Slotwise

Plan every retailer’s promotions on one board

Drag a promotion to another week and watch its ROI change before you let go. Forecast volumes with your own numbers or the built-in model, review every change before it lands, and see what each promotion actually returned once it has run.

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  • Public prices
  • Your spreadsheet imported in an afternoon
  • AI proposes, your team approves
The demo uses fictional numbers, worked out with the same formulas as the real board.
How ROI and margin impact are calculated

ROI is the margin earned on every promoted unit, including the ones you’d have sold anyway, for each dollar of trade spend; each organisation sets the target that turns it green.

Margin impact is the margin given up on the promoted units compared with full price, counting the price cut and the unit deal; it is negative for any discount, even when ROI is green.

From spreadsheet to approved plan

The tour takes you from the first spreadsheet import to an approved plan. You’ll see ROI recalculate as promotions move and an AI assistant propose changes for your team to decide on, along with forecasting, custom views and the API. Pick any chapter to jump straight to it.

  1. 0:00Spreadsheet to board
  2. 0:08Promo mechanics
  3. 0:17Board & table
  4. 0:25Suggestion mode
  5. 0:34Approvals & audit
  6. 0:43AI assistant
  7. 1:00Forecasting
  8. 1:18Sub-boards
  9. 1:26Custom views
  10. 1:35Trade plan overlay
  11. 1:44Bulk edit & linking
  12. 1:53Performance review
  13. 2:01Integrations & API
  14. 2:10And there’s more

The tour is an animated walkthrough recreated from Slotwise’s own interface, using fictional demo data. It has music and sound effects but no narration.

The brands behind our experience

The experience behind Slotwise wasn’t built at Slotwise. It comes from our founder’s work deploying trade promotion management with some of the best-known consumer brands and retailers in Australia, and Slotwise is built on the lessons from that work. These are some of the businesses behind our experience.

  • The Arnott’s Group
  • Campbell’s
  • Kellogg’s
  • Endeavour Group
  • BWS
  • Dan Murphy’s
  • Carlton & United Breweries
  • Asahi Beverages

These names and logos belong to their owners. They show where our experience comes from, not a customer relationship or an endorsement of Slotwise.

Promotion plans outgrew the spreadsheet

Trade spend is one of the largest costs a manufacturer carries, yet many teams still plan it in shared spreadsheets — a workbook for the running numbers, and a separate file recreating the calendar. Copies multiply, formulas drift, and two promotions on the same product can overlap for weeks before anyone notices.

  1. Choc Cereal 500g is promoted twice on overlapping weeks. Nobody flagged it.
  2. A #REF! and a #N/A have sat in the formulas since the last reshuffle.
  3. Two subtotals for the same tab — $84,210 here, $91,650 on the Copy of Master tab. Which one goes to finance?
  4. More than a third of the ROI column is just blank.
  5. The same half-price deal is typed four ways — HP, Half Price, 1/2 PRICE, 50% OFF — in two different fills, amber and purple.
  6. One cell holds two promotions at once, 20% off and 2F1, flagged only by a comment nobody's opened.
  7. The key says 2F1 is blue, but Multigrain Crackers’ 2 for 1 — the same deal, another name — is filled green.
  8. This calendar can’t show ROI or spend: that lives in the other file, and with two “Coles CAL” tabs open, nobody’s sure which copy is current.

What the research says

  • More than half of everything bought at Coles and Woolworths is sold on promotion.

    Source: ACCC Supermarkets Inquiry, final report, 2025

  • 15–25% of a manufacturer’s gross revenue typically goes on trade spend.

    Source: Strategy& (PwC)

  • 72% of promotions in the US lose money, and 59% do worldwide.

    Source: McKinsey

  • Only 46% of trade promotions deliver a positive ROI, a figure that hasn’t moved in years.

    Source: Salesforce, 2025, a survey of 2,400 consumer goods leaders in 12 countries

  • About A$11.3 billion a year of Australian promotional spend is wasted.

    Source: Nielsen Australia, 2018 (an older estimate)

For a supplier, that makes the promotion plan a large part of the sales plan, and trade spend one of the biggest lines in the budget. When the plan lives in a spreadsheet, you often don’t know which promotions were worth running until long after they’ve ended. Trade promotion management puts the plan, the forecast and the results in one place, so you can see what a promotion is likely to return before you commit the money.

From plan to proof on one board

Every promotion goes through the same five steps, and every step works from the same numbers. You plan, forecast and review before a promotion runs, then check what it returned and let Slotwise grade the forecast once it has ended.

  1. 1PlanEvery retailer, one board
  2. 2ForecastYour numbers or ours
  3. 3ReviewStaged before it lands
  4. 4ProvePlan against actual
  5. 5LearnForecasts that grade themselves

See every retailer’s plan on one board

Your products run down the side and the weeks run across the top, with each promotion drawn as a bar. Drag a promotion to another week and its ROI recalculates straight away, so you know what the move is worth before you commit to it.

  • Coles and Woolworths each get their own view of the same plan, so you can work in either one without copying anything.
  • When two promotions on the same product overlap in time and scope, both are flagged as a clash while you’re still planning.
Slotwise · Promotions
The Coles board at week zoom: promotion bars for Choc Cereal, Fresh Cookies, Deluxe Chips, Gourmet Soup and Light Yoghurt, each with its retailer code and an ROI chip. Two Choc Cereal bars overlap and are outlined as a clash.

