
In Excel 2016 Microsoft has made it much easier to forecast. Excel also has all the options and functions to measure the accuracy of our forecast to make it possible to continuously develop our forecast model to get a very precise forecast.The Scenario Manager and the Goal Seek tools can be a great help to get a accurate forecast.The Analysis Toolpak provide us with Exponential Smoothing, Moving Average and Regression which are all tools we need for creating the right forecast model.the Solver tool in Excel can be a huge help if you want to forecast seasonal data.If you work with exponential data you can use the Growth function to forecast and an exponential trends can also be visualized in a Excel chart.The Forecast function can forecast any number of periods into the future. For forecasting of linear data you can use the Forecast function.The Trend function will only return a accurate result if you work with linear data. You can calculate the accuracy of the trend or Excel can provide you with this information in a chart. For trend analysis you can use the Trend function and to visualize and calculate trends, Excel charts can show trends and the equation for the trend.Some of the useful forecasting tools in Excel are: to create a budget you need to forecast.Įxcel offer a lot of tools to do accurate forecasts based on historical data and analysis tools as the What If Analysis tools to help predict the future. It doesn’t really matter if it is sales figures, expenses, man-hours, growth, market shares etc. In all businesses where data are collected and employees make use of the data the capability to forecast may be required. Good forecasts capture the authentic patterns and relationships which exist in the historical data, but do not replicate events from the past that will not happen again. Learn more about Excel training spreadsheet.Ī key step in forecasting is knowing if something can be forecast accurately, or if it is better just tossing a coin. Whatever the situations or time horizons involved, accurate forecasts are vital part of preparation and planning. Forecasts can be needed months or years in advance, or only a few minutes beforehand. The future electricity needs forecast vital to planning building more power stations scheduling employees in a call centre next week requires forecasts of call volume just imaging how much forecasting the planners behind London 2012 Olympic Games must have done. Forecasting is important in many circumstances to be able to do effective and efficient planning.
