Reorder windows, seasonal patterns and quiet accounts

This Watch learns the rhythm of each account's ordering and tells you when the next window is opening — early enough that you are quoting rather than reacting. It is one of the three Watches raising points in your Inbox today. In Settings → Workspace → Watches it sits under Pattern Recognition as PA-1.

What it watches for

• An account whose order rhythm says the next window is opening — a leash reorder on a nine-month cadence, staff kits every January.
• An annual or event-driven pattern whose window is approaching — October banners that get budgeted in September.
• An account whose order frequency has decayed against its own baseline, with no open quote and no recent conversation.

Every reminder takes its date from the order record itself and says why it exists.

Why it matters

The easiest order to win is the one the customer was going to place anyway — if you are the one who brings it up. Reorder business is also where distributors leak revenue most quietly: nothing breaks, no one complains, the account simply buys somewhere else next year because that supplier called first. And a customer who has quietly stopped ordering is worth a phone call long before renewal season.

This Watch books as Margin on the Found ledger — the reorder won, the account kept.

What it needs connected

• One required: your accounting system or a supplier feed. One of the two has to hold the order history the pattern is built from.
• Helpful: a mailbox, a CRM. The mailbox is what lets Scout see that a conversation is already open, so it does not suggest reaching out to somebody you spoke to yesterday.

What the point looks like

A point is one item Scout raises with the proof behind it. This one is an observation — something to know rather than a task — so it arrives in the Inbox under Worth knowing:

Tidal Tails cape reorder window opening — Tidal Tails · projected window late September

Tidal Tails has ordered capes four times, at a median interval of just under six months. It has been 5.9 months since the 480-unit run. The projected window opens in about two weeks, and there is no open quote on the account.

Evidence: four past orders with their dates and quantities · the median interval calculation · the absence of an open quote.

Prepared by Scout: a reorder outreach note.

Longer-running rhythms also appear as Seasonal patterns on the Found page and in the Inbox — for example Camp Canine: staff kits every January, bandanas every June — two peaks, not one.

The settings that tune it

This is the one Watch with plain number fields rather than presets. Each has its own Save.

• Lead time (days) — default 14. How far ahead of the projected window the point should appear. Scout deliberately holds the point back until this many days before the window, so it arrives when there is still time to act comfortably rather than the morning the window opens.
• Planning horizon (days) — default 45. How far into the future Scout will look for a window. A projected date beyond this is not raised yet.
• Minimum orders — default 3, and 3 is also the lowest it accepts. Two points make a line through anything; three is the minimum before Scout will call something a pattern.

When it arrives

It is here. This is a second-wave Watch by catalogue order, but it was already built, so it is on and working. Its row in Settings shows an accuracy figure rather than Coming soon.

Good to know

• An account needs at least three orders in the history before it gets a pattern. New accounts are quiet here, and that is correct.
• The reorder-rhythm half of this Watch is raising points today. The quiet-account detector — an account whose frequency has decayed against its own baseline — is not available today.
• Observations do not expect an action, so they do not lapse the way an overdue recommendation does. Mark one Handled when you have acted on it.
• Scout writes the outreach note; you send it. Nothing goes to the customer from Scout.
• Raising Minimum orders is the quickest way to quiet this Watch down if it is finding patterns you do not believe in; raising Lead time makes the points arrive earlier.
• The supplier-side equivalent — a supplier whose numbers are drifting — is PA-2.