A line plan is the numeric architecture of a season’s line: option counts by category, price tier and delivery, with the planned units, price points and margin each cell carries. It is derived from the merchandise financial plan and agreed before the styles exist. The line board visualizes it and the line sheet sells what the board became. In apparel the option is a style-colorway, the tiers are good, better and best, and the deliveries are drops or floor sets.

How is a line plan different from a line board and a line sheet?

The line plan is the numbers: how many options, at which tiers, in which deliveries, carrying which units and margin. The line board is the picture of the same range, where design and merchandising decide which bodies and colors fill each counted slot. The line sheet is the outbound wholesale document, produced after lock, that offers the finished range to accounts with prices, minimums and delivery windows. The plan says how many, the board says which, and the sheet says what an account can order.

What are the steps to build a line plan?

Seven, in order. Set each category’s option budget by dividing its planned units by the depth an option needs to carry. Split the category by price tier, units first. Split each tier into carryover and newness. Place the options into drops and sum the units per delivery. Check every cell against factory minimums, mill minimums and the unit-weighted margin target. Reconcile cell by cell with design’s proposal. Lock the counts at line review, with prices locking at the commercial lock and quantities at the buy.

How many options should a line plan have?

The count is derived, not copied. Divide each cell’s planned units by the depth an option there needs to carry, then check the result against the minimum depth that fabric and factory minimums allow, which sets a ceiling. The ceiling is a limit rather than a target, because a cell at its ceiling has no room for a short booking or a cut in costing. A count inherited from another team or season is unusable until its unit is stated, since a count in styles and a count in style-colorways differ by a factor of the average colorway count per style.

When is a line plan locked, and what can change after lock?

Option counts lock at line review, cell by cell, with the carryover or new flag on each slot. Price points and target costs lock at the commercial lock once quotes are in, and planned units become quantities at the buy. After lock the plan changes by swap: a reserve concept can replace a locked option in the same tier and delivery if it clears the same checks. An addition divides the cell’s units one more way, so it has to name what comes out, what downstream work has already started, and who absorbs the cost.

Is a line plan the same as an assortment plan?

No. The line plan decides breadth — how many options, at which tiers, in which deliveries — and the assortment plan decides deployment: which channels, clusters and doors each locked option goes to, and how deep. The assortment plan inherits the line plan’s counts and cannot repair a plan that was too wide for its units; it can only spread the thinness differently. In the wider sense of the term, where the line plan also carries the style list, the order still holds: line plan first, assortment plan second.

// Line planning

How to build a line plan, step by step

By Line Board Editorial TeamPublished September 13, 2026Editorial policy

A line plan is the numeric architecture of a season’s line: the option counts by category, price tier and delivery, with the planned units, price points and margin each of those cells has to carry. It is agreed before the styles exist. The line board then visualizes it, turning each counted option into a card, and the line sheet then sells what the board became. In apparel the option is a style-colorway, the tiers are the good-better-best ladder, and the deliveries are the season’s drops or floor sets.

This guide covers the plan, not the board — for the board, see what a line board is and how to build one. Below: the inputs, seven build steps, an illustrative plan whose rows sum, review and lock, failure modes, and line planning across ten verticals.

The short version

Build top-down, then reconcile bottom-up. Divide the category’s unit budget into option budgets at a depth each option can carry, split them by price tier, then by carryover and newness, and place the options into deliveries. Check every cell against fabric and factory minimums and the blended margin. Then reconcile with design’s proposal cell by cell and lock the counts at line review — prices lock with confirmed costs, and units with the buy.

Definition — Line plan: The numeric skeleton of a season’s range — how many options, at which tiers, in which deliveries, with the units and margin each cell owes — locked before the range is committed to a buy. It states what the line is allowed to be; the board shows what it is.; Options in a cell = planned units for the cell ÷ planned depth per option, by category × price tier × delivery; Used by: Merchandise planning, with merchandising and finance; Related: Line board, line sheet, assortment plan, option count, price tier, drop

// Key takeaways

A line plan is numbers, not product: option counts by category, price tier and delivery, with the units and margin each cell carries.
It comes first: the board visualizes it, the assortment plan deploys it, and the line sheet sells what it became.
Build top-down from units and depth, then reconcile with design cell by cell, not at the category total.
A depth below fabric or factory minimums is a cell that cannot be bought at quoted cost — it needs a surcharge, a platform or fewer options — so every cell is checked before lock.
Counts lock at line review, prices at the commercial lock, quantities at the buy; after lock, the plan changes by swap.
What counts as one option changes by vertical — a style-colorway in apparel, a shade in beauty, a model in a finish in furniture.

