Projects
Projects
A project is a piece of work you start yourself. It has a scope (a category, a remit, a window, or whatever you name), a workflow that says what its stages are, and a start and an end.
Open Projects from the left rail. The list opens on what is live; the control above it reaches closed and archived projects.
Where projects come from
You start them. A project is for work with a shape of its own: a negotiation, a promotion programme, a pre-order window, a clearance plan, or a problem worked out of a conversation.
| Workflow | One project per | Started by |
|---|---|---|
| Supplier negotiation | Category | You, from New project |
| Promo plan | Event or supplier programme | You, from New project |
| Pre-orders | Window (a year or a half) | You, from New project |
| Clearance / exit | Remit | You, from New project |
| Log a problem | Whatever you name | You, usually from a conversation |
Supplier orders, price reviews and transfers are not projects. They are tasks, raised by routines: open Tasks to review today’s orders. A project can raise tasks of its own too, such as a promo plan’s deals; those appear in Tasks beside the rest, and the task’s From column names the project.
When a project closes itself
A project where everything is decided and nothing has changed for the window your workspace set closes itself (Settings → Projects, off unless you set one). It is recorded in the log, and it never closes work you still have open.
The rail beside a project
Every project carries the same rail whatever its workflow: the gate (who has to agree, and whether it is ready), tasks out (with somebody else) and tasks back (with you), the documents attached to it, the artefacts it has produced, and its log.
Starting one by hand
New project offers the workflows this workspace has switched on, and asks for a name and an owner (you, unless you say otherwise). A conversation with twelfth can be promoted into one with Make this a project: the chat stays the record of how it started, and the project carries it from there.
Workflows
A workflow is the template a project is started from: its scope, its stages in order, who has to agree before it closes, and what it counts progress in. Every project pins the version of the workflow it was started on, so a workflow can change without rewriting a project already running on it.
| Workflow | Scope | Started by | Progress counted in | Stages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Log a problem | Whatever you name | You | Tasks | Work it out → Done |
| Supplier negotiation | One category, several suppliers | You | Suppliers | Strategy → Ask → Negotiate → Sign-off → Apply |
| Pre-orders | One window — a year or a half | You | Lines decided | Offers → Commit → Live → Done |
| Promo plan | An event or a supplier programme | You | Deals | Build → Run → Claim |
| Clearance / exit | One remit | You | Lines | Identify → Route → Sign-off → Run → Close |
Each is offered on New project unless an admin has narrowed the list under Settings → Projects. See Promotions for promo plans.
Coming soon
Workflows that are designed but not built yet appear as dashed Coming soon cards on New project: Range review, Buy plan, Promotion plan and Season plan. Opening one shows the stages it will have and records that you want it, which is what decides the order they get built in.
If none of them is the process you run, Request a custom workflow at the foot of the panel takes a name, a description of how the work goes, and optionally a document that describes it. A custom workflow is your own order of stages from the same library.
Pre-orders
A pre-orders project is one window of pre-orders, such as “2027 pre-orders” or “F27 H2”, worked from the suppliers’ offers to the last line landing. It replaces the new tab in the pre-order sheet: the lines, the quantities, the money by supplier and by month, and where every line stands live on the project instead.
Starting one
New project → Pre-orders asks for a name, the year a month means (“February” on a 2027 window is February 2027; it defaults to the year in the name), and an optional budget to commit against. Several windows can be live at once.
Adding offers
Add offers on the project’s Status reads a spreadsheet (a supplier’s offer sheet, or a tab of the sheet you keep today) or rows pasted from one. Choose the tab when a workbook has several. The headings are found wherever they are (a title row above them is fine) and read by what they say: Range, Products, SKU/barcode, Supplier, ETA, QTY, Buy Price, Offer number, Embargo date and REX SKU, and the usual variations of each. A total typed into a heading and a Month column that repeats the ETA are left out; the month comes from the ETA.
Nothing is refused for being incomplete. An ETA of TBC or Q1, a missing price or a missing quantity is kept as typed and flagged. A row already on the window (the same article, supplier and offer) is skipped, so reading the same sheet twice adds nothing. The answer says how many lines were added, how many were already there, which rows did not read and why, and how each heading was read.
A barcode is matched to your catalogue even when the sheet has dropped its leading zero, and a matched line carries its Retail Express SKU. A line with no match is marked new to the range. For a single line, say from a phone call, use Add a line.
The tracker
Status shows where the window stands in a sentence, the money (committed, still on the table, and against the budget) by supplier and by the month it lands, then the tracker: every line, filterable by To decide, On order and Closed, by supplier, and by what needs a look (needs a quantity, no buy price, offered twice, ETA TBC, past its ETA, no REX SKU, short).
The quantity and buy price are edited on the line while it is proposed. Commit commits every proposed line with a quantity, which locks it. A quantity of zero passes on the line instead, and a line with no quantity yet stays to decide. A committed line moves on from its menu: Set for pre-order, Mark received (asks how many landed, so a short delivery is recorded as short), Did not come to market, or back one step if it was pressed by mistake. ETA, embargo and REX SKU stay editable throughout.
