Receipt Plan Formula
How apparel planners calculate the planned receipt flow — the inventory movement the buy and supply chain teams must actually deliver.
What Receipt Plan measures
Receipt plan is the planned flow of new inventory into the business for a period. It is what the buying team must deliver for the plan to balance.
Receipts = Sales + EOP + Markdowns − BOPThe receipt plan is not the same as OTB. Receipts is the total planned inflow; OTB is the residual — receipts minus what is already on open POs.
Worked apparel example
Plan: $850K sales, $1.2M EOP, $120K markdowns, $1.1M BOP.
Receipts = $850K + $1.2M + $120K − $1.1M = $1.07M
$1.07M of inventory must land in the period at retail to deliver the plan. Half may already be on order (prior seasons' chase, carry-over PO). The remainder is what OTB covers — and what the buyer commits with current-season POs.
$1,070,000 in planned receipts. This is the inventory flow the buy needs to deliver — OTB is what remains of it after existing orders.
Failure modes we see
Receipts planned monthly, delivered lumpy. Plan says $1.07M should land evenly across the month. Factory reality delivers $900K in the last 10 days. The month opens light and closes heavy — sell-through in Week 1 suffers, markdowns land at month-end because inventory arrived past its prime window.
How RetailNorthstar handles receipt plan
Receipt plan runs at weekly grain, not monthly. Factory calendar delays are surfaced against the plan and the OTB impact is flagged. Buyers see the delta against their PO ship dates before it compounds.
Related formulas
- Open-to-Buy — the residual of the receipt plan
- BOP Inventory — the opening input
- EOP Inventory — the target ending state
See weekly receipt-plan flow with factory-calendar reality — not just the monthly plan number.
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