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Merchandise Financial Planning Software

Better manage financial plans and open-to-buy budgets.

Because your retail company’s financial targets–including sales, margin and inventory goals–are determined during merchandise financial planning (MFP), accuracy and inter-department alignment are crucial to your success. Yet, with this part of the retail planning process encompassing so many data points, merchandise planning teams can find themselves buried in lower-level details of the product hierarchy.

ToolsGroup Merchandise Financial Planning software provides the efficiency and accuracy retailers need to plan multiple brands, channels and currencies–all in a singular view.

The solution also manages your organization’s traditional open-to-buy plan: You get the flexibility to choose your own planning calendar, plus the ability to manage strategic plan targets across a specific period in time. In addition, as a retailer, you can make changes to merchandise financial plans from the highest to the lowest levels within the defined product hierarchy.

Meet your financial goals with improved visibility and collaboration

Intelligent decision making - Image

Intelligent decision making

ToolsGroup Merchandise Financial Planning software enables rapid assessment of strategic retail planning decisions. Thanks to hindsighting, scenario planning and exception-based reporting, you can better understand customer demand and meet your financial goals.


Greater visibility - Image

Greater visibility

The solution provides visibility into actual retail trends and future demand forecasting across multiple channels and product segments, ensuring you stay ahead of the competition and maximize inventory productivity.


Better pre-season and in-season plans - Image

Better pre-season and in-season plans

The ToolsGroup Merchandise Financial Planning system improves the quality of strategic pre-season and in-season retail plans, helping you meet customer demand across products.


Improved collaboration - Image

Improved collaboration

The unified financial planning system encourages cross-functional participation and accountability across merchandise planning teams and roles, giving you increased efficiencies and a common view into financial targets.


Spreadsheets and gut instinct are no longer enough to gain a competitive advantage.

Now is the time to incorporate digital technologies into your merchandise financial planning.

  • 55% of retail supply chain executives are willing to invest in productive planning and demand forecasting
  • 40% want to invest in real-time supply chain visibility
  • 40% see the need to improve integrated operational supply chain planning

Merchandise financial planning software features

01

Flexible planning grid

Manage your planning process with an intuitive, strategic view of the financial plan and product hierarchy, complete with configurable metrics. With drill-down capabilities and the ability to adjust plans at any level, the solution makes it easy to calculate, track and manage both financial forecasts and cash flow.

Not only is the merchandise financial planning tool delivered with retail industry best-practice base metrics, it’s easy to add additional metrics: Simply drag and drop them into the planning grid.

If you’re a merchandise planner looking for something more advanced, ToolsGroup Financial Planning software offers hundreds of additional metrics to support your merchandise inventory needs.

02

Top-down, middle-out, and bottom-up planning

ToolsGroup Merchandise Planning software supports multiple planning strategies, including top-down financial plans, bottom-up category plans and store plans, with the added ability to plan by vendor.

Each planning type can be created independently, allowing multiple roles in your merchandising organization to create their own version of the plan. Merchandisers can then compare plans, reconcile them from the top-down or bottom-up, and lock and spread adjustments at any product, location, or time-level within the retail plan.

03

Location and category planning

Get more accurate assortment plans and store clusters with location and category planning. The system enables you to automatically balance and reconcile both location and merchandise plans, so you can measure category performance at a location level. This type of planning is used extensively by fast fashion and category-focused retailers in managing the allocation of products.

04

Open-to-buy budgeting

No business should operate without monitoring its inventory spend within the cash flow cycle. ToolsGroup Merchandise Financial Planning software helps you monitor inventory investment within any period of time–or any part of the product hierarchy.

Track the amount available to spend on additional receipts, or, cut back on receipts no longer needed within your organization’s merchandise plan. For ease of use, the open-to-buy capability works hand-in-hand with the strategic target setting used during merchandise financial planning.

05

Reconcile your MFP and assortment plans

In addition to “what-if” scenario planning across all plan types, you can reconcile your MFP targets to your assortment plans across all core metrics, including sales, inventory and receipts. The ability to make on-the-fly changes in MFP or assortment planning ensures you can quickly respond to market trends while still meeting financial goals.

01

Flexible planning grid

Manage your planning process with an intuitive, strategic view of the financial plan and product hierarchy, complete with configurable metrics. With drill-down capabilities and the ability to adjust plans at any level, the solution makes it easy to calculate, track and manage both financial forecasts and cash flow.

Not only is the merchandise financial planning tool delivered with retail industry best-practice base metrics, it’s easy to add additional metrics: Simply drag and drop them into the planning grid.

If you’re a merchandise planner looking for something more advanced, ToolsGroup Financial Planning software offers hundreds of additional metrics to support your merchandise inventory needs.

02

Top-down, middle-out, and bottom-up planning

ToolsGroup Merchandise Planning software supports multiple planning strategies, including top-down financial plans, bottom-up category plans and store plans, with the added ability to plan by vendor.

Each planning type can be created independently, allowing multiple roles in your merchandising organization to create their own version of the plan. Merchandisers can then compare plans, reconcile them from the top-down or bottom-up, and lock and spread adjustments at any product, location, or time-level within the retail plan.

03

Location and category planning

Get more accurate assortment plans and store clusters with location and category planning. The system enables you to automatically balance and reconcile both location and merchandise plans, so you can measure category performance at a location level. This type of planning is used extensively by fast fashion and category-focused retailers in managing the allocation of products.

04

Open-to-buy budgeting

No business should operate without monitoring its inventory spend within the cash flow cycle. ToolsGroup Merchandise Financial Planning software helps you monitor inventory investment within any period of time–or any part of the product hierarchy.

Track the amount available to spend on additional receipts, or, cut back on receipts no longer needed within your organization’s merchandise plan. For ease of use, the open-to-buy capability works hand-in-hand with the strategic target setting used during merchandise financial planning.

05

Reconcile your MFP and assortment plans

In addition to “what-if” scenario planning across all plan types, you can reconcile your MFP targets to your assortment plans across all core metrics, including sales, inventory and receipts. The ability to make on-the-fly changes in MFP or assortment planning ensures you can quickly respond to market trends while still meeting financial goals.

Our solution experts are available to discuss your business goals and technology needs.

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