Hi everyone,

I have previously created a discussion about forecasting and I am very new to Apptio. I am now tasked to roll out a multi year forecasting using the ITP and I am still taking my little steps to get to the process.

Objective of creating these plans  is for the cost center owners to adjust their budgets month over month reflecting their expected additional/reduction costs, etc.

Given facts:

1. Created a forecast test plan starting July 2018 with baseline FY2018 Budget.

2. Actuals are imported from external source from January - May 2018

3. No adjustment are made yet to the Plan.

4. Plan is on the "NEW" state.

5. Plan length is set to 1 year

This is how it looks like now :

Observations:

1. Actuals and Budgets matches from Jan - May 2018. My thoughts is that because I have actuals through these months, this replaces parts of my budget. To compare budgets to actuals, I can just open the FY2018 Budget plan and set Compare to : Actuals.

2.  In the graph, we can clearly see that forecasting simply means Actual spend + remaining budgets in the year

3. The time scale doesn't have 2019 even if I set the plan length for 1 year.

Another thing that I did is to create an August test plan (baseline July 2018 test forecast). Plan year is set at 1 year.

This is how it looks like:

Observation:

1. Because I don't have actuals from June 2018 onwards, the graph was blank for June and July.

2. The time scale doesn't have 2019 even if I set the plan length for 1 year.

Questions: 

1. Why can't I see 2019 months even if I set the plan length for 1 year starting JUly 2018? My understanding is that I would see 2019 months in the time scale as well. Or is because we still haven't loaded budget amounts for these months?

2. If I have to import actuals for June where should I need to import it? in the July test forecast plan or in FY2018 Budget (baseline)?

3. Same as question #2, if I want to import actuals for July, August, into what plan should I import it?

I am on the early stage of understanding the process and I'm not sure if I have the right questions in my mind.

Thank you very much in advance and I'm looking forward to your thoughts about this!  

Hi Rose Ann,

In regards you're questions, let me see if I can help.  

1.   Why can't I see 2019 if I'd selected July 2018 as my starting point?  This would be do to the fact of when you create the plan you most likely selected the Fiscal Year of 2018 and set that plan length to 1 year, you'd have to set the plan length to 2 years if you wanted to see 2019 in you're chart above.

2.  If I have to import actuals for June where should I need to import it? in the July test forecast plan or in FY2018 Budget (baseline)?  In ITPF you'd go to the Spend Management Tab and import the actuals there.  However, once you import those actuals they will not automatically show up on your forecast.  You'll need to create a new forecast.  

If you have actuals through June, you'd create you're forecast to start in July as July would be the first month that you'd like to forecast.  

Hope this helps,

Cheers,

Ryan

Hello Ryan,

Thank you very much! I will try to change the way I set up my July test forecast and see from there.

I initially thought that when I set the Plan Length at 1 year, it will start July 2018 - July 2019.

For importing of actuals, does it mean that for every month of my Forecast, (e.g July, Aug, Sept) I will be importing it to its respective Plan month under Spend Management?

Thank you very much, Ryan for your assistance!  

Best,

-Rose

Awesome! thank you so much, Ryan.

Best,

Rose