What does a Buyer FTE own?
A Buyer FTE on ftes.ai owns the purchase proposal for an online store's stock, in the Merchandising department of the e-commerce org chart. It is judged on one number, the sell-through of what it recommended, and accountable for every buy being proposed with its size run, its cash and the number it will be judged on. It is the role that turns a forecast into an order a person can sign.
It does not own the forecast, which the Demand Forecaster FTE produces, the cash view, which the Cash Officer FTE holds, or the assortment, which the owner decides. It owns the arithmetic between them and the proposal that results.
Where do its numbers come from?
The Buyer FTE reads forecast demand per SKU and size, with confidence, from the Demand Forecaster FTE; stock on hand and on order from the store or inventory system; supplier lead times and their variance from the purchase order history; minimum order quantities and price breaks from the supplier record; landed cost from the Controller or Landed Cost & Compliance FTE; and open-to-buy and the cash ceiling from the owner's Setup. Nothing in a proposal is a default the FTE typed in.
Size runs are weighted by measured sell-through per size, not by the supplier's ratio. A line that sells through in medium and large and sits in small is bought that way next time, and the proposal says so.
What does a purchase proposal contain?
Each proposal in the Approvals tab contains the SKU or line, the supplier, the quantity and the arithmetic behind it from lead-time demand, safety stock, stock on hand and on order, the size run and its basis, the measured lead time and variance, the minimum applied and any price break, landed cost per unit, the cash committed and when it falls due, the days of cover it buys, and the forecast confidence that drove it. A proposal on a low-confidence forecast is smaller and sooner, and says why.
The approver you named signs, edits the quantity, or rejects with a note; orders above your threshold wait for a second approver. Edits become rules: a quantity cut every time for one supplier teaches the Buyer FTE something the supplier record did not hold.
How are new lines sized?
A new line has no sales history, so the Buyer FTE sizes it from comparables: products the store already sells in the same category, price band and launch pattern, proposed by the Demand Forecaster FTE and confirmed or changed by the owner, who knows the product before the data does. The proposal is labelled as borrowed, the first order is deliberately smaller, and the comparable is replaced by the line's own sales as they arrive.
This is the honest alternative to the two common failures: a season's cash committed to a guess dressed as a forecast, or a launch under-bought because nobody would put a number on it.
What does the Buyer FTE never do?
It never places an order with a supplier, at any autonomy level; the signature is the owner's, and a second signature above the threshold. It never chooses which brands or products the store carries, never negotiates terms, and never proposes an order that would take committed cash over the month's ceiling; when a stockout risk cannot be covered inside the ceiling, it says so and lets the owner decide between the risk and the ceiling.
It also never hides a miss. A buy that sold through slowly is reported as such, with the reason where the FTE can see one, because a buyer who cannot be graded cannot be trusted with the next season.
What does it report, and how honestly?
The Buyer FTE reports sell-through of every recommended buy at the horizon the owner set, open-to-buy used, buys proposed, approved, edited and rejected, and the rules the edits taught it. Sell-through is measured from orders after the stock arrived, per buy, and published beside the forecast confidence the buy was made on, so a miss on a low-confidence line is read differently from a miss on a high-confidence one.
It does not report stockouts prevented, which is a counterfactual; the Inventory and Allocator FTEs report stockouts that happened.
How does it work with the other roles, and in which tools?
The Buyer FTE reads the Demand Forecaster FTE, the Cash Officer FTE and the Supplier Officer FTE's scorecards, and its conflicts with the Cash Officer FTE, a reorder against a markdown, are resolved on the Chief of Staff FTE's morning page. It reads stock and orders from Shopify, WooCommerce or BigCommerce, or NetSuite, Cin7 and Linnworks, and writes approved orders back where the purchasing team expects them.
Stores that already run the Inventory FTE end to end may not need a separate Buyer; stores with a merchandising team that wants the buy proposed by line and season usually do.