An article offered by two suppliers says so on both lines, with the other supplier’s price.
Download gives the window as a workbook in the pre-order sheet’s own column order, with each line’s state, committed quantity and received quantity on the end.
Phases
Each phase has must-haves. Yours hold the phase, so the project will not move on until they are ticked; twelfth’s are listed and never block.
| Phase | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Offers | Every offer read in, each line’s supplier and buy price checked, articles offered twice flagged, order deadlines noted. |
| Commit | A quantity on every line or the line passed, the total read against the budget, the lines committed, the order sent to each supplier. |
| Live | A REX SKU on every committed line, lines set for pre-order once their embargo passes, TBC ETAs chased, pre-sells reviewed weekly. |
| Done | Every line closed — received, short, or did not come to market — and what the window came to kept with the project. |
Committing does not send anything: the order still goes to the supplier the way it does today, and the REX purchase order is still raised in Retail Express.
Supplier negotiation
A supplier negotiation is one category negotiated with several of its suppliers at once, against a cost target. Each supplier has its own position (what you asked for, what came back, whether it settled), and those positions add up to one category outcome you can read in a sentence.
It is open to every workspace. If you cannot see it on New project, an admin has taken it off the list of workflows people can start under Settings → Projects.
Starting one
New project → Supplier negotiation asks for four things: the category, the suppliers in scope, the start date, and the targets (a cost target as a percentage of the category’s cost of goods, and a range target if you have one). The suppliers offered are the ones trading in that category, biggest first, so you are choosing from the range rather than typing names.
You can edit each phase’s goal and how many weeks it runs before you start. One live negotiation per category: if the category already has one, open that instead.
The Status page
A negotiation opens on Status, which is the whole position on one screen:
- Where it stands: a written read of the phase, how long is left in it, what is agreed against the target, who is stalled and what is due next.
- The phases and their dates.
- Progress against the cost target, drawn once. Every other view reads the same figure.
- The tracker: one row per supplier, with the ask, the latest offer, what was agreed, and where the supplier stands.
- The milestones that mark each phase’s close.
Nothing on the page is stored twice. A supplier’s status, the category tally and the progress bar are all worked out from the rounds you recorded, so two screens cannot disagree about the same negotiation.
The five phases
| Phase | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Strategy | Where the category stands, which suppliers matter most, and what you are going in to achieve. |
| Ask | What you ask each supplier for, how big, and what you can give. |
| Negotiate | The rounds: what was offered, what moved, and where each supplier stands. |
| Sign-off | The outcomes confirmed in writing and approved by whoever can commit to them. |
| Apply | The new terms handed to the people who put them into effect, and what was learned. |
Each phase carries its must-haves: the things that have to be done before the project moves on. Some are yours and some are ours: twelfth drafts the fact base, the tiering and the asks; you confirm the dates, the levers and the walk-away. A phase will not move forward while one of your own must-haves is unticked, and the move says which ones are holding it. Going back a phase is always allowed, since needing to revisit one means you had not finished it.
Recording a round
Every exchange with a supplier is a round on that supplier’s row: the date, whether it was our ask or their offer, what shape it took (trading terms, scan funding, a lump sum, a growth incentive) and the figure. A round with no figure is fine, such as a meeting held or an ask restated.
Recording a round is all you do. The supplier’s status, the offer on the table, the category tally and the progress bar all move because they are read off the rounds.
- Accepting an offer records the agreed figure with it. A supplier that has agreed takes no further rounds.
- Walking away closes that supplier for this review with the reason kept beside it. The rounds stay as the record of the conversation, and the ask stops counting towards the category.
- Confirmed in writing is the tick that says the supplier committed. It is dated the first time you set it, and you cannot walk away from a supplier that has confirmed: that is a broken agreement, not a negotiating move.
A supplier reads as stalled when it has been asked or has countered and its next step has no date, or a date already past. Nothing stores “stalled”; giving the next step a date clears it.
Once the project is closed, the rounds, ticks and positions stop moving: it becomes the record of what happened.
Where the cost of goods basis is set
Every ask is sized against what a supplier’s trade costs you, and that is worked out from your trading history rather than stored anywhere: sales excluding tax, less the margin on them. Settings → Projects → By workflow → Supplier negotiation holds the two choices behind it: how many weeks of trading history to read (13, 26 or 52) and the sales tax rate to take off, which is used only where your history reports sales including tax.
The Status page names the basis in force and links to it. Change the window and every share of cost, the category total and the target move with it.
A supplier with no attributed trading in that window reads as unknown, never as an estimate, and the category total stays blank rather than showing a partial one.
Where the old links go
/app/work, /app/triage and /app/pending now open Projects. Supplier orders, price reviews and transfers that used to sit in a project’s Triage and Pending stages are tasks now: find them in Tasks.