SETTING UP A 12 mONTH CALENDAR FORECAST STATEMENT

A forecast statement is designed to show twelve months of balances.  The current or past months will show actual balances.  Future months will show budget amounts.

1) Setting up the column codes.

A column code will need to be set up for each month and for the total.

To do this, go to General Ledger > Statements > File Maintenance > Column.  In Column, hit F5 for insert mode and set up as follows:

Code:  This is the code that is referenced in the definition.  For a forecast statement, this code should be the letter p (for period) followed by the number of the period you are setting up (01 for January).  It is important that this convention is used due to the utilities that need to be run to update the information in this statement. 

Description:  This is a description for your own reference   In this example, January is used.

Heading:        This is what will print at the top of the column in your statements.   January is used for this  

                       example.

Start period:    Beginning of the period for the balances to be displayed in this column.

End period:     End of the period for the balances to be displayed in this column.

Update:        “a” (annually) means that these periods will be updated when you close your year.

A column code also needs to be set up for the total.  It will look like this:

Please note the column code will need to be ‘ftotl’ for the utilities to work property.

2) Setting up the definition.

Go to Statements > File Maintenance > Definition to set up the definition.

Press the F5 key for insert mode.  Begin setting up the definition as in the following example:

Definition Code:   A unique code to identify this statement. 

Description:           A description for this new statement.

Build Order, Print Order:     Every Statement has a build order and a print order.  These numbers tell the system the order in which the statements are calculated and the order they are printed.  If this statement is to print last in the package, the print order number should be higher than the print order number in the other statements. 

Row Code:         Code that represents the body of the statement.  The Row Code for the P&L statement can be used if there was not one set up specifically for this statement.                         

No Columns:      14.    This represents description column, twelve months, and the total column.

[Date] Col:         13.   (but the date in the heading will be the period that the statement is run.)

Press F2 to continue

On the next page, fill in the title for this statement as it should appear on the statement.  Since the current period will be in a different column each month, it is best to use [period] to represent the month in the heading of the statement

Press F2 to continue.

For the first column, fill in type “d” for description.  Press F2.

Leave the column code on this page blank.  Press F2.  Leave the format as it fills in automatically.  Fill in the start position as 1. (Depending on the format of each column, the starting position can be adjusted later)

Press F2

Column 2.  The type for this column is “b” for budget. Press F2.

The column codes for the rest of this statement will be the ones that were created earlier.  For column 2 the code is P01 because this is the first month.  Type “P01” or use control-l to look-up.  Press F2. Set the format as to how the statement figures are to appear.  The format must allow for the largest total that will display in this column.  Rounding will be 1 for rounding to the nearest whole number. Below is an example:

Continue setting up the rest of the columns in a similar manner. All columns will be type “b” for budget and the budget type for all will be “forecast.”  Column 14 will be the last (total) column.   The type is still “b” for budget, although a larger format should be considered because the numbers in this column will be larger than the other columns.

3) Printing your monthly statements.

There are two procedures that must be run before printing your Forecast statements.   The first procedure to be run is “Create Forecast Budgets.”  This procedure is found under GL > Utilities > Budgets.

Budget records with a “type” called “forecast” will be created for the current year based on actual data up to the current month, plus budget data for the balance of the year.  This should be run each time you print your Forecast statement so that all of your current actual data is pulled into the forecast.

The next procedure to run is “Create Forecast Columns”.  It can be found under GL > Statements > Utilities > Format.  

This procedure will put the word “actual” or “budget” in the headings of the columns.  This only needs to be run once a month.

The statement will look something like the following when finished.

If there are any questions, please contact Data Plus.