Budgeting and forecasting are a large part of a company’s ability to set KPIs, short and long term goals and make informed decisions.
The budget is essentially a roadmap for where a company wants to go, the expenses they’ll incur and revenue they’ll earn. Cash flow, goals, forecasts and the company’s current financial position are used to determine budgets. While goals are an important part of budget setting and progress, they aren’t always met due to fluctuations in the market and unforeseeable events or reallocations.
The forecast indicates where a business is actually headed through an analysis of historical data and past results.
How do the two work together? Forecasts are what companies use to determine how they should allocate their budgets. Forecasts are agile and change regularly when there are operational, market, inventory, or business plan changes so that executives can take action. In addition to this, the ability to have forecasts and budgets connected by a single source in a solutions that automatically updates data in real-time is imperative for the agility of companies in a today’s competitive and variable business landscape.