Questions and answers

You upload a spreadsheet and describe, in your own words, what you want to predict or decide. 4castPlannr works out what can be forecast, tests several forecasting methods on your history, and, when your question is a decision such as how much to order or how many people to schedule, builds a plan for it. You get a plain-English report with charts and a spreadsheet you can use.

No. That is the point. Describe the decision the way you would to a colleague, for example: how much flour should we order each week. We choose the method, set it up and explain the result in plain words.

CSV and Excel files (.csv, .xlsx, .xls), up to 50 MB for the free forecast. One sheet with a date column and the numbers you care about is enough. Exports from QuickBooks, Square, Shopify, ERPs and booking tools all work.

As a rule of thumb, at least 3 to 4 times as far back as you want to look ahead, and a full year if your business is seasonal. We tell you if the history is too short for a reliable answer.

Usually less than 15 minutes after you confirm. We first email you one sentence describing what we will forecast; you confirm with one click or change it. Automatic checks look at every result, and if one flags a problem, a person looks at it before we send it.

Yes. Your first forecast is free for the first 50 businesses. No credit card and no sales call. You get the full report and spreadsheet.

The founder plan is $20 a month for updated forecasts and plans, and early customers keep that price for as long as they stay. Paid signup opens soon: join the list on the pricing page to be first in line. We will never charge you without asking first.

We are a new startup, and automation does most of the heavy lifting, so each forecast costs us little to make. We would rather you love the product first. Early customers keep founder pricing as a thank you. Full planning suites cost hundreds of dollars a month or more; see the comparison page for public prices.

During the launch period you send a fresh export each week or month and we send back the updated forecast and plan. Direct connections to tools like QuickBooks and Google Sheets are planned but not available yet.

It depends on your data, so we measure it on your own history before you rely on it. We hide the last stretch of your data, forecast it, and compare with what really happened, several times over. Across our 13 public case studies, our forecasts had less error than simply repeating last season in all 13 tests. See the results page for every number, including where simpler methods won.

No. Our software reads your request and your file to propose what to forecast, and you confirm it by email before anything runs. The numbers come from forecasting methods that are tested on your data and an optimization model that does the math for the plan. Every number in your report can be traced and reproduced.

Every forecast comes with a range and with the error we measured on your history, so you know how much to trust it. When accuracy is low or the data looks off, the report says so and recommends a review instead of hiding it.

No. In our public examples it did not in every case: in one, the grid operators' own forecast was more accurate, and in another, a simple ordering rule cost less than our plan. We show those results too, and we will show yours honestly.

Your files travel over an encrypted connection, are stored separately per customer, and are used only to produce your forecasts. We do not sell your data or use it to train shared models. You can ask us to delete it at any time. The security page explains the details in plain words.

Only the people at 4castPlannr who need to process your request. We do not share your data with other customers, and we do not use advertising or analytics trackers on this site.

Yes. Email us and we will delete your files and results.