Seasonal detection finds the products that sell mostly in a few months of the year, such as holiday decorations or summer toys. While one of them is out of its season, Tendlio doesn’t treat it as dead stock: its health color says Seasonal, Auto outlet doesn’t discount it, and your restock list doesn’t push you to reorder it.
You will learn #
- How to turn on seasonal detection and fill its list
- What Confirmed, Needs review and Set by you mean
- How to confirm a product, add one that detection missed, or take one off the list
- How to give a whole category its season, and take out the products in it that sell all year
- What changes for a seasonal product
- How to find the products that didn’t sell last season
- How to make detection stricter or looser
Before you begin #
- Detection needs sales history. It reads up to three years of your sales, and it confirms a product on its own only when the same busy months come back in at least two different years. If your store has less than two full years of sales, detection doesn’t confirm anything on its own: the products it finds wait under Needs review for you to confirm.
- To add products to the list or take them off, you need permission to edit products, because Tendlio saves your choice on the product. Without it, the page says that only someone who can edit products can use it.
Turn on seasonal detection #
- In your WordPress admin, open Tendlio → Inventory, and click Seasonal.
- Under Auto-detect, switch on Detect seasonal products automatically from sales history.
- If products in some categories should never be marked seasonal automatically, tick those categories under Excluded categories. Ticking a parent ticks everything under it, and a branch that stays fully ticked also covers sub-categories you add later.
- Click Save seasonal settings. A line under the button confirms the save, with a Re-scan now button next to it.
- Click Re-scan now to run a full analysis. When it finishes, the products detection found are listed under Detected seasonal products.
Once detection has found products, the box at the top of the page says Seasonal detection is on ✓, with how many products Tendlio treats as seasonal and how many need your review. Until then, it says No seasonal products detected yet.
When you change the settings on the Seasonal page later, click Re-check seasonal products, next to the Detected seasonal products heading. It runs detection again on your last analysis, in a moment, without a full analysis. You need the full analysis the first time, because Auto outlet can’t go Live until one has finished since you turned detection on.
Read the list #
Under Detected seasonal products, the All, Confirmed and Needs review buttons show every product on the list, or one group at a time. Confirmed also lists the products whose season you set yourself, on the product or through its category. For each product, the list shows:
- Detection, which says why the product is on the list:
- Confirmed: its busy months came back in at least two different years, and it sold at least 2.5 times faster in them than in the rest of its year.
- Needs review: it has a clear pattern, but the pattern hasn’t repeated reliably enough. Tendlio doesn’t change anything for it until you confirm it.
- Set by you: you chose its season yourself, and it counts the same as Confirmed.
- Set by category: you gave its category a season under Seasons by category, and it counts the same as Confirmed. The label names the category.
- Season: the months Tendlio treats as the product’s season. The season can be wider than the product’s busiest months, and then the busiest months show underneath, for example “peak May to Jul”.
- By month: the twelve months in a row. Purple marks the peak months, light blue the rest of the season, and an outline the current month.
- Right now: In season or Off-season for the products Tendlio treats as seasonal, and No automatic changes for the ones that need your review.
In Advanced mode, five more columns show the figures behind each decision: Sales by month, Peak share, 3-yr units, Yearly match and Peak pace.
Confirm, add or remove a product #
While detection is on, the Seasonal page has two ways to change the list:
- To confirm a product under Needs review, or to add one that detection missed: under Add seasonal product, tick the months of its season, then search for the product and add it. Tick the whole season, not only its best months, because Tendlio uses exactly the months you tick and adds nothing around them. The product then shows as Set by you.
- To take a product off the list: click Not seasonal on its row. It leaves the list right away and stays off it in future analyses. If you’d set its season yourself, that season goes too.
Both changes take effect right away. The product’s health color, your Smart Product Sort order, your to-do cards and your Inventory Score update without a full analysis. While an analysis is running, Tendlio asks you to wait for it to finish and try again.
You can make the same choices on the product itself, with Seasonal handling on its edit screen in WooCommerce. A choice made there takes effect at the next analysis, or when you click Re-check seasonal products. It’s also the way to set a product’s season while detection is off: the Seasonal page then shows neither the list nor Add seasonal product, and a season you set on the product keeps working.