// Four artifacts

Line plan vs line board vs line sheet vs assortment plan

Four artifacts list the same season’s styles and do four jobs in sequence. The full three-way treatment, with ownership and the handoffs that break, is on line board vs line sheet vs line plan.

Line plan. How many options, at which tiers, in which deliveries, carrying which units and margin. Owned by planning; agreed before the styles exist.
Line board. The same options as cards, where design and merchandising decide which bodies and colors fill each counted slot — and push back on the plan.
Assortment plan. Where the locked line goes — channel, cluster, door — and how deep; see line plan vs assortment plan.
Line sheet. The finished range offered to wholesale accounts with prices, minimums and delivery windows, produced only after the line is locked.

The plan says how many; the board says which; the assortment says where; the sheet says what an account can order.

// Inputs

What a line plan is built from

Six inputs go into a line plan. Each one either sets how many units the line has or limits how many ways those units can be divided.

The category sales plan and margin target. The merchandise financial plan gives each category a sales plan and a margin, and planning converts the sales plan into a receipt budget in units through the planned average unit retail and sell-through. That unit budget is what the line plan divides, and the margin — initial markup at this stage — has to hold in blend across tiers. See costing the line to a margin target.
Carryover and newness. Carryover candidates from the last hindsight arrive with known sell-through, no development cost and shorter lead times, and each takes a slot before any new concept is drawn; what remains is design’s newness brief. The split comes out of per-style decisions — balancing carryover and newness covers the test — but the plan has to hold it, because the two consume calendar, samples and minimums differently.
Price architecture. The good-better-best ladder — tier count, price points, spacing — is set before options are allocated, because the tier is the plan’s second axis and each tier carries its own depth and markup. Line architecture covers the ladder.
Drops and delivery windows. The calendar sets how many deliveries the line lands in, and each has to merchandise on its own, which makes the delivery the third axis. See planning drops on the line board.
Fabric platforming and minimums. Mill minimums are quoted per fabric and color, factory minimums per style or style-colorway. Both put a floor under depth and so a ceiling on option count; fabric platforming lets several options clear a minimum none would clear alone.
Channel needs. Wholesale accounts need enough options per delivery to fill a floor set, a direct-to-consumer site needs newness per drop to bring a customer back, and a channel exclusive exists in only one channel’s count. The plan carries these as rules — a minimum per delivery, an exclusive cell.

// The build

The seven steps to build a line plan

Five steps run top-down, one runs bottom-up, and the last locks the plan. A plan reconciled with design before its own arithmetic is checked has nothing to reconcile against.

1. Set category option budgets top-down

Divide each category’s planned receipt units by the depth an option in that category needs to carry. Set the budget before any concept is drawn, so the count comes from units and depth rather than from the number of ideas on the wall.

Record two depths: the planned depth the season wants and the minimum that fabric and factory minimums allow. The second sets a ceiling, and the ceiling is a limit, not a target — a category planned at its ceiling has no room for an option that books short or a cut in costing. The option count planner builds the same count from styles, tiers and colorways, which makes it a useful cross-check.

2. Split each category by price tier

Divide the category’s units across its price tiers, then divide each tier’s units by that tier’s planned depth to get options per tier. Split units first and options second, because tiers carry different depths and markups.

An even option split across good, better and best looks balanced on a board and hides that the tiers carry different depths — in the example below, Good carries 420 units per option and Best 250 — so the unit weight can sit far from the option split. Set price points here too — the margin check in step five weights by units at retail — and read the ladder for gaps while it is still a table; line architecture covers how.

3. Split each tier into carryover and newness

Place the carryover options the hindsight has earned in each tier, and treat the rest of the tier’s budget as the newness design develops. Flag every slot as carryover or new so the rate reads by tier and by delivery.

Carryover goes first because its sell-through, cost and lead time are already known. Stating the remainder as a count — four new Good options, not “some new basics” — lets design size its sampling. The resulting newness rate is read, not set.

4. Place the options into deliveries

Distribute each tier’s carryover and new options across the season’s drops, so every delivery holds more than one tier and a share of the newness. Sum each delivery’s planned units to see where the season’s weight lands.

Place the anchor core first, then the new options against lead times. Read counts and units separately: a delivery can hold a sensible option count and still carry an outsized share of the units when its options sit in the deepest tier, and newness that drifts late lands with the least full-price selling time.

5. Check every cell against minimums and margin

Test each cell against its constraints: depth against factory minimums, units per fabric and color against mill minimums, and the unit-weighted blend of price and target cost against the margin target. Fix a failing cell in the plan, not in the buy.

