Before starting, here are some tips to keep in mind:
Tip #1 Make sure you change the status of the Budget version to “Complete,” so you don’t accidentally make any changes to the wrong version. This should be done in Model Manager.
Tip #2 Plan which accounts/cubes need to be forecasted. You may not want all your cubes/account values to be changed for forecast purposes.
Tip #3 You can have a different rule set for budget vs. forecast accounts. For example, you can have a formula for a tax calculation in budget version, but the same account could be a direct data-entry for forecast version. More information on how to create different rule sets can be found here in our help files. This is also shown in the recorded webinar above.
Create a new Version in Model Manager. Make sure you select the Start/End date for which you want to forecast and perform data entry. For example, if you want January-March Actuals and April-December as forecasting months, the start date should be April and End date should be December.
Once you create the new Version, an important property is Carry forward from. This defines where the data prior to April will “auto” populate from. In this example, the data will be carried forward from Actuals up until the start date in April.
Save and Publish the cube.
Detailed next steps for tasks like how to pre-populate forecast months with original budget as a starting point, initiating workflow and other tips please view the Creating a Rolling Forecast webinar.
We have been using Prophix for budgets & forecasts for a while now. I never thought to have a different rule set for forecasted accounts. This will come in handy!
These tips are so helpful! I am just looking at getting budget information into my new cubes against actuals and the rolling forecasts will be next. Just knowing what concepts are possible is so helpful at this stage when we are planning our next developmental moves so we can look into these steps when they become relevant, thank you
