# 4castPlannr > 4castPlannr turns a spreadsheet and a plain-English question into a tested forecast and a recommended plan (how much to order, produce or staff) for small and midsize businesses, and keeps sending the updated answer. Key facts: - Who it is for: US small and midsize businesses that plan in spreadsheets, starting with wholesale distributors and food and beverage producers (10 to 200 employees), plus multi-location service businesses that need staffing plans. - How it works: upload a CSV or Excel export and describe the decision in your own words. 4castPlannr picks what to forecast, tests several forecasting methods on your history (from simple rules to an AI forecasting model), keeps the most accurate, and builds an optimization model for the plan when the question is a decision. - Offer: first forecast free for the first 50 businesses, no credit card, no sales call. Then a founder plan at $20 a month (USD) for updated forecasts and plans, price locked in for early customers. Paid signup is not open yet (join the list on the pricing page). - Evidence: 13 public case studies. In back-testing, 13 of 13 forecasts had less error than repeating the last season (median 25% less error). Results where 4castPlannr lost are published too: a grid operator's day-ahead forecast was more accurate in one case, and a simple ordering rule beat the plan on held-back data in another. - Data: files are used only to produce the customer's forecasts and are not used to train shared models. No advertising or analytics trackers on the website. - Optimization costs in the case studies are example values; the pizza dataset is synthetic. ## Main pages - [4castPlannr: Forecast and plan anything from your spreadsheets](https://4castplannr.com/): Describe your weekly decision in plain words and upload your spreadsheet. Get a tested forecast and a plan: how much to order, make or staff. First forecast free. - [How it works: from a spreadsheet to a weekly plan](https://4castplannr.com/how-it-works/): How 4castPlannr turns a spreadsheet and one sentence into a tested forecast and a plan: what you send, what we check, how accuracy is measured and what you get back. - [Results: where our forecasts won, and where they did not](https://4castplannr.com/results/): Every case study in one table: accuracy against simple rules, reality checks and plans. 13 of 13 beat repeating last season, and one plan lost to a rule of thumb. - [Live demo: real forecasts vs what actually happened](https://4castplannr.com/demo/): Four real runs on public data: dairy production, bike rentals, a pizza place with its order plan and 311 staffing. Forecast vs actual, accuracy and plans. - [Methodology: how we test forecast accuracy](https://4castplannr.com/methodology/): How we measure forecast accuracy before you rely on it: tests on your own history, comparison with simple rules, reality checks, and how plans are built. - [Pricing: free for the first 50 businesses, then $20 a month](https://4castplannr.com/pricing/): Free forecasts for the first 50 businesses, no credit card. Then the founder plan at $20 a month, locked in for early customers. - [Questions and answers](https://4castplannr.com/faq/): Answers to common questions about 4castPlannr: what to upload, how accurate forecasts are, the free offer, pricing, and how your data is handled. - [4castPlannr vs Netstock, Inventory Planner, Prediko, ChatGPT and Excel](https://4castplannr.com/compare/): What Netstock, Inventory Planner, Prediko, Lineup.ai, Pecan, Lokad, ChatGPT and Excel charge and do (October 2026), and why 4castPlannr costs less. - [Get your free forecast](https://4castplannr.com/start/): Upload a CSV or Excel file and tell us what you want to predict or decide. Free for the first 50 businesses, no credit card. ## Use cases - [Use cases: reorder, production, staffing and more](https://4castplannr.com/use-cases/): Inventory reorders for distributors, production plans for food makers, staffing for service teams, restaurant demand and battery schedules, from your spreadsheets. - [How much inventory to reorder: weekly plans for distributors](https://4castplannr.com/use-cases/inventory-reorder-distributors/): Reorder the right amount of every item without a spreadsheet model. Upload your sales export and get a tested forecast and a reorder list in whole cases. - [Production planning spreadsheet alternative for food makers](https://4castplannr.com/use-cases/production-planning-food-beverage/): Decide what to produce each day on a shared line. We forecast demand per product and plan batches around capacity, changeovers and shelf life. - [Call center staffing calculator alternative: shift plans](https://4castplannr.com/use-cases/staffing-call-centers-service/): Staff to the demand you will actually get. We forecast daily calls, visits or jobs per channel or site and build a shift plan that covers it at the lowest cost. - [Restaurant sales forecasting: how much food to prep](https://4castplannr.com/use-cases/restaurant-demand-forecasting/): Forecast daily sales, covers or items from a POS export and turn them into prep and ingredient orders, tested on your own