Forecasting in Actuly, explained.
A forecast in Actuly is built line by line from the numbers you already have. This guide walks through how that works, what the special lines do, and why the balance sheet always balances.
The forecast page. Months to March are actuals, tagged in blue. April onwards is the budget, tagged in orange. Annual joins the period toggle when a version spans more than one financial year. Figures are an example company in £k.
1. Introduction to forecasting
A forecast is a set of assumptions, not a spreadsheet of numbers.
Actuly already holds your history. A forecast tells it how each line should carry on from there, and the numbers follow.
In Actuly a forecast version is a saved set of assumptions for one company over a date range. It stores very little in the way of figures. What it stores is a method for each line of the P&L and balance sheet, plus any months you have typed in yourself.
When the forecast is shown, your actuals are copied as they are and the forecast months are added on the end. One table shows history and forecast side by side, with each month tagged Actual or, for the forecast months, Budget on a budget and Forecast on the other versions, so you can always see where one stops and the other starts.
There is no opening balance sheet to key in. The first forecast month simply continues from the last month of actuals, so every opening balance is already there.
Rolling 12 Months
Always the next twelve months after your newest actuals. It moves forward on its own as each month's figures arrive, so its dates are not editable. Think of it as the "if nothing changes" view.
Budget
The plan for a year, with a start and end date you choose. You can keep several budget versions and star one to adopt it. The adopted budget is what Performance vs Plan and the budget columns in reports measure against.
Revised Forecast
A reforecast made part way through the year, as circumstances change. It works exactly like a budget, and one revised version can be adopted alongside the adopted budget.
Three ways a line gets its numbers
Every line in the forecast uses one of these. Most lines use the first and never need touching.
Let a method do it
Pick a rule such as "same month last year plus 3%" or "a percentage of sales". Every line starts with a sensible default, so a new budget shows numbers the moment you create it.
Type it in yourself
Choose Manual Entry and a grid of months appears. Type the figures, or paste a row straight from a spreadsheet. Use it for things you already know, like a rent review or a planned hire.
| Apr 2026 | May 2026 | Jun 2026 | Jul 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
32.1 | 32.1 | 32.1 | 34.0 |
Type the start, let a method finish
Choose Manual + Forecast Method. Type the first few months, click Final Manual under the last one, and a method takes over from the month after. Good when you know the next quarter but not the year.
| Apr 2026 | May 2026 | Jun 2026 | Jul 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
25.9 Final Manual | 27.5 Final Manual | 27.6 ✓ Final Manual |
Forecasting a line that has no history. A new product, a new region, a cost you are about to start paying: none of these have actuals, so they are not in the forecast to begin with. Add it in Performance first: on the P&L, Balance Sheet or Indicators tab, open Choose report lines from the Report Options menu and tick it (the Performance guide covers the dialog). It then appears in the forecast, from its next refresh, as an ordinary row, forecasting zero until you give it a method or type figures into the grid.
Adopting a version. Click the star next to the Forecast Version dropdown to adopt it. One budget and one revised forecast can be adopted per company at a time. Until one is adopted, Performance vs Plan measures the month against the Rolling 12 Months forecast instead, in columns headed Forecast.
A line kept in Performance appears in the forecast as an ordinary row. Garden centre cafe has no history yet, so its budget months are typed in.
2. How forecasting works in Actuly
Every line gets its own forecast.
Click any line in the forecast and set its method. The totals above it are added up from the lines beneath, every month.
Actuly forecasts at the bottom of the tree. Each reporting line (and each Unit under it, if it has any) carries its own method. Categories such as Sales or Overheads hold the default method for their lines, and their figure is the sum of those lines, month by month, so changing one line changes every total above it. Four categories are the exception and are forecast as one total, covered in Special lines.
A worked example. Retail sales uses Prior Year Sales + Growth at 3%, so April 2026 is April 2025 plus 3%. Cost of Sales uses TTM Cost of Sales %, so it is forecast sales multiplied by the last twelve months' cost ratio. Premises uses Prior Year Opex + Growth at 2%. Change Retail sales and Cost of Sales follows it, because it is worked out from sales.
You do not have to set anything up. Every category has a default method and a short list of methods that make sense for it. Sales lines are offered sales methods, cost lines are offered cost methods, and so on. A company's business type (mature, seasonal, or fast growing) adjusts those defaults, and a company with a short history gets safer fallbacks. There are two bands, under twelve months and under twenty-four months of history, fixed when the version is created, and a "Short history" note in the line window tells you which applies.
Setting a method higher up fills in the lines beneath. A method set on a category or line is inherited by everything below it that has no method of its own. Those lines show it as "(Inherited)" in the dropdown. Restore Default on any line drops its own setting and returns it to the category default.
