Optimized Purchasing Budget for Multi-Store Retail Operations

Role: CFO

Industry: Botique Retail Stores

Situation:

Store Overview Our footprint includes: Men's Clothing Stores (5 locations) – Apparel, hats, footwear, accessories, and cologne Women's Clothing Stores (3 locations) – Women's apparel, accessories, footwear, lifestyle items Children's/Toy/Gift Store (1 location) – Toys, sweets, games, seasonal items Each store has unique sales patterns, merchandise categories, and vendor dependency. Across the retail group, 3–5 major vendors account for roughly 80% of total purchasing volume, with long-tail specialty vendors making up the remainder. Sales & Inventory Structure Annual retail sales are under $5 million, but with a high SKU count and a complicated purchasing process. We maintain store-level budgeting, monthly sales forecasts, and inventory turn targets by store. Inventory is tracked at cost, and we utilize beginning inventory (12/31) + target turns + forecasted sales to guide purchasing strategy. What We Need We are looking for an Excel-based, stand-alone solution that can generate a monthly purchasing budget for each store using the following inputs: Forecasted monthly sales for 2026 by store Margin / COGS assumptions Target inventory turns Beginning inventory by store (12/31/2025) Basic vendor-terms mapping to calculate cash-outflow timing The goal is for the model to automatically calculate required monthly purchases by store, using turns-based logic (e.g., Ending Inventory = Sales ÷ Turns × COGS), and produce a clean Open-to-Buy / purchasing budget that can be handed directly to our buyer. Additionally, we need the ability to enter actual sales monthly and have the template update future months--essentially a rolling purchasing budget. Key Requirements Multi-store supported structure (9 stores) Monthly forecasting and purchasing budget output Fully unlocked Excel (editable formulas) Ability to scale or add simple customization as needed

Question to Marcus:

“

Can this template prepare a purchasing budget for multiple locations? What does that look like in excel