How to plan a season on the buying calendar

Buying › Buying calendar shows a season's buy as money: what your purchase orders commit you to, month by month, and when the cash actually leaves. It reads the orders you already have in What are suppliers and purchase orders?, so there is nothing to copy across.

Before you start

• The Purchase orders module has to be on. See How to switch parts of Tideswell on and off.
• Seeing the calendar needs View purchase orders and the buying calendar. Creating and editing seasons needs Edit purchase orders and the buying calendar. Both start at lead; see How to set who can do what.

What is a season?

A season is a name and a pair of dates, such as Spring 26 running from 1 February to 31 July. Every purchase order lands in the season its ship date falls in. Create your first season and the calendar fills in from the orders you already have.

Until then the page reads No seasons yet, with a New season button.

How do you create a season?

1. Press New season.
2. Type a Name, then pick when it Starts and Ends.
3. Under What you plan to commit each month, type the amount you mean to spend in each month. Leave a month empty if you have not planned it.
4. Press Save season.

Give each season dates that sit beside your other seasons rather than over them, because two seasons cannot cover the same dates.

An empty month reads as "not planned", never as a plan to spend nothing. Fill in only the months you have actually budgeted.

To change the dates or the plan later, choose the season and press Edit season.

How do you read Money by month?

Each month of the season gets a row. Three things are drawn on it:

• Committed, by the month the goods ship. This is the order total, landing in the month of its ship date.
• Cash out, by when you pay. This is the same money, moved to the ship date plus the supplier's Pays after shipping days.
• Planned, a marker at the amount you typed for that month.

Beside each month is the amount committed. In a planned month it also says how much is left, or how much the month is over, in red.

Above the chart, the season line reads its dates, how many orders it holds and the total committed. Use the season picker at the top left to switch seasons.

What do the notes under the chart mean?

They name the orders the chart could not draw, so the totals never quietly leave something out.

• "Not on this timeline" counts orders with no ship date and orders shipping outside every season you have set up. Add the ship date, or create the season they belong to.
• "Shown as paid on the day they ship" counts orders whose supplier has no payment terms recorded. Set the supplier's Pays after shipping to move them to the right month. See How to record new terms and read a supplier's performance.
• Orders in another currency get their own line with their own total, kept out of the totals above because they are not in your home currency.

Cash that leaves after the season ends still counts as committed. It just has no month on this chart to fall in.

What are Vendor deadlines?

The last day each supplier will take a change to an order, soonest first. Each row gives the revise-by date, the order, the supplier and the amount, and links to the order.

A row marked ship date already moved belongs to an order whose ship date has changed since it was first set. Read those first: a supplier that has slipped once is the one to talk to before the deadline.

Only deadlines you can still act on are listed. A line under the heading counts how many more have already passed.

What does Against last season show?

This season beside the season before it, by start date. Each side gives the season's name, the money committed and the number of orders.

Fairgreen Golf Co. uses it at the start of a buy: if Spring 26 already holds more orders than all of Spring 25 with three months still to place, the plan needs another look.

How is this different from the Revisions calendar?

The Revisions calendar button on Buying › Purchase orders places each order on a month grid by its dates. The buying calendar adds the orders up into money per month against your plan. See How to find late orders and plan revisions for the Revisions calendar.

Can the Agent use the season plan?

Yes. Ask the Agent about a purchase order and it can say how the order sits against the plan for its ship month, and how much room that month has left. See How to ask about stock, suppliers and marketing.