The Trade Calendar Settings page lets admins configure how promotions are created, planned, and tracked across your organization. You can find it under Settings → Trade Calendar.
Default trade subsidiary
This dropdown sets the default accounting subsidiary that new promotions will be associated with. If your organization only has one subsidiary, this will already be set for you. If you operate across multiple subsidiaries, select the one that should be used by default — users can override this on individual promotions if needed.
Types of trade that can be created
This controls which promotion types are available when users create a new promotion in the Trade Calendar. Use the multi-select dropdown to add or remove types. For more detail on common promotion types, see here.
Once a type is added, it appears in the table below with three configuration options:
Allow products — When checked, users can assign specific products (individual sellable units) to promotions of this type.
Allow product families — When checked, users can assign product families instead of individual products. This should almost always be enables for all trade types.
Accrue by default — When checked, new promotions of this type will automatically be set to accrue.
Users can also choose not to accrue for certain trade types (e.g., some brands do not wish to accrue for Slotting)
Users can further configure exceptions — specific planning groups or customers that should not accrue even when this is on.
Allow cross level reason usage
Allows users to create distributor level promotions with promotion items that are of retailer type and vice versa. In other words, users can apply any promotion type to any customer level — meaning a "Distributor" type can be used on a retailer account and vice versa. This is helpful if your trade structures don't always follow a strict distributor-vs-retailer split. When disabled, promotion types are restricted to their designated customer level only.
Distributor markup
The distributor markup accounts for the difference between the price to distributor and the price to retailer. It is applied automatically to MCB, MCB EDLP, and Free-Fill promotions to calculate the true cost of these deals.
Default distributor markup — The percentage markup applied to all MCB, MCB EDLP, and Free-Fill promotions unless overridden. For example, if your default is 20%, Confido will factor in a 20% markup when calculating the cost of these promotion types.
Customer exceptions — If a specific distributor has a different markup than the default, you can add an exception here. Click Add Exception, select the customer, and enter their markup percentage. For example, if KeHE operates at a 35% markup while your default is 20%, add KeHE as an exception at 35%. Exceptions override the default for that customer only.
Example:
A brand plans a 10% scan deal on 1000 units. Their unit price is $2.00, and their distributor markup is 20%.
| Without markup | With markup |
Unit price used | $2.00 | $2.40 |
Promotion cost | $200 | $240 |
The distributor markup can also be overridden on a per-promotion basis when creating or editing an individual promotion.
When changing markup settings, you'll be prompted to choose whether to apply the change to future promotions only, all promotions (maintaining existing spend), or all promotions (recalculating amounts).
Display promo string
When toggled on, a promo string field will be visible on promotions. Promo strings are text identifiers that can help you match promotions to external systems or communicate deal details to distributors and retailers.
Display promo IDs
When toggled on, a promo ID field (a short alphanumeric code) will be visible on promotions. Promo IDs are unique identifiers that can be used to track and reference promotions across systems.
Promotion planning dimension
This dropdown sets the default unit of measure for planning promotions. Options include:
Units — Plan promotions in terms of unit volume (Default)
Cases — Plan promotions in terms of case volume
Users can adjust the dimension on individual promotions as needed.
Separate lift and base volume
When toggled on, the promotion planning view splits volume into two components:
Base volume — The volume you'd expect to sell without the promotion
Lift volume — The additional volume driven by the promotion
This is on by default. When toggled off, you'll plan against a single total volume number.
Default to plan lift in quantity or percentage
This dropdown controls how lift is entered by default:
Percentage — Enter lift as a percentage increase over base volume (e.g., 25% lift) (Default)
Quantity — Enter lift as a flat number of additional units or cases
Show lifts in promotion table
When toggled on, projected lift data will be visible directly in the promotion table view, making it easier to scan across promotions and compare expected lift without opening each one individually.
Threshold for suggesting lift revision
This sets a percentage threshold for flagging promotions where your planned lift differs significantly from Confido's projected lift. For example, if set to 50%, any promotion where your projected lift is more than 50 percentage points away from Confido's projection will be flagged.
This is a helpful guardrail to catch promotions where expectations may be too optimistic or too conservative compared to what the data suggests.
Hide promotion accounting fields for sales users
When toggled on, accounting-related fields on promotions (e.g., accrual details) will be hidden from users with a Sales role.
Split new promotions by accounting period by default
When toggled on, new promotions that span multiple accounting periods (e.g., Jan-March) will automatically be split into separate line items for each period. This makes it easier to track spend and accruals on a period-by-period basis.
When toggled off, promotions remain as a single entry regardless of how many periods they span — users can still manually split them if needed.
Allow tagging deductions to closed promotions
When toggled on, users can tag incoming deductions to promotions that have already been closed (Default). When toggled off, only open promotions can receive tagged deductions.