Routines: the retail checks you repeat, kept up on a schedule
- 01ORDERPlanned buy: 3 suppliers to orderMondays · one task per supplier
- 02STOCKSell-out scan: 4 lines shortDaily · stock lands too late
- 03PRICEPrice scan: 6 lines above rivalDaily · one task per category
- 04CLEARSlow movers: nothing to raiseWeekly · run recorded, no task
WHAT A ROUTINE IS / 01
A check you would otherwise run by hand every week
Most buying teams have a set of checks they repeat: what is about to run out, what is priced above a competitor, what is not selling, which stores will run short. Done by hand, each one is a spreadsheet pulled on a Monday and a judgement made line by line, and the weeks it is skipped are the weeks something is missed.
A routine keeps that check up for you. It has its own products, its own schedule and its own rule for what qualifies. When a run finds work, the work arrives as a task with the lines on it. When it finds nothing, the run is still recorded, so a quiet routine reads as checked rather than broken.
START FROM A SENTENCE / 02
Say what you want checked; twelfth drafts the rows
You start a routine in your own words. twelfth reads the sentence and drafts it as rows you can see and change: which products it looks at, what makes a line qualify, what it raises, the columns each line shows, what each run gives you, and when it runs and for whom.
Where a word could mean more than one thing, such as “aged stock” or “low stock”, twelfth asks on the row it affects instead of choosing for you. Before you create the routine, “If it ran now” shows what it would find today: how many lines qualify, example lines with the conditions each met, and the next few runs.
WHAT EACH RUN GIVES / 03
Lines to act on, a review, a briefing or a checklist
A routine gives one of four things. Lines to act on puts only the lines that need action on a task. A review puts every line, or only those that qualify, on a task to look over. A briefing is a written report on your range after each run, with no task. A checklist raises the same tasks on your schedule.
A routine that gives lines can say what it raises: lines to review, orders sized to cover or to the next buy plus lead time, stock moves between outlets, or price changes to a figure you set, such as a competitor’s price or a margin.
- Planned buy
- Lines that won’t last until the next planned buy plus the supplier’s lead time, with the quantity to order. One order task per supplier.
- Daily sell-out scan
- Products that will run out before stock can arrive. Silent when stock on order, or the next planned buy, lands in time.
- Daily price scan
- Lines priced above a tracked competitor by more than the allowed premium, and lines losing sales on price. One price task per category.
- Slow movers
- Lines still in range holding months more stock than they sell, with a suggested price move.
- Store transfer check
- Stores that will run short before their next replenishment, and the whole packs to send from the warehouse.
WORK THAT DOESN’T PILE UP / 04
Open work is refreshed, not raised twice
When a run finds work that is already on an open task, it refreshes that task rather than raising another. New lines are added, a line whose suggestion changed moves to the new suggestion unless you edited it, and a line that no longer qualifies is withdrawn.
A line you have closed as reviewed with no action is held off for a while, and you can mute a line on one routine for a week, a month or until a date. The product still appears everywhere else.
GUARDRAILS / 05
People review, and you set the limits
What a routine raises is a task for a person to review. Tell twelfth what a routine must never do, such as “never discount camping” or “don’t order anything”, and it keeps to that for the life of the routine.
A new routine can run in shadow first: it runs on its schedule and records what it would raise, but publishes nothing, until you make it live. A routine waits for the day’s data before it runs, and a run on stale data says so.
FAQ / 06
Frequently asked questions.
- Q01What is a routine in twelfth?
- A check you want kept up: what to look at, how often, and what counts as needing attention. Each routine has its own schedule, its own products and a record of every run. When a run finds work, the work arrives as a task.
- Q02How is a routine different from an alert or a scheduled report?
- An alert fires on a threshold and a scheduled report sends the same table each time. A routine judges each line against what qualifies, puts only the work on a task, refreshes that task on the next run rather than raising it again, and records quiet runs so you can see it checked.
- Q03Do routines place orders or change prices on their own?
- A routine raises orders, stock moves or price changes as tasks for a person to review. You can also set limits it keeps to, and run a routine in shadow, where it records what it would raise and publishes nothing.
- Q04Do I need to build routines myself?
- You can start one from a sentence, and twelfth also sets up routines for a workspace, such as a planned buy, a daily sell-out scan and a daily price scan. Their schedule and name can be changed.
- Q05How do we start?
- Book a demo with this page’s campaign, or read how a one-category pilot works.
RELATED / 07
Keep reading.
- twelfth for buyers
How buyers back winners sooner and clear stock before it eats the margin.
- AI for category managers
The brief, the ranked queue and the record for CatMan teams.
- Replenishment
What replenishment means and how cover drives it.
- How a pilot works
Start with one focused category.
NEXT MOVE
See the commercial workspace on your category.
We set up two or three routines over one of your categories and walk you through a week of runs.
