These are the data prerequisites to run a Markdown model.

Four sources are needed, they can be either Datamarts or Data Sources. They can have mixed types.

Sales Datamart or Data Source – Represents transactions, special events, and product attributes.
Products Datamart or Data Source (optional) – Contains the products to markdown.
Stock Datamart or Data Source – Contains the historical stock quantity by store.
Competition Datamart or Data Source (optional) – Contains the list of competitors prices.

Sales

Field	Required?	Comment

Field	Required?	Comment
Product	Yes
Product Name	No
Store	Yes	If there is only one store, set always the same value.
Store Name	No
Date	Yes	The date of the transaction.
Product Group	Yes	The product groups or categories.
Product Pareto	Yes	In general, the values are: 1 Best Seller, 2 Runner, 3 Core, 4 Long Tail… Using a prefix helps to keep them ordered as they are displayed alphabetically. But the user can have different category names.
Quantity	Yes
Recommended Retail Price	Yes	Extended to the quantity.
Retail Gap	Yes	Extended to the quantity. If not existing for now, set to 0.
Retail Price	Yes	Extended to the quantity.
Stock Influencer	Yes	Extended to the quantity. If not existing for now, set to 0.
Special Offer	Yes	Extended to the quantity. If not existing for now, set to 0.
VAT	Yes	Extended to the quantity. If you have the VAT rate, calculate the extended VAT from it.
Shelf Price	Yes	Extended to the quantity.
Revenue	Yes	Extended to the quantity. Without the VAT.
Supplier Costs	Yes	Extended to the quantity.
Storage Costs	Yes	Extended to the quantity. If not existing for now, set to 0.
Profit	Yes	Gross Margin extended to the quantity.
Minimum Advertise Price	No	Unit value.

Products (optional)

Field	Required?	Comment

Field	Required?	Comment
Product	Yes	Must be of the same type as the Product field of the Sales source.
Store	Yes	Must be of the same type as the Product field of the Sales source.

Field	Required?	Comment

Field	Required?	Comment
Product	Yes	Must be of the same type as the Product field of the Sales source.
Store	Yes	Must be of the same type as the Product field of the Sales source.
Quantity in stock	Yes	Stock with a quantity of zero will be included. Null values should be avoided.
Date of stock	Yes	At least one date of stock must exist for any product and store. The stock history is better to compute and display some metrics. The update frequency depends on the context, the best is the same frequency as the update frequency of the model.

Field	Required?	Comment

Field	Required?	Comment
Product	Yes	Must be of the same type as the Product field of the Sales source. Only one competitor product should be defined by product and store.
Store	Yes	Must be of the same type as the Product field of the Sales source.
Competitor	Yes
Shelf Price	Yes	Unit value, representing the competitor shelf price.
Date of competition price	Yes	It could be a “From Date”, meaning from which date this price should be considered. The update frequency depends on the context, the best is the same frequency as the update frequency of the model.