OrionCastOrionCast is a sales forecasting platform that turns predictions into clear, actionable guidance on what to order and when, blending AI with real-time market signals for maximum precision.
FAQ
Get answers before you dive in
OrionCast is built for inventory-intensive companies. Operations, supply chain, revenue, and merchandising teams can run it without any technical background.
Absolutely not—no data science team required. OrionCast automates data preparation, model selection, and validation so any business user can run forecasts end-to-end.
Our models are benchmarked against millions of time series and tuned specifically for sales forecasting, using ensembles to select the optimal approach for your data.
Once your data is prepared and uploaded, running a forecast takes less than a minute, so you can act on insights almost immediately.
Yes, that is one of the core features. OrionCast calculates not only how much you are likely to sell, but also when you need to place a new order. We account for your lead times and desired safety stock to provide concrete purchasing recommendations that reduce the risk of stockouts.
Yes. OrionCast gives you control over important planning inputs such as lead times, safety stock, current stock, and related inventory settings, so recommendations can reflect how your business actually operates.
Reorder recommendations are based on forecasted demand together with the inventory rules you set, such as lead time, safety stock, current stock, and capacity constraints. The goal is to suggest when and how much to order before you risk running out.
That depends on how much historical data you have and how stable your demand patterns are. In general, longer and cleaner history supports a longer forecast horizon, while shorter or noisier history is better for near-term planning.
The integration is seamless and requires no coding. By connecting your Shopify store through our app, OrionCast gets read access to your sales history and inventory levels. We use a secure API to automatically fetch the data needed to generate your forecasts.
We primarily sync three types of data:
- Product information: SKU details, titles, variants, and prices.
- Order history: Historical daily sales to understand trends and seasonality.
- Inventory levels: Current stock on hand so we can calculate when it is time to reorder.
No, you do not need Shopify. While our Shopify connection is the fastest way to get started, we also support manual uploads. This is ideal if you use another ERP or want to include data that is not available in your online store.
By default, your data is synced once per day to ensure your forecasts are based on fresh sales statistics. When needed, you can also trigger a manual update directly in the dashboard.
Yes, absolutely. OrionCast is built for item-level precision. You can view specific forecasts for each individual SKU, helping you identify exactly which variants, such as size or colour, are driving sales.
For manual uploads, we primarily support CSV and Excel (.xlsx). We also provide templates in the tool to make sure your data is mapped correctly, such as date formats and SKU columns.
Once your data is uploaded, our AI model analyses the history to find patterns. Shortly afterwards, usually within just a few minutes depending on data volume, your finished sales forecasts and inventory recommendations appear in the dashboard.
Yes. Shopify is one fast way to get started, but OrionCast can also work with data from other systems through manual uploads. That makes it a good fit if you use another ERP, POS, or e-commerce platform.
The exact structure can vary by use case, but a manual upload typically needs a few core fields:
- Date: when the sale, stock snapshot, or transaction happened.
- SKU or product identifier: so OrionCast can match data to the right item.
- Quantity or sales value: the metric used for forecasting.
Depending on your setup, extra columns such as variant, warehouse, or current stock can also be useful. We provide templates to make formatting easier.
Yes. Having a few dozen historical data points is ideal. As a rule of thumb, you can forecast roughly one third of the length of your history—for example, nine months of sales lets you predict the next three.
Your historical sales data is encrypted in transit and at rest, stored in secure EU data centres, and handled in full compliance with GDPR.
Access is limited to authorized users. Within your workspace, only the teammates you invite or grant access to can view relevant data, and internal access is restricted to what is required for support, operations, and security.
You can upload spreadsheets (Excel) or CSV files directly in the app. If you need another file format, reach out through the contact page and we'll evaluate it together.
Yes, OrionCast is built for collaboration. You can invite team members to your account so buyers, inventory managers, and leadership can work from the same numbers.
For most teams, onboarding is fast. If you connect Shopify, you can usually get started the same day. With manual uploads, timing depends on how ready your data is, but most customers are up and running quickly.
Yes. OrionCast is built so you can work with forecasts and recommendations inside the platform and export the outputs when you need to share, review, or use them in other workflows.