Comprehension of forecast calculation moving average 6 months

[Former Member]

Hello,

I try to comprehense the moving averge (6 months) calculation in a planning book. But I cannot reproduce the calculated values for the future.

I take the sum of the values of the last 6 months of my desired key figure and divide everything by value 6. This should be the moving average value for the next months. But the values are not matching exactly. Values in planning book are a bit different to my manual calculation.

Does anybody know the reason how this can be explained in general?

Are days taken into account by calculating the moving average forecast? Perhaps if I execute the forecast calculation on February 6th - what is the basis for the calculation: the values in the last 6 monthly buckets or all the data from 6th August (exactly 6 months before 6th Feb). In my forecast profile months are set as periods.

Hope, somebody can help!

Kind regards

Heinz

[former_member209769]

Hello Heinz,

Need more inputs as Ada also mentioned.

Whenever you run the forecast, since you have specified monthly buckets in forecast profile, your history would be considered till month - 1 (one month earlier compared to when you run the forecast).

If you are running forecast on let's say 6th Feb, monthly history would be considered till Jan month. So without maintaining an offset, your 6 monthly buckets considered as history when running the forecast on 6th Feb would be Jan, Dec, Nov, Oct, Sept, Aug.

Hope this helps.

Thanks - Pawan

[former_member187488]

Hello Heinz,

If you run forecast in a monthly view, it won't consider days during forecasting.

The forecast is a bucket based process.

Could you please tell us your history data in last 6 months and the system calculated result?

What's your manual calculated result? Have you consider rounding effect?

Best Regards,

Ada