Forecast methods

A forecast method decides how an Expected transaction's amount (or its timing) is projected, so you do not hand-set every occurrence. A method has a type (the algorithm) and a role it plays:

• an amount method says how much: Manual (the amount you set, e.g. Payroll), Look-back average (the average of recent actuals), Escalation (grow by a percent or a step each period), or Driven (a percent of another party's or bucket's flows, like the mid-market Volume rebate at 5% of Northwind Traders sales).
• a timing method says when: for example Average days late, which learns from how late that party's payments usually land.

Attach, activate, compare

Save a method once and attach it to any Expected transaction. A transaction carries one active amount method and, independently, one active timing method, so the How-much and the When are chosen separately. Attach more than one and Compare scores each against actuals (accuracy as mean absolute error) so you can see which projects best before you make it active.

Escalation

An escalation method grows the amount over time: a fixed percentage (e.g. a 3% annual rent increase) or a fixed step, applied every so many months. The mid-market Warehouse lease escalates 3% a year. See *Model an escalating lease*.

Seasonality

A seasonality profile (Set up -> Seasonality) is a twelve-month curve that scales an amount method up or down through the year (1.0 = no change). It is off until you attach it to a transaction, and it never applies to a learned method (look-back, ML) unless you opt that transaction in. Each transaction and occurrence carries its own profile, so two items under one party keep independent curves; override a single occurrence from the matrix.

In-app documentation, version 5. Generated from the product documentation source, so this matches the app exactly.