Seasonal collections for clothing shops, from first delivery to end of season

What a Collection is

Clothing and shoe shops think in seasons, and PointLit does too. A Collection has a name, a short code, a colour and optional start and end dates, and every product lives in exactly one. Your business always has one default Collection, so a shop that does not work in seasons never has to think about it.

The dates only remind you. Opening and closing a Collection are deliberate steps someone takes, because a season that closes itself at midnight on a busy day helps nobody.

Planned, Open and Closed

• Planned: build the season's products and prices before the stock arrives. The till will not sell them yet.
• Open: the Collection sells, receives deliveries and can be edited. The till signs into an open Collection when it starts.
• Closed: no sales, no goods receipts and no catalogue or price edits. Returns against old bills, stock counts, adjustments, transfers, returns to supplier and carry-over still work, and someone with the right permission can reopen it.

Model numbers per Collection

Each Collection numbers its own models, starting again from its own counter with its own prefix, so this summer's model 001 does not collide with last summer's. Two products may even share a model number and a barcode when they sit in different Collections. When a scanned barcode matches more than one, the till asks which one the customer is holding.

End of season: carry over what did not sell

Choose Carry over… on the old Collection and a wizard walks you through Products, Target, Barcodes, Model numbers, Prices, Locations and Preview. PointLit copies the chosen products into the new Collection and moves their stock and cost at each branch you pick, recorded on the stock card as Carried over out and Carried over in. Barcodes are kept by default, so an old label still rings up the carried product. Markdown % takes a percentage off the base price, and off price-list prices if you copy them, which is how end-of-season clearance pricing is set in one step.

How did the season do?

The Collection performance report puts each Collection on one line: Status, Products, Pieces sold, Net, Returns, Margin, Margin %, On hand, Sell-through and Ends on. Most reports can be filtered to the Collections you choose, and the Size curve and Sell-through reports show which sizes and models moved, so next season's order follows what customers bought.

How it works in PointLit

1. In Collections, create the new season. It starts as Planned.
2. Build its products and prices, then open it when the stock arrives.
3. Sell as usual: the till signs into an open Collection.
4. At the end of the season, choose Carry over… on the old Collection and set a Markdown % if you want one.
5. Close the old Collection. Its history stays readable in every report.