What should be on a line board before a line review?

At minimum every style needs a current image, a category, its colorway count, and a price tier, with option counts recalculated after the most recent cuts. Beyond the per-style fields, the board should be checked as a whole for category balance against the line plan, colour story spread, price-tier architecture, and reconciliation of total option count to the plan. The full checklist on this page covers eight sections, from required style fields through downstream readiness.

How do you know if a line board is review-ready?

The practical test is whether the room can spend its time on judgement rather than reconciliation. If the first twenty minutes of a review go on establishing which version of the option count is correct or what a style currently costs, the board was not ready. Every item in the “board is current” section of this checklist exists to prevent that specific failure.

Who owns getting the line board ready?

Usually merchandising, working with design on images and product development on costs and feasibility. The important thing is that it is owned by a named person rather than assumed: boards go into reviews stale most often when preparation is everyone’s job in general and nobody’s in particular.

Is this checklist specific to apparel?

It is written in apparel vocabulary, but the structure applies to any category planned as a seasonal range with visual product — footwear, accessories and bags, and home and furniture teams run the same sequence with different terms. Footwear teams read “colorways” as colour and material combinations across a size run; home teams read it as finishes and options. The balance, price architecture, and sign-off checks are unchanged.

// Checklist

Line board checklist

By Line Board Editorial TeamPublished August 1, 2026Editorial policy

44 checks across eight sections for getting a line board ready to review — so the meeting is spent on judgement rather than on working out whose numbers are current.

Free, no email required. Print it or work down it on screen before your next line review.

The short version

A line board is review-ready when every style carries a current image, category, colorway count, and price tier; when option counts have been recalculated since the last round of cuts; when category, colour, and price-tier balance have been checked against the line plan rather than against habit; and when there is a clear place to record status, cuts, and sign-off. The failure this prevents is spending the first twenty minutes of a cross-functional review reconciling files.

// Section 1

1. Every style carries its required fields

A board is only reviewable if every tile can be judged. Missing fields do not slow the review down evenly — they push the room into discussing whichever styles are complete.

Style name or code, matching whatever product development and planning use
A current image — the latest sketch, sample photo, or CAD, not last round’s
Category, and subcategory or class where the range is large enough to need it
Colorway count, and the colorways themselves where colour is part of the decision
Price tier, and target retail price where it is set
Cost or target margin, where margin is in scope for this review
Delivery window or drop, if the season is phased
Carryover vs new flag — reviewing a range without knowing what is repeat is guesswork

// Section 2

2. The board is current, not last round’s

Walking a stale board is the single most common way to waste a line review. These checks take minutes and protect an hour of cross-functional time.

Every style added or cut since the last review is reflected on the board
Images replaced where a style has changed materially since the last round
Option counts recalculated after the most recent cuts, not carried forward
Costs refreshed if sourcing has repriced anything
The open-to-buy figure the range is being judged against is the current one
Anything still undecided is visibly marked as undecided rather than left ambiguous

// Section 3

3. Category balance holds

Category balance is a whole-range property. It is invisible style by style and obvious on a board, which is most of the reason the board exists.

Option count by category compared against the line plan, not against last season by habit
No category expanded without a stated reason — growth target, new door, known demand
No category thinned below the point where it still reads as a category on the floor
Core and carryover proportion checked — enough newness to matter, enough continuity to hold
Cross-category duplication checked: the same idea appearing in two categories is often one idea too many

// Section 4

4. The colour story reads

Colour is where over-expansion hides. Fourteen colourways of one silhouette and fourteen distinct styles produce the same option count and completely different ranges.

Colourways per style are deliberate, not inherited from the previous season’s pattern
The season’s palette is visible across the range, not concentrated in one category
Core neutrals present at the depth the channel actually sells
Hero or statement colours identified, and limited to styles that can carry them
No style carrying more colourways than its expected volume justifies

// Section 5

5. Price architecture is intentional

Good / better / best should be a decision, not an outcome. A range that drifted into its price spread is usually heavy in the middle.

