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Sage Financial Forecasting takes over from WinForecast

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25th Dec 2005
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ExcelLast month, Sage introduced a new forecasting program that will take over the mantle from its market-leading WinForecast Professional application.

Priced at £550 for a standard, single user version, Sage Financial Forecasting has been completely redesigned to provide a more intuitive user experience, said Sage forecasting product manager Mark Francis.

"Historically Sage WinForecast Professional was perceived as being difficult to use and confusing because of the way it brought up lots of screens at once," Francis said.

"We spoke to accountants and company users to try and simplify how the product is used and displayed. This is becoming important because we are finding more and more business executives are are turning to forecasting and bringing it in house.

"What we've done is combine a lot of forecasting formulas and key accounting practices within the application," he continued.

"We want business planners to be able to look at the figures without having to worry about the underlying architecture or forecasting calculations."

Evenutally Sage Financial Forecasting will replace the WinForecast family, he added. Work is underway to produce a consolidation version that can almalgamate several forecasts, and once that's ready, the migration from the Winforecast range will be complete.

As well as a new "fresher" Windows XP-style interface, Sage Financial Forecasting links directly to Sage accounting packages such as Line 50, Line 100 and MMS so the forecaster can select the nominal codes for spending that they want to analyse. The application has a similar link to Sage Payroll.

Sage Financial Forecasting is able to display actual data pulled in from external sources alongside the original forecasts. It will automatically refresh itself with the data you've linked to and output the results to Excel, where you can do pretty well what you want," Francis added.

Aside from the underlying engine and interface, the program includes several new features including the ability to carry out weekly forecasts, data entry facilities for cash receipts and payments, handling up to 13 accounting periods. A new "Values" pane allows the user to see the impact of forecast adjustments on the bottom line and a sales price scenario tool lets you set a sales target and play with pricing strategies to achieve the ideal mix.

SageFor more information about Sage Financial Forecasting, visit the developer's partner page on AccountingWEB, or the Sage UK website

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