Fairway Stores buys Order A's T-shirts from Northline Apparel on a standing wholesale supply, with a separate, smaller top-up run sourced through Meridian Sourcing, an agent working on 5% commission, whenever stock cover drops fast enough to need a faster-reacting supply than the standing schedule allows. This hybrid arrangement means Meridian Sourcing regularly receives a retail planning report from Fairway Stores showing stock cover, sell-through and a suggested reorder trigger, and has to decide whether to act on it before recommending a top-up run to the factory. A KPI report can look complete and precise while still being built on stale or mismatched data underneath. This lesson teaches the specific checks that separate a report worth acting on from one that only looks trustworthy.
You need: the general idea of a KPI, decision owner and trigger value (Track 17, Course 4), and the weekly KPIs covered in lesson 6.2. No other lesson from this course is required first.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: which KPIs to include in a weekly review (lesson 6.2, already covered) and building the complete course worksheet (lesson 6.4).
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Source check | Comparing a dashboard number against the original record it was supposed to be built from. |
| Stale data | Information that was once correct but has not been updated to reflect a more recent change. |
| Data input | One of the individual figures that a dashboard calculation combines to produce its displayed number. |
| Data-check history | A record of when a KPI's inputs were last checked and what correction, if any, was found. |
| Trigger value | The specific level a KPI must reach before it changes what the decision owner does. |
| Refresh timestamp | The date and time a report last pulled data from its source, shown so a reader can judge how current a number is. |
A KPI report can display a stock-cover figure to one decimal place and still be built on a stock count that is several days old. Precision on screen says nothing about whether the underlying data input was current when the report was generated. Before acting on a KPI report, the decision owner, or an agent recommending action on their behalf, needs to know the report's refresh timestamp and whether its data input still matches the original source record it came from. A report that fails either check should not drive a decision, however clean its dashboard looks.
| What can differ | The shapes you will meet | Why it matters to you |
|---|---|---|
| Single system versus hybrid account | Fairway Stores' standing wholesale supply from Northline Apparel is tracked in one system; the separate agent-sourced top-up run through Meridian Sourcing is tracked in a second, smaller record. | A hybrid account's two sides can each look current on their own while disagreeing with each other, since neither side automatically checks the other. |
| Domestic versus export data lag | Cedar & Co.'s own domestic point-of-sale data can refresh within hours; an export chain's stock data often passes through more systems before an agent or factory ever sees it. | A longer chain between the original sale and the report an agent reads increases the chance the refresh timestamp is older than it appears. |
| Who checks the source | A retailer's own planner can check a source record directly; an agent such as Meridian Sourcing, one step removed from the retailer's own systems, often has to request the source record explicitly before it is checked. | The further a decision owner sits from the original data, the more deliberate the source check has to be, since it will not happen automatically. |
| First report versus repeated report | A KPI report checked once and found accurate does not stay verified forever; each new report needs its own refresh timestamp and source check. | A data-check history should record when each check was last done, not only that a check was done once in the past. |
Fairway Stores' hybrid account with Northline Apparel and Meridian Sourcing is built so that Meridian Sourcing recommends a top-up run whenever Fairway Stores' stock cover for Order A's T-shirt style drops to or below 3 weeks, faster than the standing wholesale schedule can respond. This week, Fairway Stores sends Meridian Sourcing a stock-cover report showing exactly 3.0 weeks, its trigger value. Before recommending a top-up run to Delta Garments, Meridian Sourcing checks the report's refresh timestamp and finds the underlying stock count was last pulled from Fairway Stores' point-of-sale system four days earlier, not that morning. A sales pace strong enough to trigger the 3-week figure four days ago could already have pushed stock cover meaningfully lower, or a markdown started since then could have changed it in the other direction.
The worked numberA common mistake is confusing the date a report is received with the date its underlying data was last refreshed. A report generated and sent today can still be built entirely from a stock count pulled several days earlier, if the source system behind it was not refreshed in between. Acting on today's report as if its numbers are also today's figures can mean recommending, or skipping, a top-up run based on a stock position that has already changed, in either direction, since the report was built. The fix is a single extra habit: read the refresh timestamp before the headline figure, every time a report arrives, regardless of how current the report itself appears to be. An agent who builds this habit into every review stops relying on hope that the underlying data happened to be refreshed recently, and instead knows exactly how current the number in front of them actually is before recommending anything to the factory.
