How to use the Margin Forecast chart

The Margin Forecast chart is designed to give C-level managers and project managers detailed insights into where money is earned or lost. It provides a clear overview of financial performance across historical and future months, helping you identify key areas for optimization. You can find this chart in the 'Charts' section.

The chart gives you a visual breakdown of your margins for a selected period.

• Navigation: You can move between past and future months using the arrows or by selecting a month at the top of the chart.

• Data Bars: For each item displayed (e.g., Services, Customization), the chart shows two bars:

  The blue bar represents the total revenue (actual/forecast).

  The orange bar represents the total cost (actual/forecast).

• Margin Figures: The margin percentage and margin amount are instantly visible to the left of the bars, and the revenue and cost figures are visible to the right.

You can refine the data shown in the chart using several dimensions and filters:

The chart has the following grouping. Selecting one of these groupings defines the content of the chart. The groupings are:

1. Revenue types

2. Companies/Departments

3. Customers

4. Projects

You can filter the chart on:

• Revenue types

• Company/Department: This filter is not available when the data is already grouped by Company/Department.

• Customer: This filter is not available when the data is grouped by Company.

• Project labels.

• Accumulate from: This activates a cumulative view. You can set a starting year/month, and the chart will total all amounts from that point onward. When this is active, you cannot navigate to a month before your specified start date.

To help analyze the data, you can sort the chart information in multiple ways:

• Highest/Lowest margin %

• Highest/Lowest revenue

• Highest/Lowest costs

• Name

The data in the Margin Forecast chart is calculated as follows:

Revenue Data

• Actual Revenue: Shows the realized revenue based on financial transactions associated with a ledger account that is marked as ‘Revenue’.

• Forecast Revenue: This is the unrealized revenue for current and future months. It includes the ‘Planned orderbook’ and ‘Unplanned order book’. The 'Pipeline' is not included in this chart's data.

Cost Data

• Actual Costs: Shows realized costs from financial transactions, such as time entries, expenses, and purchase invoices, that are configured in the revenue type.

• Forecast Costs: This projection is based on the planned and unplanned order book. It is calculated by summing the cost of hours in various stages:

  • Hours in draft

  • Planned hours

  • Hours to plan

  • Hours to allocate