Sales Forecasts are a way of predicting your future sales based on historical sales patterns, bookings, weather and other factors which may affect your business. Forecasting sales each week also allows you to better plan and manage your labour.
Your forecasts will be entered into Polaris Data prior to the week commencing (i.e. if you're current week of trading is Week 15 of your Financial Year, you will enter your forecasts for Week 16 prior to completion of Week 15.
Once a forecasted week becomes your 'active' trading week - the forecasts will be locked (unless you have the necessary privileges to edit locked forecasts (see below).
On the forecasting screen there an option of a quick entry buttons to help speed up and aid the forecasting of your sales from week-to-week. There are 3 button options; Budget, Last Year and Last 8 weeks.
Budget: Populates the figures as per the budget that's present on Polaris for your site.
Last Year: Populates the forecasts figure for this week from the same week from the previous year.
Last 8 Weeks: Uses the average daily sales from the last 8 confirmed weeks.
Use these alongside the information you have to assist you in accurately forecasting your sales.
If you prefer, you can simply enter the daily sales totals (always NET of VAT), and Polaris Data will do the rest! The sales split between your major revenue streams will be automatically calculated based on the average daily sales of each revenue stream, over the last 8 weeks.
(This can be manually adjusted to reflect differently should it be required)
Once all Forecasts have been entered, ensure you click the SAVE button at the top of the page, to make sure your Forecasts are saved.
**The more accurate your sales forecasts, the better you can manage your labour requirements.**
(Optional Feature)
Unlocked Forecasts:
There is an optional feature that allows you to adjust forecasts once the week is active, should this be required. Forecasts will lock for 'tomorrow' but you'll still be able to edit the rest of the week.
For example, when you close the daily input for Mon 1st February the forecast is still editable for Wed 3rd February, but when Tuesday's Daily Input is opened, Wednesday's forecast will lock permanently.
As you can see in the picture above Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are locked out, this means that Monday's Daily Input has been closed and Tuesday's is open.
After you edit any forecasts, please make sure you press SAVE, to keep those amendments.