This page is for a domestic retail buyer who has to combine open-to-buy and a weekly sales, stock and intake plan into one working check, rather than treating the two as separate exercises. At work, a buyer who checks open-to-buy and a WSSI in isolation can approve a season budget that looks fine on its own, and a weekly stock plan that looks fine on its own, without noticing the two disagree about how much stock the season actually needs. This lesson mainly teaches the decision flow: it shows how Cedar & Co.'s hybrid buying, part Make to Stock reorder, part Make to Order top-up, is checked as one complete picture before the season is confirmed.
Cedar & Co. set a season budget of USD 40,000, has committed USD 22,000, and placed a further USD 4,000 reorder once early sales beat forecast, leaving USD 14,000 of open-to-buy. Its own WSSI plans a four-week phase built around that reorder. Without this skill, Omar might treat the open-to-buy figure and the WSSI as two separate checks, missing a week where the WSSI's own intake requirement would use more of the remaining USD 14,000 than the season budget can actually support.
You need: lessons T20-C02-L01 through T20-C02-L04, which build open-to-buy, the WSSI, forecast adjustment and commitment checks separately.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: this is the course's final lesson; course T20-C03 moves to forecasting and phasing a season's sales in more detail.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Open-to-buy | A retailer's season budget minus its committed spend: the amount still available to commit to any range. |
| WSSI | A weekly sales, stock and intake plan: the week-by-week table a retailer builds once open-to-buy is approved. |
| Intake | New stock arriving into a retailer's own stockroom or distribution centre in a given week, from a confirmed order. |
| Hybrid selling model | A brand that sells through more than one route to market at once, for example wholesale and its own direct retail, often at different prices. |
| Committed spend | The value of purchase orders a retailer has already confirmed against its season budget. |
| Season budget | The total amount a retailer plans to spend buying stock for one season, set before it sees every brand's final range. |
A season's own buying plan is not complete until its open-to-buy figure and its WSSI agree with each other: the money the season budget allows must be enough to pay for the stock the WSSI's own intake plan says the retailer needs to arrive. Checking either one alone can miss a mismatch the other would have caught; a WSSI can plan an intake the remaining open-to-buy cannot actually afford, and an open-to-buy figure can look comfortable while ignoring which week the money is actually needed in.
A buyer meets several shapes of combined check across a normal working year, and reading each one correctly stops open-to-buy and the WSSI being approved as if they were unrelated numbers.
| What can differ | The shapes you will meet | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| A pure Make to Stock season | A domestic retailer plans its entire WSSI against one forecast, reordering from Delta Garments only as stock runs down. | Open-to-buy and the WSSI move together naturally, since every reorder in the WSSI is also a committed spend against open-to-buy. |
| A pure Make to Order season | Northline Apparel confirms Order A's own full run with Delta Garments once, then builds a WSSI around fixed delivery weeks. | Open-to-buy is committed in full at confirmation; the WSSI then only has to match delivery weeks to the season's own sales plan. |
| A hybrid season, part reorder, part top-up | Cedar & Co. reorders against its own forecast, then adds a further Make to Order top-up once early sales beat forecast. | Each part draws down the same open-to-buy separately, so the combined check must add both parts together, not treat them as two separate budgets. |
| A season nearing its own open-to-buy limit | Cedar & Co.'s remaining USD 14,000 open-to-buy is close to what a later WSSI week's own intake would cost. | A combined check catches this before the week arrives; checking the WSSI alone, without open-to-buy, would miss it entirely. |
Cedar & Co. has USD 14,000 of open-to-buy remaining after its earlier reorder. Its own WSSI for the season's next phase plans a further intake of 1,800 pieces at Cedar & Co.'s own buying cost of USD 8.00 per piece. Before confirming this phase with Delta Garments, Omar checks the intake's own money value against the open-to-buy that actually remains.
Cedar & Co. can reduce the planned intake to 1,750 pieces (USD 14,000 divided by USD 8.00), request a small season budget increase, or reallocate open-to-buy from a weaker style to cover the USD 400 gap. What a combined check makes clear is that this WSSI, exactly as planned in pieces, cannot be paid for entirely from the open-to-buy Cedar & Co. actually has left.