Option count by price tier reviewed against the intended architecture
An opening price point exists in every category a customer shops as a category
The best tier is small enough to feel considered and supported by product that justifies it
No unintentional gaps between tiers large enough to break the trade-up story
Margin by tier checked where margin is in scope — the middle tier carries most ranges

// Section 6

6. Option count reconciles to the plan

This is the check that most often fails silently, because the board and the plan are usually two different files.

Total option count matches the line plan’s target, or the variance is stated and accepted
Option count by category reconciles, not just the total — offsetting errors hide in totals
SKU implications understood where sizing multiplies options into a much larger number
The count on the board is the count in the plan, from one source rather than two

// Section 7

7. Status and sign-off are unambiguous

A review that ends without a recorded decision gets re-litigated. The record is the deliverable, not a formality.

Every style carries a status: in, cut, or still under discussion
Cuts recorded with the reason — this is what stops them being quietly reinstated later
Adds recorded with what they are replacing or what gap they fill
Named owner for every follow-up action, with a date
Sign-off explicitly given, by the person whose sign-off it actually is
The next review date set before the room breaks up

// Section 8

8. The range is ready to travel downstream

Sign-off is not the end of the board’s job. What matters next is whether the decided range can move without being retyped.

The locked style list is available to planning in the form they need it
Colourway and price-tier decisions travel with the styles, not separately
The cut record is accessible to whoever does the assortment work
Any style still pending a decision is flagged rather than assumed in
Someone owns the handoff — a range that is “signed off” and sitting in a file is not handed off

// Honest note

Not every check applies to every team

A small range reviewed by three people who all know it does not need a formal status field per style, and margin checks belong in the review only where margin is actually in scope at that stage. Treat this as a superset to cut down from rather than a bar to clear. The sections that repay attention regardless of range size are option-count reconciliation and the cut record — those two fail quietly, and their failures surface late.

// Summary

Review-readiness is mostly about currency: a stale board turns a judgement meeting into a reconciliation meeting.
Per-style fields — image, category, colorways, price tier — are what make a tile judgeable at all.
Category, colour, and price-tier balance are whole-range properties, checked on the board rather than style by style.
Option count must reconcile to the line plan by category, not just in total — offsetting errors hide in totals.
Record cuts with reasons: the cut rationale is what stops decisions being quietly reversed during assortment.

// Related resources

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// FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What should be on a line board before a line review?: At minimum every style needs a current image, a category, its colorway count, and a price tier, with option counts recalculated after the most recent cuts. Beyond the per-style fields, the board should be checked as a whole for category balance against the line plan, colour story spread, price-tier architecture, and reconciliation of total option count to the plan. The full checklist on this page covers eight sections, from required style fields through downstream readiness.
How do you know if a line board is review-ready?: The practical test is whether the room can spend its time on judgement rather than reconciliation. If the first twenty minutes of a review go on establishing which version of the option count is correct or what a style currently costs, the board was not ready. Every item in the “board is current” section of this checklist exists to prevent that specific failure.
Who owns getting the line board ready?: Usually merchandising, working with design on images and product development on costs and feasibility. The important thing is that it is owned by a named person rather than assumed: boards go into reviews stale most often when preparation is everyone’s job in general and nobody’s in particular.
Is this checklist specific to apparel?: It is written in apparel vocabulary, but the structure applies to any category planned as a seasonal range with visual product — footwear, accessories and bags, and home and furniture teams run the same sequence with different terms. Footwear teams read “colorways” as colour and material combinations across a size run; home teams read it as finishes and options. The balance, price architecture, and sign-off checks are unchanged.

// See it in RetailNorthstar

See how a line board works when it is connected to the plan. Canvas — the visual line board inside RetailNorthstar — links the board to open-to-buy, the assortment, sizing, purchase orders, and production, so the board stays live instead of going stale.

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