Actuals vs Forecast Reports

As you grow your business you can track your progress at a detailed level against your initial Brixx projections. This is done through the primary financial statements - Cash flow, Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet for powerful variance reports. 

Comparing Actuals to your Forecast helps the strategic decision making process. It's designed to highlight what is and isn't going to plan so that you can make course corrections before it's too late. It also helps you present your progress to your team mates or investors since all comparison reports can be shared and viewed in the app.

 

See your performance

Your real data is lined up and compared against every component you made in your forecast. As each month of data comes in, you can drill into your reports down to the greatest level of detail in order to see what is having the largest impact. You'll see trends over time and which activities are performing better or worse than expected. This information is critical for making big decisions about the direction of your business.

Understanding the variance reports

These reports follow the exact same structure as the normal forecast reports. Every account is identical - there is just new, additional actual information being displayed. This can be in a duplicate row or column, depending on your choice.

This includes account, section and group totals. As you drill into each account line you will see more and more detail until you get the component level of your plan. You'll see the % variance at every level. Use the percentage variance to quickly find areas of the business that are performing better or worse than expected. 

You can also use the quarterly and yearly dropdown to roll up the months and see totals for these periods.

 

How is the percentage variance calculated?

This is calculated based on the difference between the initial forecast value and the actual value. The percentage will show a + or a - in front of it to show the actual data being either larger or smaller than the initial forecast. The value can also be red or green. Red represents a bad change for the business and green represents a good change.

How do I use it?

You enter your data on the new actuals tab which you can find inside your plan in the top menu. The variance reports are in the normal reporting area.