Contributors Ruvisha Pillay and Bill Tonetti

In Pivot Forecasting, forecasts may be adjusted by making entries in the Adjusted Forecast, Saved Adjustment and Locked Forecast measures. Our articles “The Role of Measures in a Model” and “The Process, an Overview” provide greater insight into this.

In this article, we outline the below additional tools you can use to adjust those very forecasting measures:

Let's say you have a forecast of 30,740 units for the next 12 months, and your client wants it to be closer to 35,000 while keeping the seasonality the same. One way to achieve this is by using your calculator to determine the percentage change and then applying it to each monthly forecast. That sounds pretty tedious. Fortunately, there is an easier way!

First, click on the Synchronized Forecast row label to select the entire row. Next, click on the Copy button or press CTRL-C. Then, select the Adjusted Forecast measure to highlight the row. You then click on the Paste button. This will bring up a dialog box where you can choose Paste Total and enter 35,000 - and there you have it! Your adjustments are complete and will add up to 35,000. Now you can simply Save and Finalize to complete the process.

There are also other available paste-special operations, like “Paste Add” and “Paste Multiply”. Paste Add will add the number that you enter for each of the selected periods. Paste Multiply will multiply the copied value by the number you enter. For instance, if you want to increase all values by 10%, select Paste Multiply and enter 1.1.

Power Users love these special paste options and you can find them on almost all the "Sheet" panels.

If you're not quite sure about the sum of your copied range, you can check out the total and average of the selected range in the Info section near the top of the screen, just right of the conversion selector.

Another tool you can use to make forecast adjustments is the “Sliders” feature found in the Visual Forecaster panel. Basically, you can use these sliders to adjust your forecast to have a higher or lower level, trend, and dampening. To get started, choose an “Adjustment Basis” as your starting point, which can be any forecast scenario you like. The default will be the Calculated Forecast. Once you have your basis set, start experimenting with the sliders to shape your demand curve. Although the slider values are not stored, they are still very helpful for visually creating a series of forecasting adjustments. For example, by increasing the trend and reducing the dampening, you can see that the future forecasts are significantly higher.

Any adjustments you make using the Visual Forecaster sliders will automatically be populated into the Adjusted Forecast measure. If you want to keep the adjustments beyond the next recalculation, you can copy them into the Saved Adjustment measure. And, always remember to finalize your forecasts as you work.

You can actually make adjustments by clicking on the Linear Chart. When you click, it will pop up a dialog box where you can enter your forecast adjustments or promotional values for that period.

You can also click on historic periods in the Linear Chart. With historic periods, the dialog will allow you to enter Adjusted History or Promotions. This capability is very helpful when it comes to fixing outliers, especially in weekly models that have a lot of periods.

Say you've got a model that's at the item-location-customer level, but you want to see what the forecasts would look like if you forecasted using the Expert at an item group level. One way to achieve this would be to add the item group attribute to your hierarchy, then make a top-down adjustment for each one. If you have a lot of product groups, this could take a while.

For Power Users, there's an option to create a Top Down Forecast for all items in a model. Once you've selected the "Top Down Forecast" option from the Top Menu, the system will ask for the "Attribute" and the "To Measure". For this example, the system will automatically make expert forecasts for all Item Categories, then put the prorated results into a reference measure called "Top Down Category". As usual, the prorations will use each item's Synchronized Forecast to determine the allocations.

You can also import forecasts in mass by using the "Import Forecast Spreadsheet" feature that comes with the "Spreadsheet Collaboration" license option.

First, export a Forecast Spreadsheet. In the example, we have picked out the node for a single salesperson. Next, you will be prompted to select the exported forecast measure and attributes. The data will automatically be summed to the level of the selected attributes. You will then get another prompt to download the file.

It's always a good idea to include the attributes that are on your current Tree to ensure that everything will match up properly when you re-import them. For example, if you didn’t include account manager in this forecast spreadsheet, then the forecast would be spread over all account managers’ customers and not just Clint’s.

Forecast Spreadsheets have a macro in them to support the great graphics and special features. You will need to allow the macros in the workbook upon opening it. However, if you don't enable them, you can still use the spreadsheet - just without the automatic charts.

You can share forecast spreadsheets with other collaborators to review, adjust and make notes. Once they send them back to you, you can re-import the changed values. If any notes were made, you will be able to see them in the Notes Panel. If you don't have the license option, you can still export the spreadsheets but you will not be able to re-import them.

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

There are many ways you can adjust your forecasts, history and promotions using Pivot Forecasting. It's all about having an efficient and powerful tool to help you make better plans with Netstock!