Cash Flow Forecasting
What is forecasting?
Businesses need to understand and predict what the future holds for them so
that they can make important decisions about their finances. The best way to do
this is to produce cash flow and financial forecasts.
Traditionally businesses have used spreadsheets or undertaken complicated
manual calculations.
Now Sage has the solution, linking your software with Sage forecasting to
create efficient and error free plans for the next 36 months.
What does it mean for your business?
Most businesses have to write business plans and produce other documentation
for themselves, banks and other financial institutions. Forecasting is a crucial
element to any business plan and most cover the next three years. These
forecasts are often key to organisations like banks when they make loan or
overdraft decisions.
Sage Forecasting is an easy to use, yet powerful package that enables you to
quickly and confidently produce cash flow and financial forecasts for the next
36 months from the start of the current financial year. This allows you to
analyse any discrepancies, to take any necessary action and to present a
complete business plan to your bank or other relevant organisation.
Why spreadsheets are inadequate!
Until now, forecasting is a task that has been commonly done with
spreadsheets, requiring you to re-key information that you already hold
elsewhere and then double check to make sure that all of your calculations are
correct. With a task as seemingly difficult as forecasting this can be a
daunting prospect. Research has shown that 90% of all spreadsheets contain
serious calculation errors and this naturally affects the reliability of your
forecasts and business plans.
Sage Forecasting takes the data already held in your accounting system and
produces accurate forecasts for the next three years saving you valuable time,
expense and costly mistakes. Once created, Sage Forecasting also allows you to
adjust the forecast to take into consideration other financial factors such as
price increases and inflation, or produce "What If" scenarios to see
the effect of any changes such as taking on staff, buying more equipment etc.
The solution from Sage
Sage Forecasting has been designed to ensure that you have access to all the
facts, figures and financial data you will need to remain in control of your
business and to make informed decisions about future plans. What's more you can
produce your cash flow and financial forecasts in a fraction of the time it
takes using spreadsheets or manual systems.
With Sage Forecasting you'll find that budgeting and planning is a simple and
straightforward year-round discipline rather than an annual task. In addition,
because Sage Forecasting links directly with Sage Line 50 for Windows and Sage
Instant Accounting, before any data is exported from your accounting package
into Sage Forecasting, the Forecast Generator will check and confirm that all
selections are correct and that the balance sheet actually balances.
| 
