Periodic Forecasting Single Dialogs Workspace

Use this workspace to create periodic forecasts for your jobs and opportunities by distributing the budgeted revenue and costs across periods.

Regular job budgets do not provide information that indicates the time at which a budgeted task of, for example, 400 hours of consulting can be entered as costs or invoiced. By creating periodic forecasts in this workspace, you can analyze the expected distribution of revenue and costs. By combining forecasts for current jobs with forecasts for jobs in your pipeline or general expectations that are not attached to any specific jobs or sales cases, you are provided with a complete and clear picture of project cash flow and periodic fluctuations in terms of both finances and workload.

This workspace is only available if you have installed add-on 123: Portal Forecasting.

The Periodic Forecasting tab shows general information about a job and the budget totals from the job budget. The Totals island shows how the revenue and costs are budgeted in terms of hours and amounts, and also indicates the resulting gross margin. This island also shows the corresponding figures according to the periodic forecast entered in the Periodic Forecast Lines sub-tab. The deviations between the budgeted and forecasted figures are also displayed. Maconomy retrieves the budget totals from the budget type selected in the Show Budget field. This budget type is also assigned to the periodic forecast created in the Periodic Forecast Lines sub-tab, enabling you to create periodic forecasts for multiple budget types.

Use the Periodic Forecast Lines sub-tab to distribute the expected costs and number of hours across periods for different types of activities. In the Show Budget Figures island in the Periodic Forecasting tab, enter the starting month for which you want to distribute figures. The Periodic Forecast Lines sub-tab then displays a column for this month and the eleven following months, allowing you to enter costs, revenue, and hours for these months. You can only enter forecasting data for jobs where information such as country, currency, and company tax code is specified.

Note: To edit job budgets and periodic forecasts, users must have access granted via the Can Change Job Budget field in the Actions workspace in the Set-Up module.

Periodic Forecast Lines Sub-Tab Structure

The Periodic Forecast Lines sub-tab displays forecast information in a hierarchical structure, allowing you to forecast at multiple detail levels. At the top level, this sub-tab is divided into five sections: Revenue, Cost, Hours, GM, and GM%.

The Revenue and Cost Sections

The header lines for the Revenue and Cost sections contain a number of sublines to enter forecast data for the individual periods. The section header lines display the totals from the associated sub-lines.

Time, Outlay, and Amount Totals

The Revenue and Cost sections both contain these subtotal lines:

• Time — Use to specify the revenue or cost expected for time activities in each period.
• Outlay — Use to specify the revenue expected for outlay activities
• Amount — Use to specify the revenue expected for amount activities.

These subtotal lines can contain sublines of their own, which include more detailed specification of the forecast as well as the sum of data entered on their sublines.

Each of the Time, Outlay, and Amount lines in the Revenue and Cost sections always contains a Default subline. Enter figures on a Default line in the same way as on all other sublines; these figures are then included in the total calculated on the Time, Outlay, or Amount line to which the Default line belongs. However, when you enter a figure directly on a Time, Outlay, or Amount subtotal line, Maconomy changes the Default line accordingly. This means that if you enter a figure on the Time subtotal line, increasing its value by 50, Maconomy increases the value on the Default line by 50. This ensures that figures on the sublines add up to the value on the Time subtotal line. The Default Line field in the Periodic Forecast Lines sub-tab always indicates which line in each section is the default line.

The following figure shows an excerpt of the Revenue section of the sub-tab:

	Jan	Feb
Revenue	4250	5800
Amount	1250
Default	1000
External	250
Time	3000	5800
Default	3000	5800

The Revenue header sums the Amount and Time subtotals (the Outlay subtotal is not included in the example). The Amount subtotal sums the values on its two sublines, Default and External, and the Time subtotal sums the values on its one subline, Default.

If you update the values on the two sublines under the Amount subtotal, the Amount subtotal and the Revenue header total reflect this change.

	Jan	Feb
Revenue	4450	5800
Amount	1450
Default	1200
External	250
Time	3000	5800
Default	3000	5800

If you change the value directly on the Amount subtotal line, Maconomy adjusts the Default line accordingly. In this case, you write up the Amount total by 100, causing the value on the Default line to also be increased by 100. The Revenue header total immediately reflects this change.

	Jan	Feb
Revenue	4800	5800
Amount	1550
Default	1300
External	250
Time	3000	5800
Default	3000	5800

Add extra lines for more detail in a forecast. Add extra lines at the lowest level or at the same level as the Default lines. Values that you enter on a manually added line are included in the subtotal as well as the totals calculated on higher levels.

The Hours Section

The header line Hours always contains the subline Default. Use this subline to enter the number of expected hours for a job within each period. The link between the Hours subtotal line and the Default line is the same as described for the Revenue and Cost sections.

You can either enter hours to indicate the resource requirements within each period, or as a means of calculating costs and revenue for time activities. If you do not select the Revenue and Cost from Hours field, you can only enter hours in the Hours section as additional information, and they will not affect the rest of the forecast.

However, if you select the Revenue and Cost from Hours field in the Periodic Forecasting tab, Maconomy automatically calculattes cost and revenue for time activities based on the number of hours that you enter and the cost and billing prices on the selected job budget.

Employee Category Prices

On manually created lines in the Hours section, you can enter an employee category. Select the Revenue and Cost from Hours field so that Maconomy calculates the revenue and cost using the employee category prices, allowing for a more accurate calculation.

The GM and GM% Sections

The Gross Margin and GM% header lines display the gross margin and gross ratio calculated from the figures on the Revenue and Cost header lines. You cannot manually change the values on these header lines or add new header lines.

If you need to shift an entire forecast to new periods because of a delayed project start, for example, enter a new starting period in the Reallocate Budget island and use the Reallocate action. This updates the values for all periods.