Inventory how-to

How to handle carryover stock between seasons

Count your carryover stock as part of on hand when you plan the next season, and net it off before you order anything new.

Short answer: Count your carryover stock as part of on hand when you plan the next season, and net it off before you order anything new. Decide early whether carryover sells at full price, at a discount, or moves to clearance, because that decision changes your demand forecast for the new season.

Why carryover stock trips up reorder planning

Carryover stock is inventory left from a prior season that you still plan to sell. If you treat the new season's forecast as if you are starting from zero, you will order too much. The carryover units sitting on your shelf are real supply, so they have to be subtracted from whatever quantity the new season's demand suggests.

The trickier part is the sales history. If last season's units sold at a markdown to clear them out, that sales velocity does not represent true demand at full price. Mixing markdown sales into a forecast for new-season full-price stock will understate how much you actually need, or overstate it if the markdown sped up sales artificially.

Separate the SKU if the product changes at all

If the new season's item is the same SKU, same price, same packaging, you can keep using one SKU and just adjust the on-hand count. But if there is any change, a new colourway, a reprinted label, a price change, treat it as a new SKU. This keeps the sales history for forecasting clean, and keeps the carryover stock's history separate so it does not distort the new item's forecast.

Running both SKUs at once also makes it easier to decide when to stop restocking the old one and when to start building stock for the new one.

Set a sell-through plan for the old stock

Before the new season starts, decide what happens to the leftover units: full-price shelf space, a discount tier, a bundle, or a clearance channel. Give it a deadline. Open-ended carryover tends to sit untouched while the new season's forecast quietly assumes it does not exist, which leads to overordering the new stock.

If you discount the carryover, expect the sales rate to jump for a while. Do not let that burst of markdown sales feed into the forecast for the new season's full-price SKU.

Net carryover off your new season order

Once you know how many carryover units you want to carry forward and at what price, subtract them from the quantity you would otherwise order for the new season. Use the standard order quantity formula, but reduce the "on hand" figure correctly depending on whether you are treating the items as the same SKU or separate SKUs.

Step by step

  1. List every SKU with carryover stock and tag it as carryover before the new season launches.
  2. Decide whether the new season's product is the same SKU or a new one, based on whether anything about the item has changed.
  3. Set a sell-through channel and a deadline for the carryover units: full price, discount, bundle, or clearance.
  4. Exclude markdown-driven sales velocity from the forecast you use for the new, full-price SKU.
  5. Subtract remaining carryover units from on hand when you calculate the new season's order quantity.
  6. Recheck the carryover count weekly until it is cleared, so it does not quietly linger past its deadline.

Worked example

A store sells a scarf that comes back each winter in a new print. Last season they have 80 units left on 1 October, and the new print launches 1 November. Daily sales of the new print are forecast at 3 units once the season is underway, lead time is 14 days, and they want 10 days of safety cover. Order quantity = 3 x (14 + 10) minus on hand and on order = 72 minus 0 = 72 units of the new SKU, calculated completely separately from the 80 leftover scarves, which they plan to clear at 30 percent off by 15 November.

How SteadyShelf helps

SteadyShelf will net on-hand units off your order quantity automatically once you mark carryover and new-season items as separate SKUs, but it does not have a bundles or markdown-channel feature, so you still have to decide manually how and where to sell off the old stock and when to stop counting it in your plans.

$29/month flat, unlimited products and suppliers, 30-day free trial. Run the numbers now with the free reorder point calculator.

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FAQ

Should I keep carryover stock under the same SKU as the new season item?

Only if the product is genuinely unchanged, same price and packaging. If anything is different, use a new SKU so the old item's markdown history does not distort the new item's forecast.

How do I stop a markdown sale from wrecking next season's forecast?

Keep the markdown sales under the old SKU, not the new one, and exclude that sales window from the data you use to forecast the new season's full-price demand.

Let SteadyShelf do this math for every SKU

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