How to plan a season using last year's sales data

A season sneaks up the same way every year. Three weeks before the rush you realize you should have ordered already, you call the supplier, and you order roughly what you ordered last time — a little more of what you remember selling out, a little less of what you remember sitting around. Then the season ends and you're either short on the thing everyone wanted or stuck marking down a pallet of the thing nobody did.

You already own the best planning document for this: last year's sales. It doesn't rely on memory, it doesn't overweight the one weekend that stuck in your head, and it tells you not just what sold but when. The work is reading it before you commit, not after.

Why memory is a bad buyer

Memory keeps the dramatic moments and quietly drops the rest. You remember the Saturday you ran out of a bestseller, so this year you double it. You forget the two slow weeks in the middle and the display that never moved, so you order those again out of habit. The result is a plan built from your three or four sharpest memories instead of the whole season — and the parts you forgot are exactly where the money leaks out.

Last year's data has no favourites. Every day is recorded at the same weight, including the boring ones. That's precisely what makes it useful: it remembers the parts of the season you'd rather not think about.

Find the ramp date, not just the peak

Most merchants plan around the peak — the busiest week — and forget the ramp: the point where demand actually starts climbing. Pull last year's daily or weekly sales for the season and look for the week the line lifts off its normal baseline. That's your ramp date, and it's usually earlier than you think. If sales started climbing in the first week of November last year, ordering in late November this year means your shelves are thin during the exact window customers started buying.

Right-size the quantities, product by product

Once you know the shape of the season, use last year's units sold as the anchor for each product — not a single blended "order more" instinct. For every seasonal line, look at how many units actually sold last year, then adjust for what changed: a price increase, a line you dropped, a supplier who was out for two weeks, a location you didn't have yet. Start from the real number and reason from there.

1. Pull last year's sales by product for the same season window.
2. Rank seasonal items by units sold, top to bottom — the ranking alone often surprises.
3. Flag the true sell-outs: items that hit zero before the season ended and cost you sales.
4. Flag the leftovers: items you marked down or carried into January, and buy those short on purpose.

The leftovers list is the one merchants skip, and it's where the easiest money is. Cutting a slow seasonal line by half costs you nothing in sales — those units weren't selling at full price anyway — and it frees cash and shelf space for the products that actually emptied out.

The mistake: planning the whole season as one number

The most common seasonal error is treating the season as a single lump: "we did about forty grand last December, let's aim for forty-five." That top-line number hides everything that matters. It doesn't tell you which weeks were dead, which products carried the season, or which ones you overbought. A season isn't one decision — it's a ramp date, a set of per-product quantities, and a short list of things to stop ordering. Plan those three things and the top-line takes care of itself.

One thing to do this week

Pick the next season on your calendar — back-to-school, Halloween, the holidays, whatever comes first — and pull last year's sales for the eight-week window around it. Don't order anything yet. Just find the ramp date and write down the ten products that sold out and the ten that lingered. That single page is more planning than most stores do all year, and it turns your next supplier call from a guess into a decision.

Where CornerPilot fits

Getting last year's numbers into that shape usually means exporting from Clover and wrestling a spreadsheet — which is exactly why most merchants skip it. CornerPilot connects to your Clover data on a scheduled sync and gives you clear sales history by product and by period, so comparing this season's window to last year's is a few clicks instead of an afternoon. It won't place the order for you, and it isn't magic — it just keeps last year's real sales in reach when you actually need them, at planning time.

If you keep more than one location, the same view lets you plan each store on its own history, since a season rarely lands the same way in two neighbourhoods. See how it works on the features page, or view pricing when you're ready.

What actually changes

Planning a season from last year's data produces three quiet wins: you order earlier because you know the real ramp date, you buy the right products deep and the wrong ones shallow, and you walk into the season with a plan you can explain instead of a hope. Nothing dramatic on day one — but come January, you have less clearance, fewer missed sales, and a clean record to plan from next time.