Indicators forecast like any other line. Where your workspace has non-financial indicators switched on, every forecast has an Indicators tab, and a headcount or a monthly count of transactions takes a method or Manual Entry just as a P&L line does. The Non-Financial Indicators guide explains which methods each kind of indicator is offered.
Retail sales
✕Click a line name to open this. The chart previews the method before you save it.
Forecast by department, region or product, and the line adds up.
A line with units beneath it is the sum of those units. Each unit has its own method, so a budget can be built where the business is really run.
Actuly calls these breakdowns dimensions: Business Units, Region, Products, Department, whatever the company tracks. When you create a budget for a company with more than one dimension, a Forecast on dropdown asks which one to build it against. Budgets on different dimensions can sit side by side for the same year, and you can keep as many versions as you need, each with its own methods.
Under a line, each unit is a forecast leaf. North might use last year plus 5%, South last year plus 1%, and Online the prior month plus 2% a month. The line is their total. The Uncategorised row is the part of a line's actuals that was never tagged to a unit. It forecasts like any other unit, so the units still add up to the line.
Forecast the line as a whole instead. Sometimes units are too fine. Open the line and pick a method for it. Actuly warns that saving will set every unit beneath to No Forecast, and the method you chose applies to the line directly. To undo it, choose Pass through (sum of sub lines) on the line: the units return to their inherited methods and the line is their sum again.
Default method for sub lines. On a line that passes through to its units, a second panel sets one method and value for every unit you have not set individually. It is the quickest way to budget a line with many units.
Only the primary dimension can be adopted. The company's reports, dashboard and Performance vs Plan are all built on its primary dimension, so a budget built on another dimension cannot be the one they measure against. The star is disabled on those versions. Split Dimensions lets each line use its own dimension in one P&L, and a budget can be built on that too.
Create Forecast Version
✕Above: Retail sales is the sum of its Region units. Below: Forecast on picks the dimension when a version is created.
Changing several lines? Pause the refresh.
Normally every line you save rebuilds the whole forecast straight away. When you have a run of lines to set, switch that off and refresh once at the end.
Open the Report Options menu (the three-line button after the Forecast Version and Report Format dropdowns) and tick Pause Auto-Refresh under the Forecast heading. From then on each save is recorded but the figures on screen stay as they were.
An amber pill at the bottom of the window counts the changes waiting and offers Refresh now. The line window shows the same warning. The reason it matters: a cost set to a percentage of sales cannot show the right figure until sales has been rebuilt, so numbers that depend on other lines may look wrong while paused.
Untick it and the forecast refreshes once if anything is pending, so you can never walk away from a stale forecast by accident. The setting lasts for your session only. Refresh Forecast in the same menu rebuilds on demand at any time.
The Report Options menu, and the pill that appears while the refresh is paused.
3. Special lines
Some lines are worked out, and some are forecast as a whole.
Most lines take a method of their own. Three kinds behave differently, and knowing which is which saves a lot of looking.
Calculated rows are never forecast. Gross Profit, EBITDA, every margin and ratio, the whole Cash Flow statement and the Key Metrics are recomputed from the forecast P&L and balance sheet each month, exactly as they are for actuals. There is no method to pick on them and no Forecast Options tab when you open them. Change the lines they are built from and they follow.
Four categories are forecast at the category level. Their lines beneath are shown faded and take no method of their own. Click the category row and set its method there. They are category level because the right answer only exists for the total: cash cannot be assembled from individual bank accounts, and depreciation is one charge against the whole fixed asset balance, not one per nominal code.
Single-method lines. A handful of balance sheet lines have exactly one way to behave, so the method is fixed and you only set its value. Corporation tax creditor, for example, accrues the year's charge and settles it in the payment month you give it.
Capital expenditure is the odd one out. In history, capex is read out of the movement in fixed assets. In a forecast it works the other way round: you set capex, and tangible assets are built from it. It is the one calculated row that takes a method.
Tangible assets is forecast as one total. Its lines beneath show history but take no method. Cash is the balancing figure, explained next.
