Currently using a spreadsheet to forecast sales by customer and sku by month for a distribution operation (I.e. no manufacturing). Also used to tie into inventory planning. Tracking units as well as sales and cost dollar amounts. ERP system is Netsuite.
Pros: very flexible and cheap. Can use formulas. Cons: not very robust, cumbersome to add new skus, customers, error prone, reporting limitations.
Requirements: as an early stage business, can't rely on historical sales. Need to be able to easily enter varying amounts by month for a seasonal business (sell thru) for each sku for each (key) customer. Need to be able to enter notes to support each layer of forecast (e.g., for a specific customer, there may be two forecasted amounts for a given sku in the same month - a regular sell thru figure and a special promotion figure).
Interested to know how others are handling this area. I found a product called Justenough, but it was way too expensive. Don't need all the bells and whistles. Just a more stable, robust solution than my current spreadsheet.
