Pricing and Presentation Price Change Unit Completion %

[Dysprosed]

I'm not quite to green for this week for price change unit completion, even though we completed 100% of the worklist. Two SKUs, in particular represent 328 units, that if completed would push our score into the green.

The question is, since the initial task was already completed, if I go back into price change and print the clearance tickets for those two items in the correct quantities, when the score updates, will it give me credit for ticketing them? Or did they need to be ticketed at the same time that the task was completed? The former makes the most sense to me, as the latter ignores the chaos of stores. We shouldn't be penalized if we later find the missing quantity in store, during the same week, and get the remaining quantity ticketed.

I've never been able to get exact clarification on this topic. I'll update the thread tomorrow though, because we're going to go ahead and print off the needed tickets. If it pushes the score up, we'll know it worked.

 

[Dysprosed]

Oops I forgot to update the thread.

To answer the question, as long as you print the tickets within the same fiscal week that the tasks were created (i.e. between Tuesday and Saturday), you will get credit for completing that number of units.

 

[Meowmeow05]

Oops I forgot to update the thread.

To answer the question, as long as you print the tickets within the same fiscal week that the tasks were created (i.e. between Tuesday and Saturday), you will get credit for completing that number of units.

Okay that makes sense, but let me take it a step further and ask - if you don’t actually have the units on hand, you’re flubbing the numbers, right? If you have them and just missed them when printing tickets, of course it makes sense to print, but if you do not have them and cannot find them, you should not print tickets. Only print tickets for what you physically have. Otherwise when stuff eventually drops to salvage and the on hands is incorrect, there’s shortage because the expected number of units is not received. Please let me know if I’m misunderstanding this because my leads have told me 262835 different things, but best practice says only print tickets for what you physically find. I highlighted best practice and was directly told not to follow it so I’m confused on the whole process now.

 

[lostlittleboy]

Okay that makes sense, but let me take it a step further and ask - if you don’t actually have the units on hand, you’re flubbing the numbers, right? If you have them and just missed them when printing tickets, of course it makes sense to print, but if you do not have them and cannot find them, you should not print tickets. Only print tickets for what you physically have. Otherwise when stuff eventually drops to salvage and the on hands is incorrect, there’s shortage because the expected number of units is not received. Please let me know if I’m misunderstanding this because my leads have told me 262835 different things, but best practice says only print tickets for what you physically find. I highlighted best practice and was directly told not to follow it so I’m confused on the whole process now.

best practice is to do it accurately and do what you physically have.

HOWEVER

there is a metric that keeps track of the accuracy of price change each week, and if you are anything like my store and have one million panties in repacks in the backroom and you have 500 units of panties in the workload, then it is unrealistic to be able to actually get through scanning them along with everything else you are expected to do throughout your shifts. so ill have 300 things I couldn't find and that tanks metric and suddenly my SD is yelling at me about our metric needing to be better. so, you flub the on hands and make some barcodes to bring that metric up, then our DSD doesnt yell at our SD and then our store is viewed better, yadda yadda yadda....

there are also cases where you have scanned every single thing and there are 100 units mysteriously left in the workload that are truly nowhere. but if you "cant find" 100 things that messes up our metrics!! so, despite the fact it INDEED does mess things up to fake things, sometimes its the "right thing" to do.

TLDR; the "correct" thing to do will vary week to week based on your workload. I'm sure leads will tell you different things (as mine do as well) so always just ask your direct lead if you have a concern and do what they say for that time. then if something is wonky, its then on that leader who instructed you on what to do and not on you for making the "wrong" decision.

 

[Meowmeow05]

TLDR; the "correct" thing to do will vary week to week based on your workload. I'm sure leads will tell you different things (as mine do as well) so always just ask your direct lead if you have a concern and do what they say for that time. then if something is wonky, its then on that leader who instructed you on what to do and not on you for making the "wrong" decision.

