How testers disappear
A tester is a full-size product with a different label. When the ERP has no tester item code, or when stores receive testers coded as sellable units, three things happen. The tester is counted as stock, so the replenishment engine under-orders. The tester is sold by mistake, so the shelf has nothing to demonstrate. Or the tester is opened and consumed, and the stock count is wrong until the next inventory.
Gifts with purchase follow the same path. They arrive with the campaign, are stored with the product, and are given away, sold or forgotten without any record of which.
What it costs
The visible cost is the tester itself, often the same cost price as the sellable unit. The invisible cost is worse: a fragrance counter without a tester sells noticeably less, and a replenishment engine that counts testers as stock will keep the shelf empty for weeks.
Three rules that fix it
- Testers are their own items. A distinct item code or flag in the ERP, so they are never counted as sellable stock and never sold by mistake.
- Testers are allocated at order validation. When the planner validates a launch order, the tester quantity per store is on the same order, computed from the number of doors and the brand's rule, not added later from memory.
- Gifts with purchase belong to a campaign. A GWP has a campaign, dates, stores and a quantity; it is ordered with the campaign and tracked separately, so the sell-through report shows what was given away.
How IRIS handles it
IRIS allocates testers when the order is validated, tracks them separately from sellable stock, and reports tester consumption per store and per launch. Gifts with purchase are campaign objects with their own quantities and dates. Generic retail tools have no notion of either; IRIS was written for the categories where they matter.
Key takeaway
Give testers their own item code, allocate them at order validation, and attach every gift with purchase to a campaign.