How to send your open-to-buy file to a buying planner

Some retailers hand their buying budget to an outside planner, who works out how much you may spend on new stock each month, category by category. The Open to buy feed builds the file that planner reads. It lives under Buying › Data feeds › Open to buy, and it reads the same Shopify store as the pages described in What is Store analytics?.

The file carries one row per category per month, with sales, markdowns, stock, what arrived and what is on order.

Before you start

You need:

• The Store module on and your Shopify store connected. See How to connect your Shopify store.
• See sales, inventory, reports and the daily brief, to open the page. It is one row in Settings › Permissions and starts at lead.
• Change stock, receiving and store settings, to change the feed settings, mark a file as sent or rebuild a month. It also starts at lead. See How to set who can do what.

Without the second permission you can still read every figure and download the file.

What does the planner do with the file?

They compare how fast a category sells against how much of it you hold and how much is coming.

Slow and overstocked means buy less. Fast and thin means buy more. Every number in the file moves that decision, so a number that is wrong in your favour costs you real money later.

What is on the Data feeds page?

Buying › Data feeds lists the files your workspace sends to outside parties. Today that is one row, Open to buy.

The row shows whether the feed is Set up or Needs setting up before it can run, and the last month you sent, such as Last sent: September 2026, or Nothing sent yet. Click the row to open the feed.

How do you set up the feed the first time?

Tell Tideswell which locations are yours, mark the stock that is not, then confirm. Until you do, the page header shows Not set up yet.

1. Open Buying › Data feeds › Open to buy and press Feed settings.
2. Under Locations you own, check each switch. Locations that ship their own inventory start switched on, so switch off any that are not yours and switch on any that are.
3. Mark anything on your shelves that is not yours to count, as described below. A category with "consign" in its name starts under Consignment.
4. Choose how the file is laid out, under File layout.
5. Press Confirm.

The header then reads Locations confirmed. From then on the button reads Save changes, and the panel's footer reminds you that a change applies to the next file you send.

Confirming your locations also unlocks How to see what your stock is worth, and it gives How to build, save and schedule a report the counting rules it uses by default.

Why count only the locations you own?

Because a supplier or dropship location holds units you never paid for. Counted as yours, they tell the planner you are sitting on stock you do not have, and your budget gets cut for it.

Each location carries a hint. Ships its own inventory usually means a location you own, and Does not ship inventory usually means a supplier or dropship location. At Fairgreen Golf Co., the team switches on its warehouse and its shop, and leaves off the dropship location Kaimen Knitwear ships from.

When Shopify reports a location you have not ruled on, it shows Added since you last confirmed. Decide whether it is yours. Switch it on or leave it off, then save.

Which mark does each thing go in?

There are four marks. Each one takes categories or brands from your own Shopify, picked with Add category or brand:

• Consignment: on your shelves, but you never bought it. Left out of stock and sales.
• Services and gift cards: not a product at all, such as classes, repairs and gift cards. Left out of stock and sales.
• Not merchandise: sold here but never bought as stock, such as a brand shipped straight from the supplier. Left out of stock, and its sales stay.
• Off-books sales: rung up at the till for a special order or another one-off. Left out of sales, and stock is untouched. See What are special orders?.

A category or brand sits under one mark at a time, so once it is marked it is not offered again further down.

How do you decide between them?

Ask what should happen to the money it takes at the till.

Fairgreen's gift cards are not merchandise: until someone spends one, it is money the shop owes. So they go under Services and gift cards and drop out of sales too. A brand the supplier ships straight to your customer really did sell, so Not merchandise keeps the sale and drops only the stock.

Get this wrong and one of the two columns stops matching the planner's own report.

What does each mark remove?

Each marked name shows the stock it removes for the month on screen, or none on shelves. An Off-books sales name shows the sales it removes in place of stock.

The line at the foot of the panel totals it: "These marks leave $8,240 out of September 2026's $412,600 of stock on your shelves." Read that line before you save, because it is the difference your planner will see.

A brand with stock in everyday categories gets an amber warning naming how much sits where. Keep it marked only if you never bought any of it.

What does File layout change?