The methodA common mistake is a buyer approving a WSSI because its own piece counts look sensible against expected sales, without converting that plan into money and checking it against open-to-buy. A WSSI is a plan for stock, but stock still has to be paid for, and a plan that makes sense in pieces can still cost more than the season budget has left. What this costs a retailer that gets it wrong is real: Cedar & Co. could confirm the full 1,800-piece intake with Delta Garments, discover the USD 400 shortfall only once the invoice arrives, and be forced into exactly the kind of late, rushed budget request this whole course has shown how to avoid. The same mistake, repeated across every phase of a hybrid season without a combined check, quietly compounds; each phase's own small, unnoticed gap adds to the next, until a buyer who trusted piece counts alone finds the season's true open-to-buy already spent well before the season itself has ended.
Open-to-buy and a WSSI are not two separate checks; they describe the same season's own money and stock, and a complete plan needs both to agree. A WSSI's own planned intake, valued in money at the buying cost per piece, has to fit inside the open-to-buy that actually remains once every reorder and top-up is counted. A buyer who checks piece counts against expected sales, without also checking their money value against open-to-buy, can approve a plan that looks sensible right up until the factory's own invoice shows it was not affordable.
Cedar & Co.'s WSSI plans an intake of 1,800 pieces for the season's next phase, worth USD 14,400 at Cedar & Co.'s own buying cost of USD 8.00 per piece. Cedar & Co. has USD 14,000 of open-to-buy remaining after its earlier reorder. Delta Garments needs Omar's decision this week to schedule cutting for the phase.
Here is the combined check Omar actually wrote before replying to Delta Garments:
Can Omar confirm the full 1,800-piece intake this week without any change? Decide before opening the answer.
No, not without a change. Two figures in Omar's own combined check decide this.
First, the WSSI's own planned intake is worth USD 14,400. That is 1,800 pieces at Cedar & Co.'s own buying cost of USD 8.00 per piece.
Second, Cedar & Co.'s own open-to-buy remaining is USD 14,000. The planned intake's own money value is USD 400 more than that.
Omar's options are to reduce the confirmed intake to 1,750 pieces, so its money value fits exactly inside the USD 14,000 open-to-buy, to request a USD 400 season budget increase before replying to Delta Garments, or to reallocate USD 400 of open-to-buy from a weaker style already committed. Confirming the full 1,800 pieces without one of those three steps would overbuy Cedar & Co.'s own season budget by USD 400.
Using this lesson's own illustrative figures:
A USD 400 overbuy against a USD 40,000 season budget is a 1% overrun, small enough that it could easily be missed if the WSSI and open-to-buy are never checked against each other. Across a season with several such phases, each carrying its own small, unchecked gap, the combined overrun can grow into a real shortfall discovered only when the season's own open-to-buy runs out earlier than planned.
Open the course workbook's "Complete profitability" sheet, which draws figures from the "Open-to-buy" and "WSSI" sheets into one combined check: it values the WSSI's own planned intake in money and compares that value against remaining open-to-buy automatically, flagging any phase that does not fit before the factory is asked to confirm anything.
[Download the Open-to-buy and WSSI worksheet](../../templates/T20-C02-open-to-buy-and-wssi-worksheet.xlsx)
1. Why is a WSSI checked against open-to-buy in money, not only in pieces?
2. A WSSI plans an intake of 900 pieces at a buying cost of USD 6.00 per piece. Open-to-buy remaining is USD 5,000. Does the plan fit?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open-to-buy | الرصيد المتاح للشراء | Budget disponible (open-to-buy) | Alıma açık bütçe (open-to-buy) | A retailer's season budget minus its committed spend: the amount still available to commit to any range. |
| WSSI | WSSI | Plan hebdomadaire ventes, stock et réassort (WSSI) | WSSI | A weekly sales, stock and intake plan: the week-by-week table a retailer builds once open-to-buy is approved. |
| Intake | الوارد | Arrivage | Mal girişi (intake) | New stock arriving into a retailer's own stockroom or distribution centre in a given week, from a confirmed order. |
| Hybrid selling model | نموذج بيع مختلط | Modèle de vente hybride | Karma satış modeli | A brand that sells through more than one route to market at once, for example wholesale and its own direct retail, often at different prices. |
| Committed spend | الإنفاق الملتزم به | Dépenses engagées | Taahhüt edilen harcama | The value of purchase orders a retailer has already confirmed against its season budget. |
| Season budget | ميزانية الموسم | Budget de saison | Sezon bütçesi | The total amount a retailer plans to spend buying stock for one season, set before it sees every brand's final range. |
This is the last lesson of Course 2. You can now check open-to-buy and a WSSI together as one plan. The next course moves to building the sales forecast that a WSSI's own planned sales come from. Back to the course map