Forecast with your numbers or ours

Import your own weekly forecast, or let Slotwise forecast each promotion as baseline × (1 + uplift). The baseline is what a product sells in a normal week, and the uplift is set for each promo type and can be refined by product, retailer or week. Draft promotions re-forecast as you drag them, so their volume and ROI stay current.

The built-in model comes with Pro and above. You can import your own forecast on every plan.

Slotwise · Forecast
A product's forecast card: baseline volume 520 times an uplift of +55% from the grid equals a volume of 806, with the formula baseline 520 × +55.0% = 806.00 shown underneath.

Review changes before they land

Turn on Suggestion Mode and your edits are staged for review instead of being applied straight away. Proposals from an AI assistant land in the same tray, and each card shows the before, the after and the difference in spend, margin impact and ROI.

  • Planners can accept a change into the plan, and approvers can accept and approve it in one step.
Slotwise · Review
A staged Move suggestion for OFF Classic Biscuits, moved a week earlier. A before, after and difference table shows total spend and margin impact unchanged, ROI up from 0.35 to 1.27, with Reject and Accept & Plan buttons.

See what each promotion actually returned

Record actual sales for each product, or let Slotwise allocate them from your weekly sell-out. Plan and actual then sit side by side on every promotion and roll up into the Performance Summary, where you can open any row to see the promotions behind it.

  • The summary reports plan, baseline, actual and the difference by month and retailer, or by brand and category.
  • A three-sheet Excel export lets your finance team re-derive every figure offline.
Slotwise · Performance Summary
The Performance Summary table by retailer: Coles at ROI 0.58 plan versus 0.66 actual, Woolworths, Other accounts and Total, each with baseline, actual and the ROI difference against plan.

A forecast that grades itself

When a promotion ends and its actuals are in, Slotwise scores the forecast against what actually sold. It tells you whether the uplift in the grid was off or the baseline itself was wrong, because each one needs a different fix.

  • Scorecards flag patterns, such as a promo type that ran under forecast in 4 of its last 5 promotions.
  • A review queue lists what needs fixing, with one clear action for each item.

Calibration comes with Pro and above, alongside the built-in model.

Slotwise · Uplift grids
The Uplift grids page for 2F1 Group 4, default uplift 30.0%: Calibration reads 5 events, −16 points average, alert: under forecast in 4 of 5 by about 19 points, next to a Propose change button.

Your AI proposes changes, and your team decides

Slotwise includes an MCP server. MCP is the open standard AI assistants use to work with other software, so you can connect Claude and have it read your live plan and draft changes the way a new planner would. Nothing touches the plan until a person accepts it.

  1. Ask

    The assistant has 20 tools to work with. Fifteen read your plan, forecasts, calibration and suggestion history, and five propose new promotions, edits, moves, removals and uplift-grid changes.

  2. Decide

    Each proposal lands in the review tray marked AI-assisted, where you accept or reject it. Anything you accept goes through the same locks, approvals and rules as a human edit.

AI assistance is included in Growth and above, and the setup guide is in the app under Help → AI assistance.

Slotwise · AI assistance
The AI assistant panel: asked which Coles promotions miss the ROI target, it calls get_org_context, get_board_events, get_promotion and find_clashes, then lists four promotions below target with their ROI and why.

Fits the way your team already works

Slotwise takes over from the spreadsheet without asking your team to change everything else at once. Each of these fits around something your team already does, from catalogues and campaigns to the spreadsheets you plan in today.

  • Trade-plan overlay

    Catalogues, campaigns and key selling periods sit above the promotions on the same weeks. You can link each promotion to the catalogue or campaign it belongs to.

  • View profiles

    Colour, pattern and label the bars by whatever you track, then save the result as a named view. Each person can plan in the view that suits them.

  • Import and export

    Import your spreadsheet in an afternoon, with every row checked before anything is saved. The export doubles as your template for recording actuals.

  • Dated prices

    List prices and unit costs carry effective dates, so every promotion is priced as at its own start date. A promo type can carry a fixed promo price or a percentage off the list price. On Pro, each retailer can have its own price list and trade terms.

  • Retailer-specific types

    Restrict a promo type to the accounts that agreed its terms. Planners are warned if they use it anywhere else, and AI proposals outside those accounts are rejected.

  • Sign-in and API

    Your team signs in with Google or Microsoft, and colleagues can join automatically from your company domain. A read API with an OpenAPI spec lets your other systems pull data from Slotwise.

Built like finance software

  • Rules in the database

    Approved promotions and locked periods can’t be changed from any screen or API call. Only approvers and admins can reopen them, and every override is recorded.

  • Everything on the record

    Status changes, overrides, AI-assisted accepts and grid changes are all written to an audit trail that nobody can edit.

  • Access you control

    Each organisation’s data is walled off in the database. People sign in with single sign-on, get a role from viewer to admin, and use personal tokens that expire.

One engine, many boards

Under the hood, Slotwise is a slotting-board engine: rows of whatever you schedule, a timeline, and events you drag, with rules, reviews and economics on top. Trade promotion is the first board built on it, and we’re designing the next ones with partners.

See your own promotions on the board

In 15 minutes we’ll put your own categories and retailers on the board and walk through the economics with you. There are no slides, just the product working on your promotions.

Book a demo

The button opens an email to us, and we’ll reply to set up a time. You can also write to info@neuralpeak.io directly.