When a refit still sits inside like-for-like
A shop with a scaffold, a temporary entrance, and half the windows boarded is still transmitting till files. Many finance files therefore keep it in like-for-like for the whole programme. The board then spends a period asking why conversion fell when the door moved six metres to the left.
Utilitycraftline treats a refit as a calendar, not a mood. We ask for the contractor’s start week, the week the temporary entrance opened, and the week the original door returned. Those three dates rarely match the landlord’s letter. They do match what staff remember.
Inclusion is binary by week. Either the unit is in the like-for-like set or it is out. We do not apply a “discount factor” for dust. Discount factors cannot be audited in a Monday call. If you want a sense of lost trade, that belongs in a one-off exception note with a named assumption, not in the estate percentage.
Concessions inside a host store are a separate trap. If the host moves you from the ground floor to a gallery during their own works, your till is still yours and the traffic is not. We mark those weeks out of conversion comparisons even when sales stay in the estate total.
The practical test: could an area manager explain the rule to a new store manager in two minutes? If the rule needs a slide, it will not survive the next opening.