Your MarginEdge Sales Forecast not only helps your team plan ahead, it also feeds directly into your budgets.
In order to get an accurate view of what your projected budget is for the period, you’ll want to make sure you’re taking steps to adjust your sales forecast for any atypical situations.
Here are some tips to make sure your forecast is as accurate as possible.
- Account for spikes or dips in sales
- Input ad hoc (and recurring) closures
- Filter by category type
- Bonus tip: Adding notes
- Are you missing historical sales data?
Account for spikes or dips in sales
Is there a big concert happening nearby and you expect to see increased sales this weekend? Or is construction happening in front of your restaurant, likely leading to decreased foot traffic and therefore less sales?
Account for these events in your forecast by manually adjusting sales in your day forecast.
Here's how: Click on the day, click to "Edit Forecast" then adjust the sales as needed. Click "Save" when finished!
Input ad hoc (and recurring) closures
If you need to close your restaurant on a day you’re not typically closed (for weather, family matters, etc) you’ll want to mark that so there’s no forecast generated that day.
Here's how: Click on the day and then toggle the slider to "Closed" instead of "Open".
And if you’re closed certain days every week, you’ll want to update that in your settings.
Here's how: Click on "More Options" at the top and "Adjust Forecast Setup".
Knowing which days you’re operating will make the forecast even more accurate.
Filter by category type
If you have category budgets set up, you’ll want to make sure your forecast is set up correctly by categories as well.
Use the filter to view food, liquor, retail, and other category forecast, and make any necessary adjustments.
Bonus tip: Adding notes
Add notes when you adjust the forecast so everyone knows why there’s been a change. Plus, you’ll be able to refer back to it to know why the forecast was higher or lower than usual.
Here's how: Click on the day to open and click in the box to "Add a Note".
What if I don't have enough historical sales data?
The model relies heavily on your historical data to make its predictions. However, we know that sometimes a certain POS may not provide that, or you may have switched POS systems.
To get you caught up, you can manually add in the data, and it works best when the historical data is organized the same way your POS will send data going forward. A common mismatch that hurts accuracy is when sales history is uploaded as one lump total, but your POS breaks sales out by category.
Uploading historical data with the same categories that will sync from your POS will significantly help sales forecasting accuracy! While this can't be done as a bulk upload, you can make manual sales entries in MarginEdge. Learn more here.