Practice: Keeping windows realistic

For: Sellers (fleet managers, org admins) · Cypress Managers acting for a delegating org

The decision

Every two weeks, a window's last day passes and the daily sweep closes it. The practice question is what you do with the vehicles that were in the window but didn't make it all the way through — and whether you're scheduling windows tightly enough that a normal slip or a normal carry becomes the plan's routine, not its emergency.

The principle

The sweep treats a closing window's vehicles by exactly where they stood:

• A vehicle scheduled but never handed to Sell by close slips — its membership is marked SLIPPED, and the plan's history records the same reason for every slipped vehicle, whatever held it up: "window [W] closed without execution." It shows as Missed on the Vehicles tab, where you can reschedule it into a later window. On the Review tab, that window's own review reads it as "Missed window" — with "— blocker still open at close" appended only for the vehicles that were waiting on one when the window closed.
• A vehicle already in Sell (handed off, listed, or under offer) that hasn't sold by close is carried into the next open window — never dropped — with the carry counted (carriedOver) and shown as a red badge on the schedule grid and named in that window's review.
• A vehicle that left the fleet mid-window (sold or archived outside the plan) is marked left-the-fleet, explicitly not a slip — counting it as one would poison the lesson the plan's memory learns from.
• A window with nothing planned in it closes silently; a WindowReview is written only when something actually was.

None of this is a failure to hide. A slip is a data point: it tells you the hand-off process is running behind the schedule you set, the same way a carry tells you the market didn't clear what you released. Both feed the plan's memory the same way a window's verdict does.

Worked example

Acme Fleet Services schedules its 2022 Ford Transit 250 into window W41–42, with a hand to Sell by date of the window's start minus the fleet's prep-lead days. If Acme's team is slow to act and W41–42 closes before anyone clicks Hand to Sell, the Transit's membership slips — Maria sees it under Missed on the Vehicles tab and reschedules it into W43–44. If instead the hand-off happened on time and the Transit was listed at $32,500 but hadn't sold when W41–42 closed, it carries forward into W43–44 automatically, with the carry counted against that lot and named in the window's review once it does sell — the $200 Alex countered above Maria's $29,000 floor still lands wherever it closes.

Signals to watch

• A lot's carried-over count climbing window over window. It usually means the ask is out of step with what the market will pay in two weeks, not that the vehicles are unsellable.
• A window's "hand to Sell by" date reading past due while vehicles are still scheduled — the earliest sign a slip is coming, days before the sweep marks it.
• A run of slips concentrated in one lot or one person's queue — a scheduling habit (or a bottleneck in prep) more often than a market problem.

Common mistakes

• Scheduling every candidate into the nearest window "to be safe." Crowding a single window makes both a slip (nobody gets to the hand-off in time) and a carry (the market can't clear that many of one class in two weeks) more likely, not less.
• Treating a carried vehicle as sold-then-unsold. It never left Sell — it's still listed, still under the same offer process; the carry is planning's bookkeeping catching up with reality, not a reversal.
• Treating a hold-only window as a problem. A window that closes with nothing planned is a valid, silent outcome — it doesn't need a lesson recorded any more than a quiet day needs a postmortem.

Related

• The schedule, the hand-off, and what actually happened
• Schedule a sale window
• Review how the plan held