A KPI report can look complete and precise while still being built on data that is several days old. Before trusting a report enough to act on it, check when its underlying numbers were actually last pulled from the real system, not just when the report itself was sent. If that gap is large compared with how fast the number normally moves, ask for the original record before deciding anything. Writing down when each check happened means the next report does not need to be checked from a blank page.
Fairway Stores sends Meridian Sourcing its weekly stock-cover report for Order A's T-shirt style, showing exactly 3.0 weeks, the agreed trigger for recommending a top-up run. Meridian Sourcing checks the report's own refresh timestamp and finds the underlying stock count was last pulled four days before the report was sent. No data-check history exists for this report; this is the first time this specific check has been done on this account.
Should Meridian Sourcing recommend the top-up run to Delta Garments today, based on this report alone? Decide before opening the answer.
No. Meridian Sourcing should request the current source record from Fairway Stores' own point-of-sale system before recommending the top-up run.
1. The reported 3.0 weeks is exactly the trigger value, the point at which the account's own rule requires action, which is precisely when a stale figure is most likely to change the decision in either direction. 2. A four-day-old refresh timestamp, at the illustrative pace of 0.25 weeks of cover used per day, could already hide a full week of movement, meaning the true current stock cover could be as low as 2.0 weeks or, if a markdown ended, higher than reported. 3. No data-check history exists for this report, so there is no earlier check to fall back on that would justify skipping today's check. 4. Recommending the top-up run on an unverified figure risks either an unnecessary run (if the true figure is higher) or a late one (if the true figure is lower than reported), both of which cost more than the short delay needed to request the current record.
Against either outcome, the cost of requesting the current source record before recommending action is a short delay of a day or two, far smaller than either the USD 400 commission on an unnecessary run or the lost sales from an avoidable stock-out, which is why the source check earns its place before the recommendation, not after it.
Use the T20-C06 Retail planning KPI worksheet. Its "Data-check history" sheet records, for each KPI report received, the reported figure, the refresh timestamp, whether a source check was done, and any correction found, so an agent or planner can see at a glance whether a report is safe to act on without repeating the whole check from scratch.
[Download the Retail planning KPI worksheet](../../templates/T20-C06-retail-planning-kpi-worksheet.xlsx)
1. Why does this lesson say a report's refresh timestamp matters more than the date the report was received?
2. Why did Meridian Sourcing request the source record instead of recommending the top-up run immediately from the 3.0-week report?
3. A different report shows stock cover at 5 weeks against a 3-week trigger, with a refresh timestamp from earlier the same day. What does the source-check rule suggest?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Source check | التحقق من المصدر | Vérification de la source | Kaynak kontrolü | Comparing a dashboard number against the original record it was supposed to be built from. |
| Stale data | بيانات قديمة | Donnée obsolète | Bayat veri | Information that was once correct but has not been updated to reflect a more recent change. |
| Data input | مدخل بيانات | Donnée d'entrée | Veri girdisi | One of the individual figures that a dashboard calculation combines to produce its displayed number. |
| Data-check history | سجل فحص البيانات | Historique de vérification | Veri kontrol geçmişi | A record of when a KPI's inputs were last checked and what correction, if any, was found. |
| Trigger value | قيمة التنبيه | Valeur de déclenchement | Tetikleme değeri | The specific level a KPI must reach before it changes what the decision owner does. |
| Refresh timestamp | طابع وقت التحديث | Horodatage de rafraîchissement | Yenileme zaman damgası | The date and time a report last pulled data from its source, shown so a reader can judge how current a number is. |
You now know how to check the data behind a KPI report before trusting it. The final lesson in this course brings every skill from this course together into one complete retail planning KPI worksheet, using Cedar & Co.'s hybrid account with Delta Garments. Back to the course map