Inventory Planner Review: Is It Worth It for Shopify Brands?

For any e-commerce entrepreneur, few things are as frustrating as seeing “sold out” on your best-selling product page. Each visitor who lands there and can’t buy is a lost sale and a potential lost customer. The opposite scenario is just as painful: a warehouse filled with products that aren’t selling, tying up cash that could be fueling your growth. This constant battle between stockouts and overstocking is a daily reality for Shopify brands. The solution isn’t working harder; it’s working smarter with the right tools.

This is where Inventory Planner by Sage comes in. It’s a specialized tool designed to take the guesswork out of purchasing. But with so many apps promising to solve your problems, is this one actually worth the investment?

This detailed Inventory Planner review will break down exactly what it does, who it’s for, and whether it delivers on its promise to help you build a more profitable and efficient Shopify business.

What Is Inventory Planner?

Inventory Planner is a cloud-based software tool focused on inventory forecasting and demand planning for e-commerce businesses. Unlike all-in-one platforms that try to do everything, Inventory Planner specializes in one critical area: helping you know exactly what products to order, how many units to order, and when to place that order.

It connects directly to your Shopify store, pulls your historical sales data, and uses that information to generate data-driven replenishment recommendations. It’s designed to replace the complex and error-prone spreadsheets that many merchants use to manage their purchasing. By automating this process, Inventory Planner aims to free up your time, optimize your cash flow, and prevent costly stockouts.

Key Features of Inventory Planner

The power of Inventory Planner lies in its set of features built specifically for the challenges of selling physical products online. It goes far beyond simple stock counting to provide actionable intelligence.

Demand Forecasting

This is the core of the platform. Inventory Planner analyzes your sales velocity, trends, and seasonality to predict future customer demand. It doesn’t just look at past sales; it considers growth trends and seasonal spikes (like Black Friday or Mother’s Day) to create a reliable forecast. You can even adjust these forecasts to account for upcoming marketing promotions or planned product launches, giving you a complete picture of your inventory needs.

Replenishment Recommendations

Based on its forecasts, the software provides clear, actionable recommendations. It will tell you which SKUs are running low and need to be reordered to avoid a stockout. The platform considers supplier lead times and desired stock levels (e.g., “I always want to have 30 days of stock on hand”) to ensure your purchase orders are timed perfectly. This feature alone can transform your purchasing process from a reactive scramble to a proactive strategy.

Purchase Order Creation

Once you know what you need to order, Inventory Planner streamlines the next step. You can create purchase orders directly within the platform based on its recommendations. These POs can be easily organized, sent to your suppliers, and tracked until the inventory is received. This consolidates your entire purchasing workflow into a single, organized system, reducing the chance of manual errors.

Advanced Reporting and Analytics

You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Inventory Planner provides a wealth of reports that give you deep insights into your inventory health. Key reports include:

• Stockout Reports: See how much potential revenue you’ve lost due to out-of-stock products.
• Overstock Reports: Identify slow-moving inventory that is tying up your capital.
• Inventory KPIs: Track metrics like inventory turnover, sell-through rate, and gross margin by product or variant.

These analytics help you make smarter decisions about which products to double down on and which ones to discontinue.

Pros and Cons of Inventory Planner

No tool is perfect for every business. Here’s an honest look at the strengths and weaknesses of using Inventory Planner for your Shopify store.

Pros

• Extremely Accurate Forecasting: The tool’s primary strength is the quality of its recommendations. It saves brands thousands of dollars by preventing stockouts and reducing overstock.
• Saves Significant Time: Automating purchase orders and forecasting frees up hours that would otherwise be spent wrestling with spreadsheets.
• Improves Cash Flow: By helping you order the right amount of stock at the right time, it ensures your cash is working for you, not sitting on a warehouse shelf.
• Seamless Shopify Integration: It connects directly to Shopify and Shopify Plus, syncing sales, product, and purchase order data automatically.
• Excellent Customer Support: Users consistently praise the responsive and knowledgeable support team, which is crucial when you’re making key purchasing decisions.

Cons

• Can Be Overwhelming at First: The platform is powerful and data-rich, which can lead to a slight learning curve as you explore all the reports and settings.
• Focused Scope: It is not a full-suite inventory management system. It does not handle warehouse management, barcode scanning, or bundling in the way an ERP or WMS would. It is purely focused on forecasting and purchasing.
• Cost: While it provides a strong ROI, it is a paid tool. For very small businesses with only a handful of SKUs, a spreadsheet might still be a viable (though less effective) option.

Pricing: How Much Does Inventory Planner Cost?

Inventory Planner’s pricing is designed to scale with your business. The cost is primarily based on the number of SKUs (stock-keeping units) in your store and the number of integrations you need.

Plans are tiered, so as your business grows and your product catalog expands, you move into a higher plan. This model is fair, as it ensures that small startups are not paying the same price as large, established brands. While specific pricing can change, the structure ensures you are paying for the value and complexity that matches your store’s current size. Most businesses find that the cost is easily justified by the money saved from preventing just a few stockouts or avoiding one major over-purchase.

[Start Your Free Trial with Inventory Planner] (don’t have link yet but put placeholder)

Is Inventory Planner Right for Your Shopify Store?

So, is Inventory Planner worth it? The answer depends on the stage and complexity of your business.

Inventory Planner is an excellent investment if:

• You are constantly running out of your best-selling products.
• You have cash tied up in slow-moving inventory that you can’t seem to get rid of.
• You spend hours every week in spreadsheets trying to figure out what to order.
• Your product catalog has more than 30-50 SKUs, making manual tracking difficult.
• You want to make data-driven decisions to scale your brand profitably.

For any Shopify brand that has moved beyond the startup phase and is focused on scaling efficiently, Inventory Planner is one of the highest-ROI tools you can add to your stack. It directly addresses one of the most significant financial levers in an e-commerce business: inventory. By turning your purchasing from guesswork into a science, it gives you the confidence and clarity needed to grow.