A plan you can still explain next year.
The plan usually lives in a separate Excel workbook, with its own formulas, its own account structure and links that nobody touches any more. By January, nobody knows why account 4210 shows an increase of four per cent. In ReportNow!, the plan sits in the same set of data as the actuals. A roll-forward there is built from assumptions that someone entered and that you can look up.
From actuals, from a file, from the pipeline.
You choose the method for each module. In Sales, for example, you load plan figures by customer and item from a file, while in Financials you roll the cost accounts forward from actuals. Both belong to the same plan variant.
Roll forward from actuals
In Sales you choose a base period, set growth and churn and enter different rates for individual customers or items. From these, ReportNow! calculates plan rows for every month, by customer and item. In Financials and HR you likewise start from a base period. There the plan rows are created by account and cost centre, or by person and cost type.
Load a finished plan
If you have already planned elsewhere, upload the plan file. The columns are read by their heading. Before the import, the preview shows the number of rows and the total of the existing plan rows that it would replace. If one of your columns has a different name, you map it once.
Include the pipeline
In Sales, the opportunities in the pipeline are added to the roll-forward, with amount, quantity and probability. The probability weights amount and quantity alike, so the unit price remains the one offered. A recurring contract repeats in the plan at its own interval, such as monthly or quarterly, until the end of the variant.
Six assumptions the plan is built from.
Whether a plan is any good depends on its assumptions, not on the formulas. Every assumption should have a name and still be traceable a year later.
That is why in ReportNow! you enter the assumptions, and the plan rows are calculated from them. When you change a rate, you have the plan recalculated. The assumptions stay stored with the variant.
Base period
You decide which months form the basis. The average is taken over all months in the period, including those without revenue. A customer invoiced once a year is thus spread across the plan months instead of appearing twelve times at the full amount.
The base may only contain months up to the actuals cut-off (“Actuals up to”). If it reaches further, ReportNow! rejects it, because a part-month would leave the plan too low without anyone noticing.
Volume and price growth
Volume growth raises volume and revenue, price growth only revenue. A higher price rate therefore changes the unit price, not the planned number of units.
Both are annual rates and compound. In total, the first twelve plan months exceed the base by the rate, and the next twelve exceed those by the same rate again.
Churn
The share that is lost is entered as a positive figure and always deducted. It reduces volume and revenue to the same extent, so that the number of units does not rise while revenue falls.
ReportNow! does not accept negative churn. Additional business is planned through the growth rates.
Different rates by customer, item or product group
Legacy business is winding down, the premium line is growing at double-digit rates, and for one major customer only the price is rising. For each value of a dimension you can enter separate rates for volume and price.
If a field is left empty, the variant’s rate applies. A 0, on the other hand, means “no growth”.
Phasing
You enter eleven monthly shares, and December is the remainder up to 100 %. The shares apply to calendar months: the Christmas trade falls in December whether the plan starts in January or in July.
The “From preceding actuals” button fills the fields with the pattern of the twelve months before the plan period. This is a suggestion that you can still change before saving.
Costs and payment terms
ReportNow! rolls costs forward with rates of their own: by account, account range or P&L line, either as an annual increase or as a percentage of planned revenue. For each group of the direct cash flow you can also set after how many days payment is made, such as 45 days for customer payments, 30 days for suppliers and 0 days for wages.
The narrower rule applies with all its settings. A rate for a single account takes precedence over that of its account range, and an account range over that of the P&L line. Each account is therefore governed by at most one rule, and otherwise by the variant’s general rate.
Every plan row records where it came from.
It is normal for a plan to be off the mark. It becomes difficult when, later on, nobody can say what it was based on. That is why ReportNow! stores the source of every plan row. On the Planning page of Financials, Sales and HR you see a variant broken down by source, with the number of rows and the total. Who changed what in the plan, and when, is recorded under Master data › Plan history.
ReportNow! runs the balance sheet check for a plan variant as well. If a variant plans only P&L accounts, the plan balance sheet does not balance. In Direct cash flow, the “Plan” and “Actual + plan” data series flag this and state the amount by which they are off as a result.
Rolled forward
from actuals, with the variant’s rates
Loaded
from a plan file you have uploaded
Pipeline
sales opportunities, weighted by their probability
Joiners and severance
planned positions, weighted by their probability, and severance for planned leavers
Transferred from sales planning
planned revenue, with the receipts according to credit period or payment term
Transferred from HR planning
planned payroll costs by cost type, with the payment terms for costs
Transferred from loans
interest and repayments, calculated from the contracts
Transferred from taxes
income taxes and VAT, with their payment dates
Will the money last until December?
That is the question behind most plans, and a P&L plan alone does not answer it. Between revenue and the cash coming in lie credit periods, VAT and everything that has no cash effect. In the direct cash flow report, the “Actual + plan” data series therefore starts from the bank statement.
- Bank balance from the bank statement. Up to the last imported day, “Actual + plan” shows the payments on the bank statements, and the plan after that. The plan starts on the day after the statement, even if the accounts have only been posted up to an earlier month, and carries the bank balance forward from that day. The “Plan” data series, by contrast, starts with the variant, from the cash and cash equivalents in the balance sheet.
- Part-month. If the statement ends on the 10th, the plan for that month carries only the remainder for each group: the plan figure less what has already been paid by then. At the end of the month, the result is the planned position again.
- Payment terms by group. A term can be staggered, such as 30 % after 14 days with a cash discount and 70 % after 45 days. The stages must add up to 100 %, otherwise ReportNow! does not save them. The calculation uses 30-day months: 45 days fall half into the following month and half into the month after that.
- Suggestion from receivables. How long your customers take to pay can be seen from the imported item lists. ReportNow! measures the days to pay from them, weighted by amount, and suggests a staggered term that you can apply and adjust.
Budget, forecast and the scenario the bank asks about.
Each plan variant has its own period and its own assumptions. In the report you set as many variants side by side as you need.
Copy and adjust
You copy “Budget 2027”, raise churn in the copy and have it recalculated. In the report you then set both side by side as data series. The copy is independent. Whatever you later change in the original does not affect it.
Actuals and plan are never added together
In a data series, each month shows either actuals or plan. For a forecast, choose the “Actual + plan” data series. It shows actuals up to the month set under “Actuals up to” and the plan after that, and names the month in which it switches.
A variance only where both series cover the month
If a month lies outside the period of a data series, its cell stays empty and no variance is calculated there. A budget that only starts in July therefore does not show the first half of the year as a slump to zero.
Try planning with your own figures.
In the demo we roll a year forward and set the plan next to the actuals. If you bring an export from your accounts, we import it during the demo; otherwise we use the sample company. The demo takes 30 minutes, and there is nothing you need to prepare.