AI Merchandise Financial Planning (MFP) Software for Retail & Fashion Brands
TrueGradient turns MFP from a season-start spreadsheet into a living financial plan — sales, margin, receipts, and Open-to-Buy reconciled top-down to bottom-up and reforecast continuously as the season sells.
Most merchandise financial plans are locked in a spreadsheet at the start of a season and stale by week three. Targets sit in finance, the buy sits with merchants, and Open-to-Buy is a formula that breaks the moment actuals arrive. TrueGradient makes MFP continuous: ML models build the baseline plan, agents reforecast OTB against real sell-through, and every change reconciles to margin and receipts automatically.
Plan sales, margin, receipts, and inventory on one financial model
Legacy MFP fragments across tools: sales and margin targets in finance, receipts and OTB in a buyer's spreadsheet, and inventory in the ERP. Reconciling them is a manual, error-prone exercise that a single broken formula can derail. TrueGradient plans sales, gross margin, receipts, markdowns, and inventory on one financial model, so every lever moves together. When a sales assumption changes, the receipt plan, the margin, and the inventory position update in the same view — no export, no reconciliation, no version-control chaos.
Reconcile top-down financial targets with bottom-up category plans
MFP lives or dies on reconciling two directions: the executive top-down targets — total sales, margin, inventory, receipts across the product hierarchy — and the bottom-up plans merchants build by department, class, and category. TrueGradient reconciles both continuously, so a change to a company-level margin target instantly reflects in class-level receipt budgets, and a bottom-up assortment decision rolls up to the financial plan without a manual rebalance. Buyers evaluating this capability are also reading pre-season and in-season planning for fashion and e-commerce.
Open-to-Buy that updates continuously against actual sell-through
Open-to-Buy is the bridge between the financial plan and the actual buy — the receipt budget that tells merchants how much is left to purchase by month, class, and channel. In a spreadsheet, it is fragile and always a step behind. TrueGradient calculates OTB continuously against live sell-through, open orders, and planned receipts, and agents flag a projected budget overrun weeks before it happens. Merchants spend their time on the decision — chase the winners, exit the dead stock — while the system handles the math. It is the same continuous, exception-driven pattern behind avoiding the markdowns that erode a season's margin.
Pre-season, in-season, and post-season planning in one cycle
Pre-season sets the financial and receipt plan; in-season reforecasts against actuals and re-flows OTB; post-season reads sell-through and margin into next season's plan. Most tools handle one phase and hand off the rest. TrueGradient runs all three on one model, so the plan is never rebuilt from scratch — it evolves. This is where AI-native planning separates from spreadsheets: probabilistic forecasts and continuous reforecasting replace the manual season-start reset, the philosophy we cover in why traditional forecasting fails in fast fashion.
Margin, markdown, and initial-markup planning built in
A merchandise financial plan that ignores margin is just a sales plan. TrueGradient plans initial markup, gross margin, and markdown budgets as first-class levers — so a receipt decision shows its margin consequence, and a markdown scenario shows its impact on sell-through and end-of-season inventory. Pair it with base price optimization and promotion optimization to plan the full price-and-margin picture in one place; the systematic approach we describe in pricing isn't a guess, it's a system.
Built for the operating reality of merchandise planning teams
Real merchandise planning is messy: new SKUs launch mid-season, channels cannibalize, and trends move faster than the buy. TrueGradient is built around it — explainable, non-black-box recommendations planners can defend or override; agentic exception monitoring that surfaces only the classes drifting off-plan; and no-code, self-serve configuration so planning teams set the hierarchy, calendar, and OTB rules without a long implementation. It suits omnichannel brands where a single financial plan has to span stores, e-commerce, and marketplace.
The business impact of AI-powered MFP
Fewer end-of-season markdowns from continuous OTB reforecasting that catches over-buys early.
Margin protected in-season by reallocating open budget to winners before the season ends.
Hours, not days, to re-run the financial plan when targets change — no spreadsheet rebuild.
Connect MFP to the rest of your retail planning stack
Get a financially aligned merchandise plan this season
See what AI MFP looks like on your sales, margin, and OTB data. Run TrueGradient alongside your existing plan for one season and measure the markdown, margin, and planning-time lift.
For Shopify Brands
Optimize inventory, prevent stockouts, and boost profits.
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TrueGradient is a no-code self-serve AI product for supply chain optimization founded in 2023.
