 3

      Units + dollars

      A unit count and a dollar figure in every category-by-month box: what your buyers act on.

    Capabilities

    A budget you can hit, every category, every month

    Franchisees and multi-banner retailers are held to a periodic buying budget, and hitting it by category and by month, not just by year, is the actual job.

    • Category & month planning

      A 12-month purchase plan by category and month, in units and dollars, viewable by week, month or quarter.

    • Budget allocation

      Set the total budget once and every category-by-month box rescales instantly. No rebuild, no waiting.

    • Holiday planning

      A holiday borrows its lift from a comparable past event instead of starting from a guess.

    • Transparent breakdown

      Every number breaks down into base rate, seasonality, holiday impact and promotion impact.

    • Zero sales history needed

      Plans before a single unit of a new item has sold, for retailers where most of each period's buy is new.

    • Franchise & multi-banner

      The same category structure runs per banner, so head office can hold every location to its own share of the budget.

    buffers.ai Monthly Buy Plan table showing planned spend and units per category for each month
    The plan itself: a dollar figure and unit count for every category in every month.
    Where Buy Plan stops

    How much to buy, not which products

    The system decides how much to spend and where. A person still decides what to buy with it.

    Buy Plan decides

    • How much to spend in each category, each month
    • How many units that budget buys
    • How promotions, holidays and new stores shift it

    Your buyers decide

    • Which individual products to buy with each category's budget
    • Which items from the new catalog fill each month
    Plan for what changes

    Promotions and new stores, sized before you buy

    Two of the biggest swings in a buying budget, each sized from real evidence instead of a guess.

    / Buy Plan

    Promotion Impact

    See what a discount does to future sales before you buy for it

    Add a future promotion to a population (a category, brand, or SKU list) with its discount and dates, and the buy plan lifts that population's months to match. The lift comes from the best evidence available: a number you pin yourself, a named past event you choose to copy, past promotions on the same population at a similar discount, or, when there is no history, a price-elasticity curve on the discount. The curve counts only the markdown on top of what the population already sells at, and the lift is spread over the days the promotion actually covers in each month.

    Example: 30% off Category A for two weeks of a 30-day month
    No promotion
    1,000 units
    30% off, 14 days
    1,330 units
    Lift on promo days
    (1 / 0.70)1.5 − 1 = +70.7%
    Spread over the month
    +70.7% × 14/30 = +33.0%
    Already selling at 10% off?
    +45.8% per day, 1,214 units
    Function
    Discount-driven demand lift per population, prorated into each month of the plan
    Optimizes for
    Buying enough stock for a promotion without overbuying the months around it
    / Buy Plan

    New Store Demand

    Size the lift a new store adds to the whole chain

    Opening a store adds demand permanently, not for a few weeks like a promotion. Enter the store's opening stock buy and the plan sizes the lift by comparing it with the stock the chain already holds, then phases it in over the store's first 13 weeks and keeps it from then on. The same lift feeds the SKU forecasts, and it updates automatically as chain stock changes. You can also pin the lift yourself when stock data isn't available.

    Example: a $1.56M opening buy in a chain holding $52M of stock
    Opening day
    no lift yet
    Week 4
    +0.71%, +71 units/wk
    Week 8
    +1.42%, +142 units/wk
    Week 13 on
    +2.31%, +231 units/wk
    Extra demand at full size
    1.56 / (52 × 1.3) = +2.31%
    Phase-in
    Straight line over 13 weeks, then held
    On 10,000 units/week
    +231 units every week after
    Function
    Permanent, phased-in chain demand lift from a new store's opening stock value
    Optimizes for
    Buying for a store opening without guessing its effect on the rest of the plan
    Read the full Monthly Buy Plan guide
    / Buy Plan

    One flat price, any store count

    Buy Plan is $1,000 per month, however many stores or banners the plan covers. See it next to the other modules.

    See pricing
    Go deeper
    The Monthly Buy Plan guideHow a budget becomes next year's purchase quantities, by category and by month, with or without history.Buy Plan pricingA flat $1,000 per month, regardless of store count. See it next to the other modules.What data you needThe data a plan runs on, and how it connects to the systems you already use.
    Buy Plan FAQ

    Common questions

    The platform

    One platform, three modules

    Each module is licensed on its own. Start with the one that solves today's problem and add the others when you need them.