The minimum checks are division — tier units over option count, platform units over colors. The margin check sums units at retail against units at target cost across tiers rather than averaging tier markups. A narrow pass means quote variance will decide the margin, so record the headroom alongside the pass.

6. Reconcile bottom-up with design’s proposal

Lay design’s proposal against the plan cell by cell, rerun the depth, minimum and margin checks on design’s numbers, and agree each cell on the result rather than on the category total.

A larger proposal is evidence about where the season’s ideas are, not an error. The plan says no with arithmetic: an extra option in a tier at its ceiling drops every option in that tier below minimum. A matching category total can hide a tier that grew and one that shrank, and concepts that do not fit go to a reserve list against the cell they would replace.

7. Lock the plan at line review

Walk the reconciled plan with the board at line review, confirm the count in every cell, and record the lock with a version, a date and a named owner. Counts lock here; prices lock with confirmed costs, and quantities with the buy.

The line review agenda gives the running order; the plan needs the meeting to end with a count per cell in a stated unit. The lock releases sampling, master data and line-sheet layout — locking the line covers what each lock commits.

// Illustrative example

An illustrative line plan: one category, three tiers, three drops

Every figure below is illustrative — not a benchmark, not drawn from any brand, and chosen so the arithmetic can be checked.

Take women’s knit tops in a hypothetical season with three tiers and three drops. Planning has set a receipt budget of 9,000 units and a blended initial markup target of 60%. Top-down, the units split 4,200 Good, 3,300 Better and 1,500 Best at planned depths of 420, 330 and 250 per option: 10, 10 and 6 options, 26 in all.

Illustrative constraints: factory minimums of 350 units per option in Good, 275 in Better and 150 in Best set ceilings of 12, 12 and 10 options. Good runs on one jersey platform in four colors against a mill minimum equivalent to 800 garments per color at the style’s fabric consumption — 1,050 per color clears, where six colors at 700 would not. Best runs on premium fabrics with a minimum equivalent to 450 garments per fabric.

Design proposes 30 options: 8 Good, 12 Better and 10 Best. Better at 12 is 275 units each — exactly at the minimum, so one short booking puts options below it. Best at 10 spreads 1,500 units over seven fabrics: three carry two options at 300 units, four carry one at 150, and none clears 450. Good at 8 is 525 units each, a quarter deeper than planned.

The reconciled plan gives design one of its two extra Better options, at 300 units each; holds Best at six options on three fabrics — two per fabric, one fabric per drop, 500 units against the 450 minimum; and restores Good to ten. Four Best concepts and the twelfth Better concept go to the reserve list, and the two Good slots design left unfilled return to the brief: 30 − 5 + 2 = 27 options on the same 9,000 units.

Illustrative locked line plan by price tier — women’s knit tops, hypothetical season
Tier	Retail	Drop 1	Drop 2	Drop 3	Options	Carryover / new	Units per option	Planned units
Good	$39	4	3	3	10	6 / 4	420	4,200
Better	$65	3	4	4	11	3 / 8	300	3,300
Best	$98	2	2	2	6	0 / 6	250	1,500
Category	—	9	9	9	27	9 / 18	about 333	9,000

The same illustrative plan read by drop
Drop	Options	Carryover / new	Planned units	Share of units
Drop 1	9	3 / 6	3,080	about 34%
Drop 2	9	3 / 6	2,960	about 33%
Drop 3	9	3 / 6	2,960	about 33%
Season	27	9 / 18	9,000	100%

Every drop holds nine options — three carryover and six new — across all three tiers, so newness is level rather than back-loaded: two-thirds in every row. Drop 1 carries 3,080 units, more than either later drop, because it holds four of the ten Good options in the deepest tier, a weighting placed deliberately on the longest full-price window. The Best tier is entirely new, which makes it the story tier.

The margin check weights price by units. Target markups of 58%, 60% and 63% give target costs of $16.38, $26.00 and $36.26. The tiers hold $163,800, $214,500 and $147,000 at full retail — $525,300 in all — against $208,986 of target cost: a blended initial markup of about 60.2%, passing with two-tenths of a point of headroom. If the Best quotes come in two markup points worse, at 61%, the blend falls to about 59.7% and the plan misses — Best holds a sixth of the units but about 28% of the retail value.

// The workbook

Run this plan in a workbook

The line plan workbook holds the plan above as working formulas. Its knit tops category is this example — the same tiers, drops, depths, minimums and markups — with two more illustrative categories beside it so the season roll-up has something to sum. Enter tier units, depth and minimums, place carryover and new options by drop, and it returns planned units, the factory and mill minimum checks, the units-weighted markup and the quote variance test above. Every sample figure is illustrative, as here. It is an Excel file, free with a work email.

