Apparel planning templates
that work together.
Three structured templates — MFP, OTB, and Assortment — designed to flow from one to the next. Better than blank spreadsheets. A clear starting point before moving to a connected system.
One planning flow, three templates
Most teams use these in isolation and wonder why the numbers never reconcile. Used in sequence, they create a coherent financial spine for the season.
Merchandise Financial Plan
Sets the financial guardrails — sales, margin, receipts, turns.
Open-to-Buy
Tracks receipt execution against the MFP budget by period.
Assortment Plan
Translates the OTB budget into product-level buying decisions.
Download any template — free
Each template includes formula logic, data validation, sample data, and a step-by-step setup guide. No email required to download.
Merchandise Financial Plan (MFP)
Set the financial guardrails for the season — net sales, margin, receipts, and inventory turns — before a single SKU is built. The upstream plan every assortment and OTB decision flows back to.
5 worksheets
For
Open-to-Buy (OTB)
Track receipt execution against your MFP budget in real time. See exactly how much open-to-buy remains by department, month, and season — and prevent over-commitment before buy reviews.
5 worksheets
For
Assortment Plan
Translate your OTB budget into product decisions — option counts, size curves, margin targets, and channel allocation — so every buy decision has a financial rationale behind it.
5 worksheets
For
// When the Template Stops Being Enough
Templates cover the structure. They don't close the data gaps.
At some point — usually when channels multiply or SKU count passes a threshold — the reconciliation work between your OTB, assortment, and buy template consumes more time than the planning itself.
buy is a margin decision
pre-season through clearance
OTB–assortment disconnection puts imperfect data in front of every decision point, and the exposure compounds across the season calendar.
excess is the tell
of an estimated OTB
Buy plans that run on an estimated rather than a reconciled OTB overshoot, and the overshoot only becomes visible once the season has closed.
of merchant time
on non-analysis work (McKinsey, 2018)
McKinsey's 2018 survey of 30+ retailers found merchants spend about two-thirds of their time gathering data, managing exceptions, firefighting, and in syndication meetings. File consolidation and version reconciliation are our own read on where that goes in a spreadsheet operation.
Know where your planning actually stands.
Templates are most useful when you know exactly which gaps they're filling. The free Planning Maturity Assessment benchmarks your operation across 5 dimensions — infrastructure, responsiveness, alignment, data quality, and workflow — in 5–8 minutes. Results tell you which template to start with and where to go next.
Templates get you started. A connected system gets your team aligned.
These templates are structured starting points — better than a blank spreadsheet, but still three disconnected files. When your OTB, assortment, and buy plan need to update together in real time, with actuals flowing in automatically and no manual version control, that's when a connected planning platform replaces the template stack.
Ready to move beyond templates?
RetailNorthstar replaces the disconnected template stack with connected OTB, assortment, and buy planning — live in weeks.
Connected merchandise planning — live in weeks, not quarters.