The goal is to strain out micro deviations from a sample time range so you can uncover longer-term trends that may potentially impact future results. Essentially, it is the average of any subset of numbers. Moving averagesĪ moving averages method smooths out trends, such as a time series, within your data.
While there are many sales forecasting methods you can do in Google Sheets, let’s focus on three of the most commonly used quantitative forecasting methods using spreadsheets. Forecasting Methods and Forecasting in Google Sheets Google Sheets is easy-to-use, and you can visualize your sales forecasting data with ease using the app’s charts and customization features. This allows you to perform a sales forecast even if your data comes from other sources and use the spreadsheet app’s built-in forecasting formulas and tools.
You can also connect Google Sheets to external databases or import files. Google Sheets offers features that allow you to store, organize, calculate, and visualize data (among other things), and it includes several tools for forecasting. This makes it crucial to verify your sales forecast before deciding and acting. While forecasting can give you invaluable information and insights, it doesn’t exactly tell you the future or the definitive method to carry out actions and strategies.Īt most, it provides you with the probabilities, giving you ideas on the best course of action. This allows you to understand your sales operations better, from adjusting your budgets to anticipating future sales and expenses. Sales forecasting uses historical data and specific assumptions to identify trends that you can project into the future. Sales forecasts are anticipated measures of how prospects and customers will respond to your company’s go-to-market initiatives. We are going to focus on the data side of the equation in this article. Sales forecasting refers to the process of predicting your future revenue by using a combination of data, experience, and gut. In this guide, we’ll dive into what sales forecasting is, the different forecasting methods, how you can build a sales forecast in Google Sheets, and how exponential smoothing can be ‘exponentially’ better (see what I did right there?) What is Sales Forecasting?
This produces “smoothed data,” making trends and patterns more visible. The exponential smoothing model allows you to analyze data from specific periods of time by focusing less on older data and more on the latest data. This is where it helps to use exponential smoothing when building a sales forecast in Google Sheets. However, sales can fluctuate due to various trends, seasonality, and other factors, making accurate forecasting challenging. If you want to predict a sales forecast effectively, you need to use your historical data to build reliable and comprehensive forecasting models.