Promotion Calendar

The Promotion Calendar is used to define dates that have significant effects on sales. The Promotion Calendar can store dates for promotions such as flyer distribution, holiday sales, or important annual special events, such as Black Friday sales. Promotions are analyzed by the machine learning forecasting model during the training process to determine how performance on past promotion dates is likely to affect the forecast for future promotion dates. When using other forecasting methods, the Promotion Calendar is not used.

Promotion dates are entered for a specific location in the Edits section of the Promotion Calendar. Promotion dates entered into the calendar are assigned a Promotion Category that defines the type of promotion and the expected scale of the promotion, in terms of its effect on volume. The Promotion Calendar should be populated with promotion dates for past promotions covering at least the same dates as the historical sales data available. Future promotion dates should also be populated for the period you are forecasting. At minimum, it is recommended to enter dates for public holidays and other significant sales events that occur during the year. Lack of promotional data for past or future dates may reduce the accuracy of generated forecasts.

It is important to note that the goal of the machine learning forecasting model is to predict future volume totals for an entire store to determine the optimal staffing levels for that store. Although promotions or discounts that only affect a single SKU are common in retail, these may have negligible value to the machine learning model unless they significantly boost total sales or other metrics for a store. Therefore, it is optional to enter single-SKU promotions or other smaller types of promotions into the Promotion Calendar.

Promotions can be defined as location specific for events that only occur in one store or department. Promotion dates can also be inherited by sub-locations in the location hierarchy. This is useful for defining company-wide promotions or promotions specific to individual territories or business units. Inherited promotion dates can also be useful for defining public holidays that are only observed in specific countries, states, or regions. Promotion dates that have been inherited from a parent location are displayed in the Inherited section of the Promotion Calendar. The combined list of active promotion dates, which are specific to the selected location or are inherited from parent locations, are displayed in the Final section.