Consolidated Forecasting

• Create your individual forecasts
• Add a group
• Add your individual entities
• View or edit the exchange rates
• Working in Customise Data
• Updating the consolidation - the Sync option
  
  

Create your individual forecasts

A consolidated forecast brings together the information from individual forecasts you've created, so before you begin, ensure you've set up all of the individual forecasts you need.

Add a group

1. From the main Spotlight Forecasting screen, click the + Add button then select New Group. This creates the consolidation and opens to the Manage Group tab.

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2. In the Group Name box, enter the name you want to use for the consolidation. This will appear on the final report.
3. From the Currency for Group Forecast drop-down list, choose the currency you want to use for the group report.Note: Values from entities which use a different currency will be automatically converted using the exchange rate options.
4. From the Forecast From and Forecast To options, select the date range you want to use for your forecast.
   
   Note: You can choose a date range spanning up to five years.
   
   
5. From the Show Actuals in Forecast until Period End option, select the month to which you want to show actuals in your report. Actuals values will be shown up to and including this month, with budget/forecast values appearing beyond this date.
6. Once you've made your changes, click Save.
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Add your individual entities

Next, you need to add the entities you want to use in the consolidation.

1. Click the Add organisation to group button, then from the drop-down list that appears, choose the organisation you want to add.
2. From the Task drop-down list, choose the forecast task which contains the values you want to use in your consolidation.
3. In the Forecast Date Range column, to ensure that values are available for the organisation throughout the date range of your consolidation, ensure that the date range shown covers the full date range that you entered earlier.
   
   

Once you've added the individual entities, you can proceed to the Customise Data and Customise Layout tabs to view the data for the consolidation and set up the pages for your report.
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View or edit the exchange rates

If your consolidation uses more than one currency, you can view and change the exchange rate used to convert to the currency of the group report. There are two ways to do this:

From the Manage Group option

When working in the Manage Group window, in the Base Currency column click the abbreviation for any currency. This opens the Foreign Exchange options. You can return to the Manage Group option at any time by clicking the Manage Group button.

From the group settings

From the main Spotlight Forecasting screen, click the three dots next to the name of the consolidation, then select Settings. From there please click the Foreign Exchange tab.

Amending the exchange rates

By default, the consolidation uses exchange rates from XE.com, however you can amend these if needed. Further information about this is available in our Exchange Rate Settings article.
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Working in Customise Data

When you access the Customise Data tab for your consolidated forecast, similarly to an individual forecast the data appears over three tabs - Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet and Cashflow Forecast.

In the Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet tabs, you can drill into each section to view the accounts. If an account has values for more than one entity, you can also click the plus sign to the left of the account name to drill into the values for the individual entities.

Note: The Cashflow Forecast tab does not display entity-level data.

As the values come from the individual forecasts, the cells in the data grid are locked - if you need to make any changes, return to the individual forecast and make the change there, then use the Sync option in the Manage Group tab to sync the updated data to your consolidation.

If required, you can click the Show details link to view the read-only report code and view or edit the group Spotlight Display Name for the accounts.
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Updating the consolidation - the Sync option

When you add the individual entities to the consolidation, the data from each of the forecasts is copied into the consolidated forecast. If further changes are made to the individual forecasts, these do not automatically copy across. To update your consolidated forecast with the changes made, in the Manage Group tab click the Sync button alongside the relevant entity.