Thanks for your response! Plot twist: I am a new lead 🤣

I totally understand why it happens. Though, I’m a pretty avid rule follower and we really don’t have a reason to be flubbing numbers because we’re small volume and the backroom is pretty organized and audited semi frequently. We do receive tons of product and truck not reflected in our inventory or missing whole casepacks and I think that’s where our problems start with incorrect on hands. We hit the metric every week and waste a whole lot of stickers, but we are not sending enough expected product to DC because we likely never had it in the first place. I feel like printing the stickers for our metric shifts the accountability away from the warehouse. I’m not new to management, but I’m new to retail and am trying to find that balance of best practice, ethics, and people pleasing. I’ll have to deep dive into greenfield and the truck manifest blah blah blah and find the trends

 

[allnew2]

Thanks for your response! Plot twist: I am a new lead 🤣

I totally understand why it happens. Though, I’m a pretty avid rule follower and we really don’t have a reason to be flubbing numbers because we’re small volume and the backroom is pretty organized and audited semi frequently. We do receive tons of product and truck not reflected in our inventory or missing whole casepacks and I think that’s where our problems start with incorrect on hands. We hit the metric every week and waste a whole lot of stickers, but we are not sending enough expected product to DC because we likely never had it in the first place. I feel like printing the stickers for our metric shifts the accountability away from the warehouse. I’m not new to management, but I’m new to retail and am trying to find that balance of best practice, ethics, and people pleasing. I’ll have to deep dive into greenfield and the truck manifest blah blah blah and find the trends

If you see discrepancies as in on hand but not actually received is best to partner with your inbound and do a trailer feedback to start , only if you are sure that is the case.
Next step when you do your weekly workload for such item and you can’t find it , just audit it to zero before the next markdown or salvage .and will drop out .

 

[Dysprosed]

I like to think of it as the opposite. I'm not actually flubbing the numbers by counting what I don't physically have. Indeed, in a way, I see myself as keeping them accurate. Let me explain.

I used to think the majority of on-hand discrepancies were the result of operations mistakes from the DC. i.e. Mispicks, or the truck just not having items on it that DCI says we received, and vice versa, extra items being sent that aren't accounted for. By all means, this does happen, and frequently. With goal for DCs being 10,000 DPMO, and them not even hitting that, there are a lot of mistakes being made. I especially notice this with PIPO and repacks/breakpacks. However, on the whole, I think they are a lot more accurate than we give them credit for. With possibly a big exception for FDC. They still kind of suck.

It's also tempting to blame retail theft on shortage, which our senior leadership certainly does. And that can't be understated, especially in certain markets and in specific high-risk categories.

If we only consider these two things, and I say I counted the items, but didn't actually have them, I might agree that I'm hiding outside shortage. Though, why that should impact my price change unit completion %, and not show up somewhere else, like in AP metrics is a little irritating since I have no control over it.

But the much more likely culprit of OH discrepancies is poorly performed in store processes! I won't dive into all the issues, but I hope I can give you an idea with this one example. Business partners that are working on problems related to Backroom Location Accuracy estimate that true BRLA is around 61% across the chain! i.e. 39% of non-physically empty locations have at least one accuracy issue, and possibly more. This means that the number of baffles in the backroom is likely staggering. And that's just things in location. I see random merchandise all over the stockroom.

The long and short of this, is that 9 times out of 10, that stuff does eventually show up, and I pop it on the salvage pallet at that time. But even if it doesn't show up because a TM threw it in the trash without doing an Item Removal on it, I've still made our counts more accurate by removing OHs from store inventory that we either don't currently have, or won't have in the future when we eventually ship it out.

The reason the best practice exists as it does, is that it's the simplest possible way to do it. It avoids gray areas and is very cut and dry. You count what you have. This can be universally taught with little room for error.

I hope my reasoning made sense. Cheers.

 

[allnew2]

I like to think of it as the opposite. I'm not actually flubbing the numbers by counting what I don't physically have. Indeed, in a way, I see myself as keeping them accurate. Let me explain.