// Review and lock

Reviewing and locking the line plan

The plan is reviewed twice. Planning checks every cell against depth, minimums and margin before design’s proposal is taken; then the line review walks the board and the plan together and confirms the counts cell by cell. The board is what the room looks at; the plan is what the room signs.

The lock maps onto the ladder in locking the line. The range lock fixes the option count in every cell and the carryover or new flag on every slot. Price points and target costs stay open until the commercial lock reruns the margin check on real quotes; planned units stay open until the buy lock turns them into quantities. Locking all three at once either forces early changes or leaves development without a count to work to.

After lock, the plan changes by swap, not addition. A reserve concept can replace a locked option in the same tier and delivery if it clears the same checks. Adding an option divides the cell’s units one more way, so it has to name what comes out, what downstream work has started, and who absorbs the cost. Keep the locked version: the plan at lock against the plan at the buy is one of the first reads in next season’s line hindsight.

// Failure modes

Where line plans fail

Each of these shows in the grid before the season shows it, because each is a mechanism rather than a lapse.

Option creep. Options arrive one defensible concept at a time — a colorway approved at a fitting, a capsule absorbed late, a channel exclusive granted — and each divides a fixed unit budget again. The sum pushes cells toward minimum depth, where options get bought short or cut after development money is spent. The grid shows units per option falling while the category total holds; the counter is the reserve list, where every addition names what it replaces.
Tier gaps. When options are allocated by category total instead of by cell, one tier absorbs the additions and another is left empty in a delivery. The customer meets a missing price point, and the sell-through never records it, because an option that was not offered leaves no demand trace. The grid shows it as a zero in a tier-by-delivery cell.
Delivery overloading. Options placed by development readiness rather than selling window — the early drop takes what is ready, the late drop what slipped — or deep-tier options clustered in one delivery land more stock than that window can clear at full price. Counts can look level while units are not, which is why step four sums them.

Underneath all three sits a plan and a board counted in different units: a plan agreed in styles and a board built in style-colorways disagree by a factor of the average colorway count per style. State the unit in the plan’s header; what counts as one option covers the conventions.

// By vertical

Line planning by vertical

The method holds in every vertical. What changes is what counts as one option and what bounds how many options the line can hold.

Apparel. An option is a style-colorway carrying a size run, so planned depth has to cover the run. The line is bounded by receipt units, fabric and trim minimums per color, the good-better-best ladder and the drop calendar, with carryover against newness as the central split. Kidswear plans as apparel, adding one up-front decision: whether a body offered across age-grade size ranges counts as one option or several.
Footwear. An option is a style-colorway that commits a full size run of pairs, plus a width run where widths are offered, so each added colorway adds a run. Tooling bounds the line: new lasts, molds and outsoles carry long lead times and development cost, so newness is budgeted in new bottoms as well as colorways. Prebooks read the line before production, and options that fail to book become candidates to cut. See the footwear and accessories guide.
Accessories. An option is a style-colorway with no size dimension, so option and SKU counts converge. Hero colors carry depth, fashion colors get shallow dated buys, and the evergreen core holds slots in every delivery. Collection families plan as sets because they sell on attach rate, and tannery minimums per color and hardware tooling set the floor under each option’s depth.
Home and furniture. An option is a model in a finish or fabric; special-order options widen the line without committing stock. Container quantities and cube, ocean lead times that fix the buy months ahead, and landed cost that moves with freight bound the line, so the margin check runs on landed cost. Core models carry for years, which makes newness a finish refresh at market. See the home, outdoor and sporting goods guide.
Outdoor. Soft goods plan in colorways with size runs and hard goods by model and model year, so one plan carries two option definitions. Model-year changeovers and technical-material lead times bound hard goods; colorway refreshes and seasonal order windows bound soft goods. Dealer prebooks size the wholesale commitment, counter-seasonal categories run their own calendars, and MAP pricing puts a floor under the advertised price, which limits how far markdown can fix an over-wide tier — the exit is closeout channels or carryover, not discounting into the dealer base.
Sporting goods. Equipment plans by model year: an option is a model in a colorway or graphic, with a price-moving component spec counted as its own option, and length, flex and weight are the run behind it — chosen from a spec rather than fitted to a body, so coverage is balanced rather than graded like a size curve — while apparel and footwear plan by season in colorways and size runs. Dealer prebooks placed months ahead through rep groups bound the line, team and season demand runs as its own roster-sized stream, and MAP makes closeout of the prior model year the exit. Each season-defined category — ski, golf, cycling, racquet — carries its own calendar.
Beauty and wellness. An option is a shade within a franchise, and the shade range plays the size curve’s part: depth by shade is what the buy needs. Launch calendars and retailer planogram resets set the delivery windows, testers and gift-with-purchase units consume budget without selling, and period-after-opening and shelf life shorten the sell-down window. Retailer POS after launch shows which shades earned their slot. See the beauty and personal care guide.
Toys and games. An option is an item, which can carry pack or assortment-case variants. Fourth-quarter concentration bounds the line, weighting the plan to the holiday window and the retailer commitments made ahead of it. Licensed items live inside their licensed windows, so their slots expire with the license, and every new item needs safety testing against the applicable standards before it ships, which caps how late a concept can enter the plan.
Baby and juvenile. In hard goods an option is a chassis in a fashion colorway; the chassis carries across model years while the colorways refresh. Safety standards and certification set how long a new chassis takes to reach the plan, model-year changeovers pace it, and registry demand keeps an option in the line while registries can still be filled. A standards change on one chassis reaches every colorway built on it, so colorways are recorded under their chassis. Kids and baby apparel plans as apparel.
Jewelry and watches. An option is a design in a metal, with a stone or a dial; ring sizes and strap lengths are the run behind it, and each is held piece by piece at low velocity, so each option is a capital commitment first. Metal cost moves can reprice a tier between plan and buy, memo and consignment terms decide who carries the capital behind each option, and gifting peaks do the work drops do elsewhere. See the toys, juvenile and jewelry guide.