Five choices shape the file itself:

• Group by: Product type or Brand, which decides what each row's category is.
• Wholesale sales: Left out or Included.
• Sales counted: Only stock you own, or Everything sold, which keeps consignment and service sales in the file while their stock stays out. Choose Everything sold when your planner's own sales report covers the whole store.
• Stock counted: All of it, or Only with a cost, which leaves out stock with no cost entered and reports how many units it dropped. Choose it only when your planner's report filters the same way.
• Orders on order: Shopify reads Shopify's incoming stock, and splits it by month where the app that raised the order recorded an arrival date. Tideswell reads the purchase orders you raise here, split by the month each delivery is due. Choose Tideswell when you raise your purchase orders in Tideswell.

Your workspace may use its own word for purchase orders; Settings › Terminology shows both.

How do you check a month before you send it?

Open the page and read it. The month loads as the page opens, starting on the last month that has closed.

Four cards lead the page: Sales, Stock at retail, month end, On order, at cost and Markdowns. Once you have sent a file, the first two also show the change since it.

Every category lists each category with Sales, Markdowns, Stock, On order and Share of stock, plus Sales change once there is a sent file to compare with. It puts the biggest change first and tags a category never sent before.

The table shows eight categories first. Show all categories opens the full list, and See the raw file shows the file's own text.

Before you send lists anything worth a second look, or shows Nothing flagged. It also asks you to check the stock figure against one you already trust.

Stock you don't own shows what your marks leave out of the month, such as $8,240 of $412,600. A bar splits the shelf into yours, consignment, services and not merchandise, and a table lists each mark with Why, Units and Stock left out. Change marks reopens the feed settings.

What do the filters change?

Only what is on screen. The bar says so: Filters never change the file your planner gets.

• Month picks the month. The month still running is labelled (in progress), and its stock and sales keep changing until it closes, so send a closed month.
• Categories narrows the table to the ones you pick.
• Show offers Every category, Changed more than 10% and Never sent before.
• Sales switches the downloads between Items you own and Include items you don't own. The file your planner gets stays the same.

How do you send the file?

Download it, send it to your planner the way you usually do, then press Mark as sent.

1. Press Download CSV, type a File name if you want a different one, and press Download September 2026 (the button names the month on screen).
2. Send the file to your planner.
3. Press Mark as sent. Tideswell records exactly the month on screen as the file you issued.

If the figures changed while you were looking, nothing is recorded and a message asks you to check the new figures and press again.

Items by category downloads the products behind each category. It comes from the same build, so it always adds up to the file, and it answers "which items are in this category" when the planner's figures and yours disagree.

What if a month looks wrong?

Use the checks on the page before you send it:

• Rebuild sales from Shopify, under Numbers disagree with Shopify?, reads the month's orders back from Shopify and replaces the sales Tideswell holds for it. Nothing in Shopify changes, and stock readings are left alone.
• Try to recover this month's stock from Shopify appears when a month has no month-end stock reading. It asks Shopify for that month's stock.
• Sales from stock you don't own splits the month's units by the shelf they left. Press Check September to see Not owned against Yours, with What sold that wasn't yours, Download this list and Every location.

That last check is the evidence for your location settings. Gift cards, lessons and repairs move no stock, so they never show there. For more, see Why a figure looks wrong.

Where does each number come from?

• Sales come from Shopify, after discounts and returns. Markdowns are the discounts.
• Inventory is the stock at the locations you own at month end, valued at retail. A closed month is read from the reading taken at the time, so sending an old month again uses that month's shelves.
• Receiving is what you booked in through Tideswell that month. See How to receive a delivery.
• On order follows the Orders on order setting above.

Why are some cells blank?

A blank cell means Tideswell did not measure that number. A zero means it measured it and the answer was nothing.

A month with no deliveries booked in through Tideswell sends Receiving blank. Under the category table, a line names the columns the file sends blank in place of zero. Your planner's loader should keep blank and zero apart too.

What is in the export history?

Every time someone pressed Mark as sent, with Month, Version, Status, Rows, Stock and Fingerprint. It appears once there is something to list.

Status reads Sent, Replaced when the same month was marked as sent again, or Withheld when the month could not be built. The fingerprint proves the file you hold is the one that was sent.