Every business relies on its ability to forecast revenues. The accurate projection of incoming funds is essential to paying overhead costs, meeting payroll expenses, and making determinations about future contracts and service orders. Despite its importance, however, most people find that forecasting revenues remains more of an art than a science.

Accurate Revenue Forecasts
You would think it would be easy. After all, how hard can it be to tabulate the number of ongoing jobs and the amount each one is expected to bring in each month? If only it were so simple! The reality is that in the real world, jobs get delayed and things often don't go as planned. Maybe the error resides on your side with a schedule that flopped and went over the projected timeline. Maybe the error resides with a client who is quibbling over some aspect of the bill and refusing to make payments.

The upshot is that revenue forecasting is much more fluid than anyone would like it to be. Estimates of monthly revenues are dependent on numerous variables and they are in a constant state of flux. It can be truly difficult to determine a clear bottom line when the numbers are always shifting one way or another.

Your best bet for getting accurate forecasts is to employ software that can keep track of multiple variables at once. Many office management programs offer advanced statistical software that serves exactly this purpose. An extension of traditional multivariate statistical software, these programs has user-friendly features that allow you to learn programming with ease and to forecast revenue with greater reliability.