2. Forecasting tool
There are many methods of forecasting sales
This can be a small handy tool for you to forecast
sales using trendlines in excel
Download excel by clicking the link here!
or , access @downloads on my blog LCDing
3. How to use the tool ?
First read “Readme” sheet in excel. If it makes sense
, try it!
What you need is at least 2-3 years of monthly data
to forecast – the more the merrier!
Follow 3 simple steps
4. Step 1
Just input first month of the past
sales data you have in the format
mmm-yyyy in the cell E10
e.g: January 2006 as Jan-2006
Rest of the months‟ names are
automatically generated
5. Step 2
First delete dummy data
given in the worksheet in
column F from F10 to F81
Now,input sales from cell
F10 …till the present month
(maximum of 180 Months)
As the number of cells in the
column taken for
computations are 192, some
cells in the column may be
found empty. Leave them as
it is…
One Last step to read the
forecast of sales!
7. Caution !
Forecasting works on a principle that the future will be like
present ( Similar conditions may prevail ! )
The hope is that near future is not going to be radically
different! ( However, who can predict economic meltdowns and Tsunamis ? )
It is idiocy to forecast sales of next 5 Years when you are not
sure about the present month sales.
Forecasts of distant months (more than 12 Months) could go
grossly wrong.
Despite all, you may find the tool useful !!!
8. The „How‟ of this tool ..
Best fit Trendline and
seasonal indexing is
used for forecasts.
Test the strength of other
trendlines using the
dropdown option here.
Seasonal Variations are
automatically
computed to give “Final
Forecast with Seasonal
Trend”
9. This is Group &
Ungroup button
If want to check How data is getting
populated - click the grouping button
“+”
10. This is where the computations are done for various trendlines
11. Here are the formulae at the bottom of the sheet