Tracking, not spreadsheet transcription
Most buyers manage open-to-buy in a spreadsheet, and most spreadsheets are a season behind reality. The numbers update when someone manually transcribes them, which means the OTB that matters, the OTB at the moment you click submit on a PO, is almost never the OTB you’re looking at. Vendee Pro doesn’t replace how you arrive at a budget number — it replaces the manual transcription by tracking that number live from the same data that drives your POs.
Enter a budget for a category, a location, or a category-at-a-location, scoped to a calendar month. As POs are drafted, submitted, and received, the tracked ledger moves in step. Your remaining OTB is always accurate, because the system reads from the same source as the PO module — no export, no re-typing, no lag.
Set your budget however you buy
You bring the number, however you arrived at it. Vendee Pro tracks it along three dimensions you can combine:
- By category. Tops vs bottoms vs accessories. The most common cut.
- By location. When different stores or locations carry different mixes.
- By month. Budgets live at month granularity; the tracker shows the current month plus the next 11.
- Combined. Apparel at the flagship for October. Specific budgets for the specific bucket.
The numbers you actually need to track
For any (category, month) cell, the budget-tracking page shows:
- Budget. What you’ve allocated for the month.
- Cost. Sum of
quantity_ordered × wholesale_priceacross every non-cancelled PO line whose expected arrival falls in the month — draft, submitted, partially received, and received all count. - Retail. Sum of
quantity_ordered × retail_priceacross the same lines, for the IMU view. - Units. Total units committed in that month.
- Remaining. Budget minus cost. The dollars left to commit.
Click any cell to expand and see the specific POs, products, vendors, expected dates, qty, weighted-avg wholesale and retail, and line totals. The remaining number is the one you watch when you’re deciding whether the next buy fits the month.
Mid-period adjustments
Budgets are not laws. Mid-period you reallocate, and Vendee Pro accommodates that. Click any budget cell to edit it in place. Add to a budget when a category is running away. Reduce one when sell-through under-performs. The OTB Budget Performance report compares budget vs committed vs remaining across months so you can review after the fact and feed the next number into your own planning process.
Budget tracking and the AI assistant
The Vendee Pro AI assistant can query your tracked budget for any month, returning budget, spent, remaining, percent-used, and a verdict (on-track / near-limit / over-budget / under-utilised) per category. Ask it where you stand on apparel for October, and it returns the numbers. When you ask it to propose a PO, your remaining budget is part of the data the assistant reasons over. Proposals are still confirm-before-write, so nothing lands against your budget without your approval.
Reports built around OTB
The reports library includes an OTB Budget Performance report (columns: month, category, budget, committed, remaining, utilisation %, status) that compares each budget cell against committed spend. Saved reports can be scheduled for recurring email delivery up to two times per weekday in your timezone, with a separate audit row per firing. More on reports →
Frequently asked questions
Can I run OTB by category and by location at the same time?
Yes. You can have multiple OTB budgets active for the same month at different cuts (category-only, location-only, or both). Each PO line contributes to whichever budgets its product category and destination location match.
How are cancelled PO lines handled?
Cancelling a PO or PO line removes it from active status, so the on-order figure drops and remaining OTB frees up the same minute.
Does OTB include freight?
Not today. OTB cost rolls up on quantity_ordered × wholesale_price (FX-snapshotted into the store’s currency at PO submit time). Per-line shipping-cost-per-unit is recorded on the PO and shown in landed-cost totals on the PO itself, but it is not currently included in the OTB rollup. If you want to budget against landed cost, set the budget at a level that absorbs your typical freight.
Are received POs included or just open ones?
Every non-cancelled status counts: draft, submitted, partially received, and received. A PO that has arrived this month absolutely consumed this month’s budget — it doesn’t stop counting just because the goods landed.
What if I don’t want OTB tracking yet?
OTB is optional. You can run Vendee Pro without budgets, and turn them on whenever you’re ready. Existing POs will be incorporated into any budgets you create.
Is this a full OTB planning or merchandise financial planning tool?
No. Vendee Pro does not do sales forecasting, top-down or bottom-up open-to-buy math, or seasonal allocation planning. It tracks the budget number you already arrived at, however you got there, against every dollar you commit on a PO, in real time. If your planning lives in a spreadsheet or a dedicated planning tool, bring the resulting monthly numbers into Vendee Pro and let it do the tracking.
Track your real OTB, in real time.
Start on Basic, then upgrade to Professional to set up your first budget and watch it move in real time.
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