Sales Forecasts - Related Setup

The Net-Chef Sales Forecasts module relies heavily on settings established in Enterprise Manager. Some of these settings are company-wide, while others can vary from one location to the next. In order to maintain consistent and accurate forecasts, these settings must be configured correctly and forecast data must be entered accurately.

Company Setup: Week Ending Day

Corporate > Company

The Sales Forecasting module allows authorized users to set up Sales, Guest, and Check forecast values for individual days, and it organizes these days into 7-day weeks.

Users control the order in which the days of the week appear in Sales Forecasting screens by setting the "Week Ending Day" attribute of the "Company" detail record in Enterprise Manager. That is, if the "Week Ending Day" is "Monday", then the week will start on "Tuesday" for the purposes of Sales Forecasts.

The Company "Week Ending Day" must also be consistent with the day of the end date of all Location Post periods for which users wish to enter forecasts, and with the day of all period end dates in the company Reporting Calendar that correspond to Location Post dates. The reason for this is that users will only be able to enter forecasts for Post periods that end on the Company "Week Ending Day" and which have matching dates in the Reporting Calendar.

Location Setup: Projected Sales %

Corporate > Locations > Projected Sales % tab

A Location’s forecasts for a week are not necessarily evenly distributed over 7 days, e.g. a store may not be open every day. For example, when users enter the budgeted sales values for a Post period (i.e. budgeted values for "Sales" General Ledger accounts), they do not necessarily expect that to be equally distributed among the days in the Post period.

The Sales Forecasts module distributes budgeted total sales for a period among the days of the week using the percentages set up for each day of the week in the "Projected Sales %" tab of the "Location" detail record in Enterprise Manager for the current Location. These percentages are displayed in the Net-Chef Sales Forecasts screens above the relevant day’s column.

Location Setup: Labor Preferences

Corporate > Locations > Labor tab

Several of a location’s Labor settings impact how forecast data is calculated and/or displayed.

"Hours of Operation" – When the system is calculating and storing forecast data for 15-minute increments, it will only do so for 15-minute increments that occur between the "Opening Time" and "Closing Time". Also, the system will sequence Dayparts in the Sales Forecasting module starting with the Daypart that includes an "Opening Time" that is not '00:00'.
"Business Day Begins at" – The system checks this setting to allocate Daypart forecasts to the appropriate actual date’s 15-minute increments.
"First Daypart for Scheduling" – In the absence of any "Opening Time" configuration, the system uses the location’s "First Daypart for Scheduling" setting to sequence Dayparts in the Sales Forecasting screen(s).

Financial Calendar: Location Post Calendar

Corporate > Financial Calendar > Post tab

The application lists week ending dates available for Sales Forecasts based on the Post Dates set up in the Post Calendar (in Enterprise Manager Financial Calendar setup) for the current Location, but only displays Post Dates that have the same weekday as the Company "Week Ending Day" and that have a corresponding record in the company Reporting Calendar (i.e. a period with the End Date equal to the Location Post Date).

In order to use the Sales Forecasts module and be able to set up sales forecasts for every day, users must set up the Location Post Calendar for each Fiscal Year so that a Post Date for each period falls on the Company "Week Ending Day".

If users require a Post Calendar in which the last day of each month is the end of a Post period, and some of these month-end days do not match the Company "Week Ending Day", then users should set up these Post periods in addition to the Post periods that match the "Week Ending Day". For Post Dates, the week ending date listed in the Sales Forecasting module will be the "Post Date" that matches the "Week Ending Day", but the sales forecast week will actually encompass two Post periods.

For example, if the "Week Ending Day" is Monday', then users must set up Post Dates for Monday 09/26/11 and Monday 10/03/11. If Post periods are also needed to mark the end of each month, then a Post Date for Friday 09/30/11 must also be set up. Sales forecasts for the 09/30/11 Post period will include dates that fall in both the 09/26/11 and 10/03/11 Week Ending periods.

Note: Users should not set up Post periods with more than 7 days, because the application will only allow users to enter sales forecasts values for the last 7 days of the Post period.

Financial Calendar: Reporting Calendar

Corporate > Financial Calendar > Reporting tab

When a user sets up forecast values for the days in a particular period, the application displays the data for each day of the previous period and the same week in the previous Fiscal Year. It determines exactly which weeks to refer to for historical data by taking the "Period" number for the current week’s end date in the Reporting Calendar record in its Fiscal Year and looking for the Reporting Calendar end date record from the previous Fiscal Year that has the same "Period" number (e.g. week "25" of the Fiscal Year).