I used to think the majority of on-hand discrepancies were the result of operations mistakes from the DC. i.e. Mispicks, or the truck just not having items on it that DCI says we received, and vice versa, extra items being sent that aren't accounted for. By all means, this does happen, and frequently. With goal for DCs being 10,000 DPMO, and them not even hitting that, there are a lot of mistakes being made. I especially notice this with PIPO and repacks/breakpacks. However, on the whole, I think they are a lot more accurate than we give them credit for. With possibly a big exception for FDC. They still kind of suck.

It's also tempting to blame retail theft on shortage, which our senior leadership certainly does. And that can't be understated, especially in certain markets and in specific high-risk categories.

If we only consider these two things, and I say I counted the items, but didn't actually have them, I might agree that I'm hiding outside shortage. Though, why that should impact my price change unit completion %, and not show up somewhere else, like in AP metrics is a little irritating since I have no control over it.

But the much more likely culprit of OH discrepancies is poorly performed in store processes! I won't dive into all the issues, but I hope I can give you an idea with this one example. Business partners that are working on problems related to Backroom Location Accuracy estimate that true BRLA is around 61% across the chain! i.e. 39% of non-physically empty locations have at least one accuracy issue, and possibly more. This means that the number of baffles in the backroom is likely staggering. And that's just things in location. I see random merchandise all over the stockroom.

The long and short of this, is that 9 times out of 10, that stuff does eventually show up, and I pop it on the salvage pallet at that time. But even if it doesn't show up because a TM threw it in the trash without doing an Item Removal on it, I've still made our counts more accurate by removing OHs from store inventory that we either don't currently have, or won't have in the future when we eventually ship it out.

The reason the best practice exists as it does, is that it's the simplest possible way to do it. It avoids gray areas and is very cut and dry. You count what you have. This can be universally taught with little room for error.

I hope my reasoning made sense. Cheers.

Not really . Because if you fidget the numbers and say you have it when you don’t it will be shortage when that item will pop up and gets scanned .
Best practice is you scan what you find .
And if location accuracy it’s a problem then you go in the backroom and do a complete audit for that aisle - best practice
Or you put can’t find -best practice and that will show on Ap report
Or you simply audit such item
Or you work your reject report for rfid - best practice

 

[Dysprosed]

Not really . Because if you fidget the numbers and say you have it when you don’t it will be shortage when that item will pop up and gets scanned .
Best practice is you scan what you find .
And if location accuracy it’s a problem then you go in the backroom and do a complete audit for that aisle - best practice
Or you put can’t find -best practice and that will show on Ap report
Or you simply audit such item
Or you work your reject report for rfid - best practice

What's the difference? If the system says I have it, and I don't, it's shortage. If I say I have it, and I don't, it's also shortage, unless it's found, which is more likely than not. When it's found, if the OH is already zero because of actions previously taken, then it's not necessary to process it further. Just place it on the salvage pallet. Total store on-hands are more accurate, and the DC gets what we told them I was giving them previously.

One could LOCU the stockroom if they like, but that'll only fix that BRLA that day. Within a month, so many units have turned that it's likely back to where it was. It's a systemic issue that requires a much more advanced solution. Since BRLA doesn't capture the true accuracy of the aisles/fill-groups anyway, it's a moot point.

AP definitely doesn't care about me hitting can't find. It's never come up in 20+ years. But unit completion not being 70% or higher will come up every single week. I'm sure it was a lot different when we had a backroom to pull price change, and price change team that could scan clearance ends and take the time to find the items. But we don't and I have to work within the parameters I am given.

What you're suggesting requires way more payroll and is also fidgeting with the numbers, albeit in a different way. Auditing the item or working the reject report is functionally equivalent to what I'm suggesting. We're both changing counts, and if I have 0 of something in the store, I want the stores on-hands to reflect that we have 0 of it. I change the count with Price Change, you change it with Audit. Either way, the expected on-hand will deviate from the systemic on-hand, and that will generate shortage when annual inventory occurs.