Contributors: Ruvisha Pillay, Bill Tonetti

With Pivot Forecasting, you’re in full control. You can make adjustments and view dashboards in a way that’s best suited to you and your objectives. Forecast adjustments can be made top-down and prorated to items in a group, or items (and groups of items) can be changed directly. Functions for performing mass updates are available on the Top Menu and the Tree Menu.

Functions on the Top Menu process all items in the model. So, if you want to recalculate all items in a model, you can perform this from the Top Menu.

The Tree Menu is accessed by right-clicking on the selected Tree node. The Tree Menu works in the context of the selected node, so it’s extremely versatile. If you click on the “All Items” node then right-click, it can also be used to update all items.

In this article, we will explore the most important and widely used functions for making mass updates. These include:

Copy Measure is a vital function. It’s the main way to move scenarios around within the app. It can be used to copy any forecast scenario measure into another row, including Final Forecasts, forecast archives, Saved Adjustments & Locked Forecasts, and others. For example, if you have a Synchronized Forecast that you want to retain through the next model recalculation, you can copy from Synchronized Forecast to the Saved Adjustment measure. It can also be used to copy a scenario such as the Sales Forecast into the Final Forecast measure. This is a common practice for accepting and using collaborative input.

The Finalize Forecast function works the same way as the Copy Measure function. It’s just a specific and often used example. Finalizing copies from the Synchronized Forecast to Final Forecast for all future periods.

Since Finalizing is done frequently and it’s a part of nearly every user’s routine workflow, it can also be conveniently performed by pressing the “Finalize” button at the top of the screen.

The Clear Measure function can be used to remove Promotions, Adjusted History, Saved Adjustments, Locked Forecasts, and other measures.

If you previously entered Saved Adjustments measure, and later decide to clear them and revert to the previous plan, you can use the Clear Measure function to remove the Saved Adjustments. You can then use the Copy Measure function to copy the Final Forecast measure (or any other scenario) into the Synchronized Forecast row and you’ll be right back where you started. Or, if you want to revert to a completely unedited state, recalculate all of the items after clearing the adjustments.

“Orphaned items” are items that are no longer found in the data source, but cannot automatically be removed from the Pivot Forecasting app because they still have Final Forecasts. Pivot Forecasting will not remove an item that has a forecast, regardless of whether or not it is found in the data source (your inventory planning app). If the item needs to be removed, you can simply remove all historic and future Final Forecasts for that item. The item will then be automatically removed with the next data refresh.

There are two kinds of Demand Planning Recalculations.

Recalculate recalculates forecast and all calculated measures including financial ones. In other words, it recalculates everything.

Recalculate Finance starts with the Final Forecast and recalculates projected prices, costs, revenue and margins. It recalculates the financial measures, leaving the Synchronized Forecasts unaltered.

Pivot Forecasting gives Power Users the opportunity to choose among different statistical forecasting methods. If you’re working on an aggregate node, Visual Forecaster will enable top-down forecast changes but it won’t actually change the forecast methods for the items in the group. On an aggregate node, forecast adjustments made in the Visual Forecaster are prorated to the items in that group (when saved), leaving the forecast types unchanged

In some instances, you may decide you would like to change the forecasting methods for all of the items in a group. For example:

Perform any of these operations on groups of items by selecting “Update Forecast Parameters” from the Tree Menu.

The Tree Menu has important functions for updating groups of items. These functions support copying scenarios, clearing unwanted data values, modifying forecast parameters, and recalculating items. These are all vital power user tools and they help you to make better plans and structure a more mature sales and operations planning process.

Have you read the related articles? Check out our Pivot Forecasting collection!