Forecasts are so inconvenient

If you’ve ever put together a financial forecast for your business, you’ll understand when I say “Forecasts are so inconvenient”

They’re great whilst they relate to the future, and as soon as you start to want to track progress, they’re not.

The word ‘inconvenient’ means what we have does not suit our need or purpose.  It is not easily accessible or at hand.  We have a spreadsheet that worked to secure funding, and as a tracking tool to show progress, it fails. 

We might simply replace each column of the forecast with actuals, however, that is time-consuming and highly inconvenient, involving manual extraction of data from finance systems.  And if we want to track our progress against the underlying assumptions we have to go to other data systems and replace that data also.

As we replace the forecast with actuals we lose the benchmark of the original plan for easy comparison. 

We all have things in our homes that would help us to do a job more quickly or more easily if only we could be bothered to go and find them.  Unfortunately, they are hidden away or stored on the top shelf, and so we try to complete tasks without the right tools because accessing them is too inconvenient. 

When we had an extension, I was adamant that we incorporated convenient loft access.  I did not want to have to pull down a loft ladder, after looking around for the access pole, every time I wanted to store or retrieve something from the loft.  The loft needs to be easily accessible storage.  So, we had a fixed, space-saving staircase installed, behind ‘cupboard’ doors on the landing, which means things can easily be stored or retrieved. 

The truth is, that inconvenience is often what drives us to look for better options.

Are you struggling with an inconvenient reporting or forecasting tool?   My purposeful planning programme  helps  you to generate an operational plan that will increase valuation whilst keeping investors feeling safe, supportive and on your side.