This is how it's being done at my store now. And it makes me crazy. When we had the DBO model still firmly in place, it was so much cleaner. Now, we have some aspects of the DBO model still being used because it works well to have the same TMs always pushing truck in certain areas, but whoever does PC in my area does an awful job of it. I've decided to stop speaking up about it because nothing changes. I've also decided to stop fixing their mistakes because I just don't have the time. Still having to talk to myself A LOT about it because it's so irritating. :-\
I've really been struggling to figure out how to do this right and haven't fallen on a great answer.
Here is how I generally prioritize things:
1) Regular Price Label Batches: Too easy. Print them on sticky paper. Make sure every task is activated, put the labels in the right place. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
2) Clearance Label Batches: Also too easy. Labels for located merchandise. Scan and activate, put them up. Should be up by EOD Tuesday.
3) First Markdowns. Most of the 1st MDs not included in (2) are going to be for Style, with a handful being for NOP merch your store received, but that was never on POG, or never set. Get your 1st MDs done right as quickly as possible. If you don't find these, they'll get activated without getting ticketed, and you probably won't sell very much, and these items won't get moved to your clearance blocks. Need to get these done ASAP!
4) Further Markdowns. In my view, the least important. Theoretically, they're already ticketed as clearance and hopefully moved to a clearance space. Activating them and keying some quantity does not affect their on-hands.
5) Finals and Salvage: Here we're in tricky territory. Can't finding them means the on-hand is unaffected until an AIC zeroes out the count, but if you scan them in Price Change after AIC has made a change, you're going to get negative on-hands. Ideally, you want as little salvage as possible, so you want to get those finals ticketed and sold. You can key them in without finding them, but again, you run the risk of on-hands going negative. Also, although it is somewhat obfuscated, there may be some financial impact if you say you CRC'd something that never made it to the CRC.
The ideal balance is to be complete every task and find enough actual inventory to ticket or salvage that your unit completion % stays reasonably high. But how much time and effort do you allocate to this and still get all your sets done on time or ahead of schedule? It's damn tricky! Especially since I am rarely allocated enough hours for pricing, only enough for set workload. This in spite of the fact that if you base Price Change Forecast on Target's very own labor standards, you would be getting anywhere from an additional 40-120 hours on top of set workload hours.
