You know the drill. Everyone celebrates the holiday numbers: “Record Black Friday!” “Best Cyber Week ever!” “Christmas sell-through is way ahead of plan!” Then Q1 rolls around. Finance closes the books.Suddenly, the story changes

Year-end is when everyone wants something from you. Finance wants clean books. Supply chain wants frozen forecasts. Sales wants that last push to hit the number. Leadership wants a tidy story for the board. Somewhere in the middle of all this, deductions sit in a report tab called “later.”

On-Time In-Full ( OTIF ) is simple on paper and brutal in peak. A missed window here, a short-shipped pallet there—and suddenly you’re funding the retailer’s margin via chargebacks. Here’s the part most teams miss: OTIF isn’t won in the warehouse. It’s won in the calendar. A quick reality check.  Across the industry, suppliers routinely see November–December carrier on-time performance ( OTP ) sag as capacity tightens and dwell times creep up. Even modest slippage can stack i