Restock planning: software that plans the money too

The short answer

If you only read one section, read this one. The rest of the article shows the working.

• You order one fixed batch a year → Excel / Google Sheets
• Your purchasing scales with revenue and the payment date decides everything → Foreqast

None of those sentences is a ranking. These products answer different questions, and the wrong one bought well is still the wrong one.

How this comparison works

We are Foreqast, so read the last-but-one section first if you want to know where the bias would be. The rule we hold ourselves to here: every claim about another product comes from that vendor's own site or from public review directories, checked on 24 August 2026, and every tool gets a verdict saying when it beats us. Where a vendor does not publish a price, this article says so instead of guessing.

What we do not do is score these tools out of ten. A weighted table can be made to say anything, and the weights are always the author's. Instead each product gets a plain description of what it is for, what it does well, where it stops, and the kind of company it fits.

The tools at a glance

What separates these products is not the length of their feature lists. It is where the future numbers come from — because that decides which questions the tool can answer at all.

How these tools build a forecast

Almost every difference further down comes back to this. A tool can only tell you about the future in the language it builds the future in.

By hand

A spreadsheet does anything you can write down, costs nothing, and is the honest answer for a business whose plan changes twice a year. The price is upkeep: every actual is typed in, every formula is yours to maintain, and the model quietly rots the month nobody has time for it.

From drivers

Revenue is a formula rather than a line: orders times basket size minus refunds, subscribers times price minus churn, booked hours times rate. Change one input and everything downstream — margin, cash, runway — recalculates. It takes more thought to set up than a bank connection, and it is the only one of the four that answers "what happens if" without a second spreadsheet.

The tools in detail

Each product on its own terms: what it is, what it is genuinely good at, where its scope ends, what it costs, and the company it suits best.

Excel / Google Sheets

A spreadsheet you build yourself: complete freedom over the model, and complete responsibility for keeping it current.

What it does well

• Free, and it can model anything you can express as a formula.
• Nobody has to approve an integration, and the file is yours forever.
• For a stable business planning once a quarter, it is genuinely enough.

Where it stops

• Actuals are typed in, so the plan is only as current as the last evening someone spent on it.
• Scenarios become tabs, and by the third one nobody knows which version counts.
• One person usually owns the file, which makes it a risk rather than a process.

Price: Free, apart from your time.

Best for: Stable businesses that plan a few times a year, and anyone who needs a model no product supports yet.

Foreqast

A forecast built from your accounting plus the drivers your revenue actually runs on — orders and basket size, subscriptions, tracked hours — with a simulator for testing a decision before you make it.

What it does well

• Revenue is a formula, not a trend line: change a driver and the forecast recalculates through to margin and cash.
• Cash and profit come out of one model, with margin in total and per unit beside them.
• Decisions sit next to the plan — a hire, an ad budget, a cancellation — and can be compared with and without.
• Shop, billing and time-tracking data feed the drivers, so the plan does not need weekly upkeep.

Where it stops

• It builds on your accounting rather than on bank connections, so it is not a treasury tool for many accounts and currencies.
• No consolidation across a group of companies today; multi-entity is the partner plan's territory.
• It is in early access, so the customer list is short and some things are still on the roadmap.

Price: €39, €149 and €399 a month, published; partner plans from €800 on request. Free on every plan during early access, no card.

Best for: Shops, agencies and small SaaS teams whose revenue moves with something countable — orders, subscriptions, booked hours — and who want to cost a decision before making it rather than watch a balance.

What to check before you buy

Questions worth asking any vendor on a demo call, including us. The answers separate these tools faster than any feature list.

Does it calculate the cash side?

Order quantity is one question; payment terms and the balance on the due date are the other.

Does purchasing scale with revenue?

Grow, and your buying grows. A fixed number in the plan breaks exactly when things go well.

Are payment terms modelled?

A deposit and the balance are often weeks apart — that belongs in the plan.

Do you see tied-up capital?

What sits in stock over the next 90 days is the number that decides your room to move.

When Foreqast is the wrong tool

A comparison written by one of the products in it owes you this section, so here it is without hedging.

• You need stock levels per location — that is an ERP's job.
• You order one fixed batch a year — a calendar entry covers it.
• You sell without holding stock — this is not your constraint.

Sources

The vendor claims above were checked against these pages on 24 August 2026. Scope and pricing change — check them yourself before you decide.

• https://foreqast.app/pricing

Disclosure: this article is published by Foreqast, one of the tools compared. We have tried to describe the others as their own customers would.