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Create forecast

Forecasts combine your plan data with your latest actual results to show where your business is heading.

Difference between plans and forecasts

  • Plans: What your business sets out to achieve in a defined fiscal period.

  • Forecasts: What you can expect to achieve based on actual performance and up-to-date assumptions.

How do forecasts work in Sage Planning?

You create a forecast as a version of an existing plan. The forecast inherits the plan’s scope, structure, and data without changing the original plan. You can then add actuals from completed periods, and finally you update future periods as needed.

This approach keeps your working plan as a baseline, while your latest results help you identify risks, adjust priorities, and support decisions about how best to allocate your resources.

Create a forecast

Start

  1. Open the plan that you want to use as the basis for the forecast.

  2. From Actions, select Manage versions > Create a version.

  3. Enter a logical Name that identifies the forecast.

  4. (Optional) Enter a Description that explains the forecast period, update cycle, or purpose.

  5. Select the Add actuals checkbox.

  6. In the To field, select the last time period for which you want to include actuals.

  7. To remain in the current plan, clear the Open plan when done checkbox. By default, the new forecast opens after you create it.

  8. Select Create.

You can now update future periods with your latest assumptions and expectations.

It is April, and your approved plan contains the targets for the full financial year. You now have actual results for January through March.

Revenue is below plan, but a new sales initiative is expected to improve performance during the second half of the year. You also expect higher recruitment costs because several planned hires will start earlier than expected.

You create a forecast from the approved plan and add actuals through March. You then update the remaining periods to reflect the revised revenue and headcount assumptions.

The forecast gives leadership a current view of expected year-end performance. They can compare it with the approved plan and decide whether to adjust hiring, spending, or investment priorities.

Refresh actuals

Sometimes, previous transactions from Sage Intacct get updated, which can make your forecasts become outdated. The solution to this in Planning is to refresh actuals.

Refreshing actuals retrieves all corrections and updates made in Intacct after you created the forecast. All plan lines in the forecast and in other versions where the same plan lines and actuals appear are updated too. You can refresh actuals even if the forecast is locked.

The only way to modify actuals in a plan is to refresh actuals.

Start

  1. Open a plan or forecast.

  2. From Actions, select Manage versions.

  3. In the Manage versions window, select Refresh actuals.

  4. Select the time periods with actuals that you want to refresh, or select Select all.

  5. Select Refresh.

    Actuals refresh across all plans and versions where they appear.

A success or failure message appears in Notifications.

Maria maintains the company’s quarterly forecasts. The Q1 forecast contains actuals for January through March. The Q2 forecast contains actuals for January through June.

After values are corrected in Intacct, Maria opens the Q2 forecast and refreshes actuals for January through June.

Planning applies the following updates:

  • In the Q2 forecast, the actuals refresh from January through June.

  • In the Q1 forecast, the actuals in the same plan lines refresh from January through March. All other values remain unchanged.

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