Inventory Planner by Sage

We have used Inventory Planner for years and were big fans of the tool. It has helped us with inventory forecasting in the past. Over the last few months, we have had significant challenges with Inventory Planner API with Shopify, and our data has been intermittently been syncing in Inventory Planner. For example, our last sync was Jan 13, 2025. This syncing issue has repeatedly happened over the last quarter of 2024 into 2025.

This has disrupted our analysis and forecast planning. We believe the Inventory Planner is working on a solution on updating their API to Shopify, but its not clear to us when this will be fixed and help our team with.

We would love to keep working with Inventory Planner if they can provide a stable API with Shopify.

Software itself works fine and I used it for a few years. It saved me a lot of time with PO and forecasting stock levels. HOWEVER, since purchasing IP, Sage have increased the annual/semi annual fees dramatically with no signs of stopping. They will corner you in an automatically renewing contract and bleed you dry. Luckily there are a number of solid alternatives out there now. I would avoid at all costs and recommend you do not sign any contracts.

This app ended up being useless for us, a huge waste of time and money. Be careful what you commit to, make sure you have an out if you can't use it.

We couldn't generate accurate forecasts that take into account the seasonality of our product. When set to last sales, which was originally recommended by the IP team, it dramatically over forecasted sales and reorders. The other two methods didn't work either. Forecasting at a category level was overridden in the system.

We were unable to plan Net vs Gross sales, return rate, or discount rate
Couldn't see critical metrics by week/month to create manual plans such as % to LY, build, discount rate, AUR, AIR. Couldn't group or view by key attributes or export a list of skus and each attribute column.

The interface is generally inefficient and difficult to navigate. Simple updates create a lag when attempting to save changes.

It's possible it would work for a non seasonal business with products that all have the same attributes, especially if there are a lot of people to manage it. Just make sure you can get out of it if it doesn't work.

Very helpful advice from Nathan, totally understood the assignment and executed with aplomb!!

I have a love-hate relationship with this app. The basic functions of being able to make and send POs, and see/sync inventories and invoices is great. The forecasting is so-so, and doesn't always display the data you need to see. Integration is also a PITA if you have a complicated store with multiple warehouses, and 3rd party fulfillment...I turned the 3P warehouses off in the settings, why are you still importing their inventory and variants?

Customer service is also lacking. You CAN'T call them. There isn't a number. So you're stuck sending chat messages, waiting for a response, then playing chat tag for days. I've also gotten incorrect information, with them not knowing they had some functionality that I found by clicking around, and being misinformed about how some apps integrate.

This app does save me time, but if I had the time to find another similar app, I'd jump ship.