Let’s say we could see the future for our client, they want to retire but need to know their business is going to give them the retirement they want. In this case, it would be nice to have a crystal ball, wouldn’t it?

That’s where Spotlight Forecasting comes in (not quite a crystal ball, but still), our all-in-one budget creator, three-way forecasting, and scenario builder can help your clients prepare and plan for the future.

Our product is extensively customisable, and as you peel the layers back you’ll unlock a whole new level of insight. So whether you’re looking to impress your clients with insightful data, or want to dive deeper into your forecasting experience, we’ve put together five features for you to explore, test, and use. A few of these features will change the way you work, and some, well we just want to show off…

1. Driver Based Forecasting

You can set up drivers to enter business inputs which drive your forecasts.  For example, you might want to budget for a specific number of units sold at a particular price. With the Drivers option, you can create additional accounts to hold this information and then use them in a dynamic rule to calculate the values for the account. By updating the underlying drivers, you can quickly see how changes – for example, a price increase next year – affect your forecast.

2. Cloning/Duplicating/Copying Tasks

Once you've set up a forecast or budget, you can make a copy if needed. For example, you may want to take an existing forecast and amend it to show a different potential outcome for the business, such as increased revenue or costs, or a possible loan or asset purchase.

3. Optimise Loan Repayments

Does your client already have a business loan? What your clients might not know is that an existing loan they secured in the past could be relatively expensive in the present. This is an opportunity for you to work through different loan scenarios to improve the impact on your client’s cash flow. In Spotlight Forecasting, you can use Scenarios and the Loan Amortisation Rule to easily show the impact of selecting different loan variables.

4. Forecast Bank Covenants

This is one of our lesser-known expert features: KPIs and Covenants. You can quickly surface loan covenants in one place to help monitor metrics and assist with decision-making. So, how would you use this? Let’s look at an example:

Debt to Equity Ratio and Interest Coverage Ratio are two metrics that businesses need to monitor. Using the drag-and-drop formula builder in Spotlight Forecasting, you can quickly create these ratios and produce a ready-to-share report for your client or Board. A glance at the covenants will show all actual and forecasted values for the specified period. You’ll see how the business in question is tracking against these covenants, and the projected position based on forecast data.

5. Consolidated Forecasting

Consolidated Forecasting for up to 75 related entities. Save time and effort, and give your stakeholders the power to make confident decisions across multiple entities.

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