Sales Forecasts - Overview
The Sales Forecasts module will allow authorized users to enter forecast data for Sales, Guests, and possibly Checks for each week throughout the year. Forecasted values can be entered for each day within a week, and forecasts can be copied from one week to one or more other weeks. When entering forecast values for a particular week, the application will provide various data to assist in this forecasting, such as budgeted sales values for the week, projected forecasts, and actual data from the previous week.
Managing Sales Forecasts
- From the Sales menu, click Manage Sales Forecasts. The summary screen will display a row for each Week Ending Date.
- In the Week Ending column, click on the desired week ending date to open the Sales Forecast detail screen.
- For each day of the week, a summary of the day's Weather data will be displayed at the top of the column. This will help managers decide what each day's forecasts should be.
- For each day of the week, the values for Total Forecasted Sales, Total Forecasted Guests, and Total Forecasted Checks (if visible) will be pre-populated.
- Click one of the Update [...] command buttons to populate these fields for each day of the week with the corresponding Reference Data values. (See "Sales Forecasting Reference Data" for details on which fields have these buttons).
- Scale the Forecasted values up or down. Simply check the box in the header of one or more columns (or check the "Week Ending" column to select all), enter a value in the field, then click Scale Values by. For example, to forecast a 10% increase, scale the amounts by 110%.
- You may choose to enter your forecasts in Hourly or 15 Minute increments.
- In the Daypart Forecast section, users can also click the [>] (Expand) control and enter the Forecasted Sales By Daypart, Forecasted Guests By Daypart, and Forecasted Checks By Daypart for each day of the week. For each day, the sum of these fields for each day will be displayed as the "Calculated Forecasted Daypart Sales/Guests/Checks". These values should equal the Total Forecasted values for that day; any discrepancy will appear as the "Difference".
- If the Total Forecasted Sales/Guests/Checks fields were edited manually, you may modify the Daypart forecast values by clicking the “Redistribute Forecasted Totals by Daypart” button.
- You may enter Forecasts by Daypart & Revenue Center.
- You may also choose to "Apply Daypart/Revenue Center Forecast Values". This will update Daypart/Revenue Center forecast data for the entire week all at once using the forecast values from the summary screen, which are derived from the "Default Based On" setting in the Suggested Order Setup screen.
- To download and print a copy of the forecast data, click the Printer (Export) icon.
- When all desired values have been entered:
- Click Save and Copy to save the changes to one or more other periods OR
- Click the Disk (Save) icon to save the changes and return to the summary screen.
- When finished, click the X (Close) icon to return to the summary screen.