Simply go to the Planning screen, where the forecast is shown automatically. At the start, it is of course “empty”.
Tip: Create a forecast with Smart Planning
With Smart Planning, you can create a cash flow plan based on your past transaction data. COMMITLY guides you step by step through model selection, fine-tuning and creation of the plan. The forecast values can be reviewed and individually adjusted before the plan is created.
More on this: Using Smart Planning for planning
Since the basis for this forecast is the mapped actual transactions, it is advantageous if all transactions have already been mapped. For a first test, however, even that is not necessary.
There you can enter how much money flow you expect in the current and coming months. Just try it out.
Further information: How does the forecast work?
Clicking any number in the planning table opens the side panel:
Create your first budgets
Clicking CREATE BUDGET on the PLAN tab opens the budget dialog.
The budget dialog is divided into (A) an information area and (B) an action area.
(A) Useful information - for creating a budget
There you find a simple chart showing the development of the category over the last 6 months (L6M). It is often a good guide to which values to plan with.
In addition, the lower area shows all actual transactions assigned to the category. You can search them using the search field. Clicking the blue arrow transfers the selected transaction into the plan dialog. This saves manual entries!
(B) Create budget - the planning dialog
The value of the category for the last month and the averages of the last 3 and 6 months are shown as suggestions. Clicking USE transfers the amounts into the amount field.
The following input fields then need to be filled in:
Name: Give your budget a name. Since you can create any number of budgets, the name should be self-explanatory.
Plan (amount): The amount for this category and the month in question. NOTE: Inflows are entered as positive amounts, outflows with a negative sign!
Rule: which periods the plan amount should be applied to; various options are available (see below)
Payment on: the day on which the inflow or outflow is expected
Creating simple and recurring budgets with rules
Options for the “Rule” function:
Rule: Current month
One transaction is expected in one month, e.g. costs for preparing the annual financial statements (accounting expenses) in April -2500.Rule: Repeat until
An example would be the monthly outflows for rent. In this case, also set an end date.Repeat - Rule: Increase (or decrease) by % (or EUR)
An example would be planning advertising expenses with a monthly increase of 3% (or EUR 100) each.
A special case is DYNAMIC BUDGETS. You find details here.
By the way, one more useful little thing:
Try starting the entry in the amount field with an "=". Simple calculations can now be made in the amount field. Great, for example, for converting an annual budget to a month. (=120000/12)
