Question 1

What is merchandise financial planning?

Accepted Answer

Merchandise financial planning sets a retailer's sales, stock, intake and margin targets for a season before the range is built, usually at department and category level. It produces the open to buy position that governs how much can be committed, and every downstream decision, from range planning to allocation to markdown, reads from it. Done in spreadsheets it tends to drift, because the version the buyer is working from and the version finance signed off stop matching within a few weeks. Done in one system it holds, because there is only one plan and everything downstream inherits it rather than restating it.

Question 2

Can we keep our existing financial year and hierarchy?

Accepted Answer

A merchandise financial plan is held against the retailer's own financial year and product hierarchy, not a vendor's. Merchmix holds budgets by financial year as you define it, whether that runs January to December, February to January, or July to June, and the grid runs your own hierarchy from total business down through department, category and sub-category. Nothing needs remapping to a Merchmix structure before you can plan, and the hierarchy you plan in is the one that appears in every downstream module.

Question 3

How does the budget reach WSSI?

Accepted Answer

A weekly sales, stock and intake plan is only reliable if it inherits the approved budget rather than restating it. The approved budget syncs directly into WSSI from the workspace, and WSSI is the source the rest of the platform reads from, so continuity, assortment planning, allocation, planogram and the trade reviews all inherit the same number. Nobody rekeys it, and there is no window where the budget in finance and the budget in trade are different documents. The version that synced is the version that was approved.

Question 4

Can more than one person work on scenarios at the same time?

Accepted Answer

Scenario planning means testing an alternative without putting the approved plan at risk. Sandboxes fork the current allocation into isolated tracks and several can run at once, so one planner can model a promotional down-lift while another tests a supplier cost increase, neither touching the live plan. Each branch stays attached to the master it came from, so comparisons are like for like rather than two spreadsheets that started from different places. When a scenario is the right answer it can be populated into the plan rather than retyped.

Question 5

What does the approval workflow control?

Accepted Answer

Budget governance is the difference between a number that is agreed and a number that is circulating. Plans are submitted for review rather than emailed, status sits on the front of every master file so draft, approved and superseded are visible before anyone opens anything, and the version that synced is the version that was approved. That matters most at board level, where the question is usually not what the number is but whether everyone is looking at the same one.

Question 6

Can we use Budget Builder for sales only?

Accepted Answer

A marketing budget derived from an approved sales budget can be compared against sales natively, rather than reconciled between two systems afterwards. The marketing budget is optional, so Budget Builder can be run for sales alone and many retailers start that way. Deriving the marketing budget is what makes return on spend readable later, because spend and sales came from the same plan rather than being matched up at the end of the quarter.

Question 7

Where do marketing actuals come from?

Accepted Answer

Spend, orders and revenue only compare cleanly when they land on the same weekly grid as the plan. Actuals arrive through connectors on the marketing plan rather than being keyed, so spend, orders, revenue and variance read against the budget instead of being reconciled to it. That means the marketing to sales ratio is a live number during the season rather than something calculated after it, and an overspend is visible in the week it happens.

Question 8

What happens if the budget changes after it has synced?

Accepted Answer

Budgets change, particularly in the first half. A revised budget goes through the same approval workflow and syncs again, and the previous version is marked superseded rather than deleted, so the history of what was agreed and when stays intact. Downstream modules pick up the revised number from WSSI, which means a re-forecast reaches allocation and the trade reviews without anyone reissuing a spreadsheet.

Question 9

How do department budgets roll into the business budget?

Accepted Answer

The grid runs the full hierarchy, so department budgets are not separate documents that have to be consolidated. Set a number at any level and the rollups resolve around it, which means a business level target can be pushed down to departments, or department plans can be built up to a business total, and both stay reconciled. The common failure in spreadsheets is that the sum of the department tabs stops matching the summary tab. Here there is only one grid.

Question 10

Does this work if we do not use Merchmix for allocation?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Budget Builder can run as the planning layer while allocation, replenishment and execution stay in your existing systems. The budget still syncs into WSSI, and WSSI can push the approved numbers out to an ERP or planning tool through the integration layer. Most retailers start with the planning modules and add execution later, which is why the modules are built to work in their own right as well as together.

Question 11

How long does it take to set up a budget?

Accepted Answer

The build itself is quick because the hierarchy and financial calendar come from your own data rather than being configured from scratch. What takes the time is agreeing the numbers, which is a business exercise rather than a software one. In a six week proof of concept a retailer typically has a working budget on their own data inside the first fortnight, with the remaining time spent on scenarios and on the handoff into the weekly plan.

Question 12

Does it handle multiple currencies and multiple brands?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Budgets are held per brand or per business unit, and cross costings carry multi-currency through to the buy, so a plan built in one currency can be committed against suppliers invoicing in another. Where a group runs several brands, each holds its own master files and approval trail while rolling into a group view, so brand teams plan independently without losing the consolidated position.

Set the number once, and hold the whole year to it.

Know which budget
is the real one.

One master per year

Status on the card

Versions underneath

Grid or table

Plan at the level you think,
roll up to the level you report.

Full hierarchy

Four period views

Six measures

Submit for review

Ask what the plan is worth
before you commit to it.

Six levers

Scenario against base

Auto-solve

Populate the grid

Model the downside
without touching the plan.

Fork the matrix

Named tracks

Concurrent branches

Tied to the master

Get the plan read
before the board reads it.

Executive overview

Signals, insights, actions, risks

Tagged by owner and timing

Evidence underneath

Build the marketing budget
out of the sales budget, not beside it.

Derived from approved sales

Three grains

Trading calendar overlaid

Marketing to sales ratio

One sync, and the whole plan inherits the number.

Plan the spend, then watch it against the plan.

Promo Calendar

Marketing Plan

Spend tracking

Sales against spend

Everything you need to know about budget planning

Onboard Merchmix for your budget planning.