The special lines at a glance
| Line | Kind | How it behaves in a forecast |
|---|---|---|
| Gross Profit, EBITDA, margins, ratios | Calculated | Recomputed from the forecast lines every month. No method to set. |
| Cash Flow statement, Key Metrics | Calculated | Built from the forecast P&L and the movements on the forecast balance sheet. Debtor days, creditor days, stock days and the rest show what your ratios become if the assumptions hold. |
| Capital expenditure | Calculated, takes a method | Maintenance CapEx (equal to depreciation, so the business stands still), Average CapEx + Growth, or Same as Prior Year. Tangible assets follow it. |
| Cash and cash equivalents | Category level | The balancing figure for the whole forecast. One method, Cash, with nothing to set. |
| Tangible assets | Category level | Opening balance, plus capital expenditure, less depreciation. |
| Depreciation expense | Category level | Reducing balance at a monthly percentage of the asset balance (default 2%), a percentage of sales, prior month plus growth, Same as Prior Month, or Nil. A version created with under twelve months of history defaults to Nil. |
| PAYE/NI | Category level | Moves with payroll: prior month, grown at the same rate as staff costs. |
| Corporation tax creditor | Single method | Accrues the year-to-date tax charge and settles it in the payment month you give it (default month 9). The P&L charge applies the tax rate (default 19%) to forecast EBITDA less interest. |
| VAT | Choice of timing | Pick the quarter pattern that matches the company's returns (Mar/Jun/Sep/Dec, Jan/Apr/Jul/Oct or Feb/May/Aug/Nov), or Not VAT registered. |
| Retained earnings b/f | Single method | Carries last year's closing reserves forward and steps on at each year end. |
| Intangible assets | Single method | Opening balance less the forecast amortisation charge. |
| Dividends | Single method | Same as prior year, or type the months in with Manual Entry. |
| Share capital, share premium, other reserves, directors' loan, investments | Single method | Same as prior month. They carry last month's closing balance forward unless you type something in. |
4. Making sure everything balances
Cash is the balancing figure, so the balance sheet always balances.
Actuly does not forecast cash as a trend. It works cash out as whatever is left after every other assumption, which is exactly what cash is.
Each forecast month is worked out in a fixed order. The P&L lines come first, then the balance sheet lines that have drivers: debtors from debtor days, stock from stock days, creditors from creditor days, fixed assets from capex and depreciation, tax and VAT from their timing. Cash is worked out last, once everything else for that month is settled, so it absorbs the rest.
That means the forecast cash balance is the forecast cash flow. Push debtor days out by ten days and cash falls by exactly the sales those ten days hold. Add £20k of capex and cash falls by £20k. Nothing else has to be adjusted to make the sheet agree.
Two more things hold the equity side together. Profit for this financial year on the balance sheet is a calculation equal to the year-to-date P&L, so it always agrees with the forecast profit. And retained earnings roll forward at each year end, picking up the prior year's profit.
Because of this there is no "balance sheet does not balance" warning in the forecast, and none is needed. What you will see instead is the practical consequence: an unlikely assumption shows up as an unlikely cash line, never as an error. Read the cash row as your check.
How April's cash is worked out (£k)
Example figures. Every bar is one assumption you can change.
The assumptions that move cash
These are the balance sheet settings worth checking on every budget. Each has a sensible default, shown here.
| Assumption | Where it is set | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Debtor days | Trade debtors: Prior Year DSO, Prior Month DSO, or Enter DSO | Prior year, or 30 days if entered |
| Creditor days | Trade creditors: Prior Month DPO, Prior Year DPO, or Enter DPO | Prior month, or 30 days if entered |
| Stock days | Inventory: Prior Month DIO, Prior Year DIO, or Enter DIO | Prior month, or 30 days if entered |
| Capital expenditure | Capital expenditure line: Maintenance CapEx, Average CapEx + Growth, Same as Prior Year | Equal to depreciation |
| Depreciation | Depreciation expense: reducing balance at a monthly % | 2% a month |
| Loan repayments | Loans and HP: Prior Year Movement, Same as Prior Month, or Monthly Loan Repayments | Prior year movement |
| Interest | Interest payable: a rate applied to forecast borrowings | 5% |
| Corporation tax | Tax on profit: rate applied to forecast EBITDA less interest. Creditor: payment month | 19%, paid in month 9 |
| VAT timing | VAT: quarter pattern, or Not VAT registered | Mar/Jun/Sep/Dec |
| Dividends | Dividends: Same as Prior Year, or Manual Entry | Same as prior year |
In short
Set the few assumptions that matter. Actuly does the arithmetic.
- A forecast is a method per line, and every total is added up from the lines beneath.
- Units add up to lines, so you can budget by region or product and still get one P&L.
- Pause Auto-Refresh when changing many lines, and refresh once at the end.
- Calculated rows follow their inputs. Four categories are forecast as a whole.
- Cash is the balancing figure. If the cash line looks wrong, an assumption is.
More guides
Keep going
Performance
Financial History, Performance vs Plan, and building Report Formats.
Dimensions
Where dimensions come from, Standard and Split, the Dimensions view, forecasting by dimension.
Documents
Getting the data right, blocks, your own calculations, AI text and the AI Assistant, saving, locking and exporting.
Workflows
Schedules, jobs and tasks, assignments and notifications, and where to see everything.
Non-Financial Indicators
Setting them up, entering them each month, reading, forecasting and reporting them.
Dashboards and the Scorecard
The Overview, the Companies list, the Scorecard's colours, and keeping them fresh.
All help guides
Every guide, grouped by what you are doing.
Still stuck? Contact support and we will get back to you.