Because the Sales Forecasts module only displays Post Dates that have the same weekday as the Company "Week Ending Day" and that have a corresponding record in the company Reporting Calendar (i.e. a period with the End Date equal to the Location Post Date), in order to use the Sales Forecasts module, users must set up the Reporting Calendar for each Fiscal Year in Enterprise Manager so that there is one period for each date in that Fiscal Year that falls on the Company "Week Ending Day".

In order to have access to historical sales data while setting up sales forecasts for the current Fiscal Year, users must also set up a similar Reporting Calendar for the previous Fiscal Year (if relevant sales data exists).

Financial Calendar: Scheduled Closed Calendar, Promotions Calendar, Holiday Calendar

Corporate application administrators should set up “Scheduled Closed”, “Promotions” and “Holiday” calendars for a Location if they wish this information to be available in the Sales Forecasts module to aid Location users in entering forecast data and/or modifying default forecasts, since the Sales Forecasts screen will alert the user to any of these calendar records that affect a particular week.

Dayparts

General > Daypart

The Sales Forecasts module allows users to distribute each day’s forecast data by "Daypart", and displays historical data by Daypart. Dayparts are not required for Sales Forecasting, but any Dayparts set up in the application will appear in the Sales Forecast detail screen.

Revenue Centers

General > Revenue Centers

The Sales Forecasts module allows users to enter and edit default Sales Forecast values (based on historical distribution of Sales, Guests or Checks) for Revenue Centers by Daypart. Revenue Centers are not required for Sales Forecasts, but any that are set up in the application will appear in this screen.

Recommended Order Setup (in Net-Chef)

Historical Driven By – The Sales Forecasting module looks at the "Current/Historical" settings to determine the number of recent and historical periods to use when calculating Projecting Sales, and to assign relative weights to the data from these periods.

Example: If "Current" is set to 60% for 5 periods, data will be used from the most recently posted period and the four periods preceding it. If "Historical" is set to 40% for 4 periods, data will be used from the oldest posted period that is not more than one year old, and the three periods that followed it. The "Current" number will be multiplied by 0.60 (60%), and the "Historical" number will be multiplied by 0.40 (40%), and then these two numbers will be added together.

Sales Forecasting Based On - The Net-Chef Sales Forecasts module will use these preferences to determine how to calculate and/or display forecast data.

If set for ‘Sales Mix (Register Sales)’, then the application will refer to register sales data (visible in the Enter Sales Transactions screen), along with outgoing Commissary Orders and Customer Orders, as the data source for calculating historical and projected sales. The application will also use register sales as a source for determining "Redistribute Forecasted Totals by Daypart" percentages.
If set for ‘Menu Mix (Recipe Sales)’, then the application will refer to sales of recipe items via a POS system as the data source for calculating historical and projected sales. The application will also use menu mix sales data as a source for determining "Redistribute Forecasted Totals by Daypart" percentages.

Note: When set for 'Sales Mix (Register Sales)', the application will refer to Menu Mix files for any data that is more granular than that contained in the Sales Mix files. For example, to calculate total Guest Counts for a date, the system will use the "Ending" count from the Sales Mix record(s) for the date. But when the system needs to determine the historical proportional distribution of guests by Daypart, the system will look at Menu Mix data since the Sales Mix files do not track Guest Counts at the Daypart level.

"Default based on" – This setting will determine which reference values will be used as the default source for Forecasted Sales, Guests, and Checks. Options include: 'Budgeted Sales', 'Last Year Actuals', 'Year-over-Year Trend', 'Average for Prior (Offset) 4 Weeks', 'Actuals for Prior (Offset) Week', 'Projected' (default), 'Last Week’s Forecasted'.
"Offset for previous week’s actuals" – If users wish to use sales data from the week immediately prior to the week for which sales forecast is being performed, users should set this to ‘0’. If users want to see sales data for each weekday from 2 weeks prior to the sales forecast week, they should enter ‘1’. The value entered here indicates how many ADDITIONAL weeks to go back.
"Display check count data" – If checked, Check Count data will be displayed in the Sales Forecasting screens. If not checked, these rows will not be displayed.
"Dashboard task ___ days before week begin date" – The value entered will determine the number of days before the week begins that Sales Forecasting task(s) will appear in the Daily Tasks section of the Net-Chef Dashboard.