// Where it lives

Keeping the plan and the board on one record

A line plan can live in a spreadsheet; every calculation here is spreadsheet arithmetic. The failure is two files — a card cut in review changes the board and not the count. The plan is only a constraint while the board cannot drift from it. If the two are still separate, start from the line board template and the line plan workbook — or, for a category-level plan without tiers or drops, the line plan template on retail-plan.com — and reconcile them at every review. Canvas, the visual line board inside RetailNorthstar, connects the board to the plan, open-to-buy and the buy on a shared data model, so the count the room signs is the count the buy inherits.

// Related resources

See the Platform →

// FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What is a line plan?: A line plan is the numeric architecture of a season’s line: option counts by category, price tier and delivery, with the planned units, price points and margin each cell carries. It is derived from the merchandise financial plan and agreed before the styles exist. The line board visualizes it and the line sheet sells what the board became. In apparel the option is a style-colorway, the tiers are good, better and best, and the deliveries are drops or floor sets.
How is a line plan different from a line board and a line sheet?: The line plan is the numbers: how many options, at which tiers, in which deliveries, carrying which units and margin. The line board is the picture of the same range, where design and merchandising decide which bodies and colors fill each counted slot. The line sheet is the outbound wholesale document, produced after lock, that offers the finished range to accounts with prices, minimums and delivery windows. The plan says how many, the board says which, and the sheet says what an account can order.
What are the steps to build a line plan?: Seven, in order. Set each category’s option budget by dividing its planned units by the depth an option needs to carry. Split the category by price tier, units first. Split each tier into carryover and newness. Place the options into drops and sum the units per delivery. Check every cell against factory minimums, mill minimums and the unit-weighted margin target. Reconcile cell by cell with design’s proposal. Lock the counts at line review, with prices locking at the commercial lock and quantities at the buy.
How many options should a line plan have?: The count is derived, not copied. Divide each cell’s planned units by the depth an option there needs to carry, then check the result against the minimum depth that fabric and factory minimums allow, which sets a ceiling. The ceiling is a limit rather than a target, because a cell at its ceiling has no room for a short booking or a cut in costing. A count inherited from another team or season is unusable until its unit is stated, since a count in styles and a count in style-colorways differ by a factor of the average colorway count per style.
When is a line plan locked, and what can change after lock?: Option counts lock at line review, cell by cell, with the carryover or new flag on each slot. Price points and target costs lock at the commercial lock once quotes are in, and planned units become quantities at the buy. After lock the plan changes by swap: a reserve concept can replace a locked option in the same tier and delivery if it clears the same checks. An addition divides the cell’s units one more way, so it has to name what comes out, what downstream work has already started, and who absorbs the cost.
Is a line plan the same as an assortment plan?: No. The line plan decides breadth — how many options, at which tiers, in which deliveries — and the assortment plan decides deployment: which channels, clusters and doors each locked option goes to, and how deep. The assortment plan inherits the line plan’s counts and cannot repair a plan that was too wide for its units; it can only spread the thinness differently. In the wider sense of the term, where the line plan also carries the style list, the order still holds: line plan first, assortment plan second.

// 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.

See the Platform →Book a Demo →