Merchandise Planning Software
Maximise every sale opportunity with your stock in the right place, at the right time, and at the right price.
From optimising inventory and improving stock planning to allocating stock more efficiently, Futura helps retailers balance availability, demand and profitability. With our advanced budgeting, planning, and replenishment tools, you can achieve greater financial control, hit your merchandise financial planning targets, and reduce excess stock while avoiding missed sales opportunities due to understocking.
Core Features of the Futura Merchandise Planning Platform
Take the guesswork out of buying and stocking with our retail merchandise planning software — designed to handle complex retail planning across stores, warehouses, and digital channels while helping you manage inventory as a financial asset and retain the flexibility to react quickly to changing demand.
Single Source of Truth
Centralise all stock and sales data to ensure data-driven decisions from head office planning through to instore execution.
Connected Planning & Stock Control
Bring budgeting, purchasing, stock and sales information together to support better merchandise decisions.
Budgeting & OTB
Align purchasing with financial targets using real-time performance data.
Markdown Management
Tie markdowns directly to profitability and financial outcomes, clearing slow-moving lines while protecting your bottom line.
Supplier Performance
Evaluate vendor reliability to strengthen future buying decisions and improve supply chain resilience.
A Data-Driven Retail Planning Solution for Modern Business
To thrive in a multi-channel environment, you need a retail planning solution that prioritises data-driven decisions. Futura goes beyond basic spreadsheets to offer a comprehensive merchandise planning and allocation software that aligns your inventory optimisation with your broader financial goals.
By centralising your data, our platform ensures that your omnichannel strategy – from the high street to the web – is supported by a single, accurate view of stock and demand. This means your team can react quickly to sales trends, adjust plans mid-season, and keep stock moving to the right locations to reduce excess stock and avoid tying up capital unnecessarily in underperforming lines.
Budgeting, Open-to-Buy, and Financial Planning
Futura’s merchandise financial planning tools help retailers maintain control of buying budgets, stock commitments and planned performance. Budgeting helps retailers balance planned stock investment with expected sales while maintaining financial control.
Our Open-to-Buy (OTB) planning tools allow you to:
- Set and Adjust Budgets: Create seasonal merchandise budgets and compare planned figures with actual sales, stock, purchasing and intake as trading develops.
- Prevent Imbalances: Reduce the risk of overstocking and costly stock shortages through in-season adjustments driven by actual performance.
- Monitor Open-to-Buy: Take account of stock, purchasing commitments and planned sales to understand the budget still available for future buying.
Retailers can create budgets across their chosen merchandise classifications, such as categories or brands, and compare planned, actual and committed figures as the season develops. Our weekly stock and sales reports also offer in-season insights, helping buyers respond to actual trading performance.
Historical Sales-Based Stock Planning
Historical sales and stock information gives buyers and merchandisers a valuable basis for future planning. Futura brings sales, stock and purchasing information together, helping retailers assess future requirements and make better-informed buying and replenishment decisions.
>Historical Performance: Use previous sales and stock performance to help inform future planning.
>Plan vs Actual: Compare planned figures with actual trading performance and adjust future plans as the season develops.
> Stock Efficiency: Suggesting inter-branch stock transfers before unnecessary replenishment or new purchase orders are raised, helping you sell through existing stock first.
Flexible Assortment Planning by Category
Modern retail requires a nuanced assortment strategy. Whether you’re managing seasonal fashion trends or core inventory staples, our merchandise planning solutions provide the flexibility you need to manage diverse product lifecycles.
> Assortment Planning: Develop a winning assortment strategy using a multi-dimensional product hierarchy (brand, department, season, etc.).
> SKU-Level Visibility: Gain total retail merchandise visibility down to the individual SKU, ensuring your retail strategy is executed perfectly across every store and channel.
> Customer-Centric Strategy: Track and adjust stock performance in real-time to align your inventory with actual customer demand.
A Unified Retail Ecosystem
Futura doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Our merchandise planning solutions are part of a unified retail platform, integrating seamlessly with your EPOS, WMS, and Loyalty systems. This centric software approach offers real-time data synchronisation across your entire retail ecosystem, allowing you to unify your operations and replace disconnected tools with a single, powerful retail stack.
This allows planning decisions to flow directly into replenishment, purchasing, stock allocation, and fulfilment workflows across the business.
Stay in Control with Scalable Retail Planning
In an era of rapid change, you need a retail planning software that is as agile as your customers. Futura provides the scalable planning tools you need to stay in control of your inventory, protect your profitability, and grow your brand.
The greatest example of the system’s merchandising strength is its live replenishment, ... a huge advantage in maximising fast selling lines
Tim Hollidge, FD, Oliver Bonas
Our clients include
Take control of your merchandise planning today and ensure your business is always stocked for success.
Scale and grow your business with our built-for-retail solutions. Reliable and flexible, Futura products can accommodate complex business processes off-the-shelf, offering valuable features as standard.
Merchandise Planning: Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between inventory management and merchandise planning?
While inventory management focuses on the day-to-day tracking of stock you already own, merchandise planning software is strategic. It looks forward, using historical data and demand patterns to determine what you should buy, in what quantities, and at what price points to meet future financial goals. It’s the roadmap that ensures your inventory investment aligns with your sales targets.
How does Open-to-Buy (OTB) help my retail business?
Open-to-Buy is a financial budget for inventory. Our merchandise planning solutions calculate OTB, showing you exactly how much spend you have available for a specific period. This prevents over-purchasing, protects your cash flow, and allows you to remain agile enough to invest in trending products in-season.
Can the software handle both store and e-commerce stock?
Yes. Futura provides a unified retail platform that manages omnichannel stock. Our merchandise planning and allocation software treats your entire inventory as a single pool or can segment it by channel, ensuring that your online store and physical branches are never competing for the same stock blindly.
Is this software suitable for fashion retail with high SKU counts?
Absolutely. Futura is designed to manage the complexity of fashion retail, including high SKU counts and variations in size, colour and style. The system provides detailed stock and sales visibility at product and variant level, alongside size and colour matrices, allocation and replenishment tools. This makes it well suited to fashion, footwear and department stores managing large and complex product ranges.