history. - [Battery peak shaving schedule: cut demand charges](https://4castplannr.com/use-cases/energy-battery-scheduling/): Forecast hourly load and get a charge schedule that saves the battery for the real peaks, tested on your history and compared with a fixed daily schedule. ## Case studies - [Case studies on public data, with every number](https://4castplannr.com/case-studies/): 13 forecasts and 5 plans run end to end on public datasets, including the ones where a simple rule or an existing forecast did better. - [Production planning for a yogurt maker: forecast and line plan](https://4castplannr.com/case-studies/dairy-supply-chain-sales/): Public dairy data run end to end: daily sales forecasts for 6 yogurt products and a production plan for one shared line, checked against the next four weeks. - [How much to reorder: fresh food forecast and reorder plan](https://4castplannr.com/case-studies/freshretailnet-50k/): Public fresh-retail data: 7-day demand forecasts for the 100 busiest store-product pairs and a reorder plan in whole cases, replayed on the following week. - [Restaurant sales forecast and ingredient orders from a POS export](https://4castplannr.com/case-studies/pizza-place-sales/): A synthetic pizza shop: a 14-day sales forecast and a two-week order plan for dough, cheese, sauce and boxes. The rule of thumb won the reality check. - [Call center staffing from a forecast: 6-week shift plan](https://4castplannr.com/case-studies/sf311-contact-center/): San Francisco 311 public data: daily phone, web and app requests forecast six weeks ahead, and an agent shift plan replayed on the weeks that followed. - [Hourly electricity demand forecast and battery schedule](https://4castplannr.com/case-studies/eia-930-hourly-demand/): U.S. EIA grid data: a 7-day hourly demand forecast for 5 balancing authorities, compared with the operators' own forecast, plus a battery schedule for Texas. - [Forecast daily revenue for the holiday peak from an order export](https://4castplannr.com/case-studies/online-retail-ii/): A public UK online retailer's order lines turned into a 30-day daily revenue forecast for the Christmas peak, checked against what actually happened. - [Weekly wholesale demand forecast for 500 store-product pairs](https://4castplannr.com/case-studies/iowa-liquor-sales/): Iowa's public liquor sales: 8-week forecasts for the 500 biggest store-product pairs. Many items sell in bursts, so the result was flagged for review. - [Forecast hotel room-nights 60 days ahead from a booking export](https://4castplannr.com/case-studies/hotel-booking-demand/): A public dataset from two hotels: daily room-nights forecast 60 days ahead per hotel, with the accuracy we measured in testing. - [Monthly passenger forecast per airline, 12 months ahead](https://4castplannr.com/case-studies/sfo-air-traffic-passengers/): San Francisco International Airport's public statistics: monthly passengers for the 10 largest airlines forecast a year ahead. - [Hourly bike rental forecast using the weather](https://4castplannr.com/case-studies/uci-bike-sharing/): Capital Bikeshare data from the UCI repository: hourly rentals forecast a week ahead, with and without weather as an extra input. - [Forecasting from a messy POS export: dates, duplicates, refunds](https://4castplannr.com/case-studies/pizza-place-sales-dirty/): The pizza dataset deliberately broken the way real exports break: four date formats, semicolons, missing days, double scans and refunds. Same engine, no hand cleaning. - [Forecasting from a messy monthly file: gaps and corrections](https://4castplannr.com/case-studies/sfo-air-traffic-passengers-dirty/): The SFO passenger data deliberately broken: months written three ways, missing and duplicated rows, negative corrections. Same engine, no hand cleaning. - [Forecasting from a messy spreadsheet: mixed dates, missing values](https://4castplannr.com/case-studies/uci-bike-sharing-dirty/): The bike sharing data deliberately broken: tabs, two date styles, missing days, duplicates, 'N/A' temperatures and thousands separators. Same engine, no hand cleaning. ## Company - [Security and data handling, in plain words](https://4castplannr.com/security/): How we protect the files you upload: separate storage per customer, strict upload checks, no tracking, no training of shared models, and what is still open. - [About 4castPlannr](https://4castplannr.com/about/): Why 4castPlannr exists: planning tools are built for analysts, and most small businesses run on spreadsheets. We do the analysis and send the answer. - [Privacy policy](https://4castplannr.com/privacy/): What 4castPlannr collects, why, how long we keep uploads, who we share data with, and your rights under GDPR and US state privacy laws, in plain English. - [Terms of service](https://4castplannr.com/terms/): The 4castPlannr terms in plain English: the free forecast, founder pricing, your data, forecasts as estimates, liability limits and Danish law. - [Data processing terms](https://4castplannr.com/dpa/): How 4castPlannr processes personal data in your files on your behalf: purpose, retention, security, sub-processors and transfers (GDPR article 28 and CCPA).