Retail Budget Management Checklist

Walk the P&L line by line. Flag any category where actual is more than 5% off plan or more than $5,000 in absolute dollars — whichever is tighter for that line. Labor, COGS, and shrink are the usual offenders. Capture the headline status here so the next steps know whether to investigate.

Pull the supporting detail before drawing conclusions. For labor, check schedule overrides, call-outs, and predictive-scheduling premium pay. For COGS, check freight surcharges, vendor short-ships, and unbudgeted RTV. For shrink, check cycle-count adjustments since the last review.

If the variance is one-time (a freight spike, a single damaged shipment), absorb it. If it reflects a structural change (rent escalation kicked in, a category is consistently underperforming), reforecast the remaining months and notify the controller.

Push the revised forecast into the financial system, lock the prior month, and re-share the updated targets with store managers so labor and OTB plans align to the new numbers.

Build the cash projection from POS deposits, e-commerce settlements, and AR. Subtract scheduled vendor payments, payroll runs, rent, and tax remittance. Flag any week where ending cash drops below the operating floor.

Target a shift from net-30 to net-60 with the highest-volume vendors. Use last year's purchase volume as leverage. Document the new terms in the vendor master so AP applies them to the next PO cycle.

Pull sell-through by week-of-receipt and compare against the markdown matrix. First markdown should hit at the planned weeks-of-supply trigger; terminal markdown should never go below cost without DM approval per the cost-protection floor.

Compare kWh usage to the same month prior year. Verify HVAC setbacks match posted store hours — open and close staff frequently override setbacks and forget to reset them, which shows up on the next utility bill.

List any SKU above 16 weeks of supply for buyer review. Carrying costs (capital, storage, markdown risk) compound monthly. Coordinate RTV or transfer to higher-velocity stores before triggering the next markdown step.