Give a whole category its season #
Some categories sell at one time of year, like Halloween or Christmas. Detection can’t recognize a product there that hasn’t sold yet, because the product has no sales pattern to find, so you can give the whole category its season instead. It works whether seasonal detection is on or off.
- On the Seasonal page, under Seasons by category, choose the category under Category. Start typing its name to find it.
- Under Season months, tick every month the category sells in, not only its best ones. Tendlio uses exactly these months and adds nothing around them.
- Click Save season. Every product in the category and in its sub-categories is seasonal right away, and so are the products of sub-categories you add later. The page then lists the category’s products.
- Go through the list. The bars show what each product sold in each month of the year. Click Not seasonal on any product that sells all year: it leaves the season right away and stays out of it, and detection leaves it alone too. Undo puts it back.
You don’t have to find these categories yourself. While seasonal detection is on, each analysis adds up the sales of every category, its sub-categories included, and checks them the way it checks a single product. The categories that sell mostly at one time of year appear above the form, under Categories that sell mostly at one time of year, and on your to-do list. Use these months ticks the months the category sells in, for you to check and save. Not a seasonal category tells Tendlio to stop suggesting it.
A product with months of its own keeps them, and a product in two seasonal categories is in season in the months of both. In the list of seasons, Review products opens a category’s products again, and Remove takes its season away. To change a season’s months, choose the same category again and save.
When you remove a season, products with months of their own, or with another category’s season, take that season at once. With detection off, the category’s other products stop being seasonal. With detection on, they keep the season until Tendlio has checked them again, which it starts by itself, so detection can confirm the ones that really have a season, and Auto outlet does not discount them as ordinary stock in the meantime. A category under Excluded categories can’t get a season: take it out of that list first.
Auto outlet depends on these seasons, like on the rest of your seasonal settings. After you add, change or remove one, Auto outlet in Live waits for an analysis that finishes after your change before it changes prices again.
What changes for a seasonal product #
These changes apply to the products Tendlio treats as seasonal, the ones marked Confirmed, Set by you or Set by category. While one of them is out of its season:
- Its health color is Seasonal whatever it sells, so it never shows as Slow or Dead. The Seasonal button on Products & insights lists it.
- Auto outlet doesn’t discount it.
- Add everything that needs restocking on the Restock page leaves it out, and so do the extra products Tendlio suggests there to reach a supplier’s minimum order.
In and out of its season:
- If Smart Product Sort is on, it moves the product up your category pages during its season and down outside it.
- In your Inventory Score, only the stock beyond one season’s worth counts as tied up, and one season’s worth is what the product sold in the better of its last two years. The months between its seasons don’t count against it.
- If, late in its season, the product has sold much less than it had by the same day last season, it shows on the to-do card “N seasonal products are missing their season”, which suggests clearing it while buyers are still shopping for that season.
- If it sold nothing in its last season, and nothing so far in this one, it shows from the start of its season on the to-do card “N seasonal products sold nothing last season” and under Unsold last season on Manual outlet, where you can discount it if it has no variations.
Whether detection is on matters in two more places:
- Auto outlet can’t go Live until seasonal detection is on and an analysis has finished since you turned it on.
- While detection is off, your to-do list can show “N products look dead but are forecast to sell soon”, with a Turn on Seasonal detection button.
Find what didn’t sell last season #
Last season sales, on the Seasonal page between the settings and Detected seasonal products, shows what each product sold in its last completed season, including products that sold nothing. From there, you can open the products you choose in Manual outlet and discount them. It works whether seasonal detection is on or off.
- Under Season, leave Each product’s season to use the seasons detection confirmed and the ones you set yourself. To pick the months yourself, for a category or for products detection hasn’t recognized, select Choose months and set From month and To month.
- Pick a Category, or leave All categories. A category includes the products in its subcategories. When two categories share a name, the list puts each category’s parent categories in front of its name, such as Baloni / Buketi.
- In Sold at most, enter 0 to find products with no recorded sales, or a higher number to include slow sellers. Leave it blank for all quantities.
- In stock only starts ticked, so the list holds only the products you still have stock of. Untick it to see the others too.
