The two sentences on the sign
A markdown schedule is two decisions pretending to be one. The first is how deep each cut goes; the second is whether the cut is measured against the original ticket or against yesterday price. Those sound like the same sentence and they are not. Twenty-five per cent a day off the original ticket reaches half price on day three and free on day five. Twenty-five per cent a day off the previous day reaches just over 56 per cent of the ticket on day three and never reaches zero at all.
The selector at the top switches between them and the day table shows the difference immediately. Sales advertised as "half off Saturday, 75 per cent off Sunday" are quoting the first kind. Sales that just keep knocking a quarter off the sticker are running the second, usually without meaning to.
What the last markdown is actually competing with
Here is the part that changes how people run the final hours. On the figures the page opens with, the remainder at the end carries a modest take-it-all offer, and clearing the tables otherwise costs $260. Accepting the offer is not worth the offer. It is worth the offer plus the hauling that no longer happens, and the page prints that combined figure because it is the number the decision actually turns on.
Turn the hauling cost up and the arithmetic gets sharper still. A seller who would not take twenty dollars for a table at four o clock is, an hour later, paying to have the same table carried out. That is not stubbornness about price, it is a comparison nobody made.
Where the estimate is soft
The sell-through figures are the soft part, and they are soft in a specific way: day one is a share of everything and every later day is a share of what remains, which means the same percentage produces smaller and smaller amounts as the sale goes on. That is realistic — the good pieces leave first — but it also means the total is quite sensitive to the day-one figure. Run it twice.
The asking total does not need to be exact. The schedule works on proportions, so a total that is ten per cent out moves every line by ten per cent and leaves the shape of the answer, and the comparison between the two endings, exactly where it was.
Related pages
The discount calculator handles stacked percentages on a single price and explains why two cuts do not add. The buy price ceiling is the other side of the table, for when you are the one buying the remainder. Home inventory value is a way to build the asking total from purchase dates when there are no tickets yet, and the storage gap calculator covers what happens when clearing a house runs into dates that do not line up.
Questions people ask
Should the cut come off the original ticket or off yesterday price?
Both are used and the page runs either. Off the original ticket is what most advertised schedules mean and it is easier for buyers to work out in their heads, which matters more than it sounds. Off the previous day compounds, so the same headline percentage produces shallower cuts and never quite reaches free. The practical difference shows up on day three and after, and the table makes it visible in one line, so pick the one your sign actually says rather than the one you meant.
How do I estimate what share sells on day one?
From a sale you have run or watched. If you have nothing to go on, the honest approach is to run the page across a range rather than commit to a figure — the day-one share drives the total more than any other input, because everything later works on what day one left behind. Whatever you choose, measure it in asking value rather than in item count, since the pieces that go first are usually the ones with the largest tickets on them.
Why is the take-it-all offer worth more than the offer?
Because accepting it also removes the cost of clearing what is left. The page prints both endings side by side and the difference between them, and that difference includes the hauling that no longer has to happen. On the numbers the form opens with, the swing is several times the offer itself. If your hauling cost is genuinely zero — the remainder fits in your own car and you were driving that way anyway — set the field to zero and the two endings converge.
Does the page know what a permit costs or whether I need one?
No, and it deliberately does not. Whether a sale needs a permit at all, how many days it may run, what may be signposted on a verge and how any of the takings are treated are decided by your city, your county, sometimes a homeowners association and, for the money side, by the IRS and your state. The setup field is there for you to enter whatever those things actually cost you. Everything on this page is arithmetic on your own figures.
What about items I should not be selling at all?
That question sits outside the calculator and is worth taking seriously when clearing a house, because estates turn up things that carry rules of their own — safety equipment, medicines, firearms, licensed or brand-restricted goods, items subject to recall, and anything with someone personal records attached. What may be sold, by whom, and with what liability attached is a legal question for a lawyer and for the agency that governs the category. The page prices what you tell it to price and takes no view on any of it.