- Click Build sales list. The list is built from your last analysis, so after you change a setting, such as a category’s season, the button waits until you run the analysis again; the note above it has the link. Tendlio goes through your products in steps and says how many it has checked, out of how many in all. If it stops before it finishes, Continue review picks it up again.
Each row shows the product’s last completed season and the months it covers, the units sold, the season before it, and the stock from your last analysis. A product that’s too new, or whose sales history doesn’t cover the season, isn’t counted as having sold nothing: where a number is missing, the row says why. Availability in that season says whether Tendlio recorded a stockout. If none was recorded, the product may still have been out of stock for part of the season, because Tendlio’s stockout history is incomplete.
To discount some of the products, tick them and click Open selected in Manual outlet. What you tick stays ticked when you move between pages of the list. Manual outlet then shows only those products, with its usual discount controls. The list and your selection last an hour. After that, go back to the Seasonal page and build the list again.
Make detection stricter or looser #
In Advanced mode, three more settings show below Excluded categories. The Seasonal page links to the Advanced mode switch in Settings.
- Peak window: how many months in a row make up the busy stretch detection looks for, from 2 to 6. It’s 3 unless you’ve changed it. The season Tendlio marks can still be wider than that.
- Concentration: the share of a product’s sales that has to fall inside those months. It’s 55% unless you’ve changed it. Raising it confirms fewer products, and lowering it confirms more. A product that sells the same amount every month already has a quarter of its sales in any three months, and half in any six, so the lowest Concentration you can set rises with the window. The page shows the lowest for the window you’ve chosen, and if you enter less, Tendlio raises it and tells you why.
- Minimum sales: how many units a product has to sell over three years before detection looks at it. It’s 12 unless you’ve changed it. Tendlio can raise it to match how much a typical product in your store sells, and when it does, the page shows the minimum it uses for your store.
After you change them, click Save seasonal settings, then Re-check seasonal products. It can take a round or two of changes before the list matches how your store sells.
Why detection works this way #
A season has to repeat #
One busy December can be one big order. The same busy months in two different years are what make a season, so that’s what detection asks for before it confirms a product on its own. The busy months can move by one month from year to year, and the product has to sell at least 2.5 times faster in them than in the rest of the year.
The season is wider than the peak #
Shoppers buy holiday or wedding stock before the busiest weeks and for a while after them. So the month on either side of the peak always counts as in season, and so does any other month that keeps selling a good share of what the peak sells, in more than one year. A single quiet month between two season months counts too. Without that, Tendlio could call a product out of season while its buyers are still shopping.
Detection reads sales, not stock #
If a product sold out in the same months every year, the months without sales can look like the gap between seasons. Look through the list before you rely on it, and click Not seasonal for anything that isn’t.
A young store confirms nothing on its own #
With less than two full years of sales, Tendlio doesn’t confirm a season on its own, even one that seems to repeat. It still shows the patterns it finds, under Needs review, and you confirm the ones that are seasonal. If you already know that a product you listed this year is seasonal, set its season yourself, and Auto outlet leaves it alone while it’s out of season.
Additional resources #
- How to use the Tendlio fields on a product: Seasonal handling, on the product itself.
- How to set up Auto outlet to clear your dead stock: why Auto outlet needs seasonal detection before it can go Live.
- Product health colors (Fast / Steady / Slow / Dead): the Seasonal color.
- How to decide what to restock and how much to order: why out-of-season products are skipped.
- How to sort your product listings by profit with Smart Product Sort: how a seasonal product moves up in season and down outside it.
- What your to-do list can catch: the two seasonal cards.
Frequently asked questions #
Why does a product I know is seasonal say Needs review? #
Its pattern hasn't come back in two different years yet, or your store has less than two years of sales. Confirm it yourself with Add seasonal product, and it counts as seasonal from then on.
Does a season I set work while detection is off? #
Yes, when you set it on the product itself, with Seasonal handling. Add seasonal product on the Seasonal page is there only while detection is on.
Why did Tendlio change the Concentration I entered? #
A longer peak window catches more of an evenly selling product's year on its own, so a low Concentration would mark most of your catalog seasonal. Tendlio raises it to the lowest value that still tells a season apart, and says so.