Changing when your forecast starts

In this article:

Updating your forecast start date

When you create a new company in LivePlan, you’re prompted to choose a start date for your forecast. You can set your forecast to reflect either a calendar or fiscal year. By default, LivePlan starts your forecast in the current month. If your start date is January, LivePlan creates a calendar year forecast (January through December). For any other month, LivePlan generates a fiscal year forecast, which runs 12 months from the start date. For example, starting in October 2024 results in a fiscal year from October 2024 through September 2025.

Planners might need to change the start date of their business for various reasons during different stages of their business journey. For a new business, the start date might be adjusted to better align with when financial activities such as expenses and revenues actually begin. Established businesses might change their start date to reflect a new fiscal year for better alignment with industry practices or seasonal cycles. Adjusting the start date ensures that the financial forecasts remain relevant and accurately reflect the business’s operational timeline.

LivePlan offers two options when changing your forecast start date, offering flexibility to either move forecast values relative to the new start date or keep them in their original calendar months. This enhancement supports businesses with both theoretical plans and established operational cycles, ensuring a seamless adjustment to your financial planning as your business progresses from planning stages to operational.

What happens when you move values with the start date?

When you update the start date of your forecast in LivePlan, the system traditionally shifts all existing forecast values forward or backward in line with the new start date. For instance, if your forecast initially starts in April 2024 and you change it to June 2024, all entries planned for April will now commence in June, maintaining their relative positions. This method works well for theoretical business plans where the timeline is flexible and dependent on when operations actually begin.

However, this approach can be less effective for established businesses with fixed operational schedules. For example, if your forecast starts in April 2024 and includes expense items beginning four months later in August 2024, changing the start date to June 2024 will move these expenses to October 2024, still maintaining the four-month gap. While this keeps the relative timeline intact, it might not align with actual business needs.

What happens when you keep values in the same actual months?

Keeping values in their original calendar months will never shift an existing month’s forecast data, regardless of changes to the start date. For example, if your forecast starts in April 2024 and includes expenses in August 2024, changing the start date to June 2024 with this feature enabled will keep those expenses in August 2024. This approach ensures that your financial planning reflects actual business timelines and seasonal variations, making it particularly useful for businesses with established schedules or those operating in seasonal industries.

However, it’s important to note that when values are kept in their original months, and the start date is shifted, data that falls outside of the forecast period (either before or after) is discarded. This means any forecast entries that do not fit within the new forecast period will be lost. For example, if your original forecast started in January 2024 and included revenue projections for December 2023, shifting the start date to March 2024 would result in the loss of the December 2023 data. Similarly, if you shift the start date backward and your forecast originally extended to December 2025, but now it extends only to October 2025, any entries for November and December 2025 will be discarded.

Please note: When you keep the forecast values in the same actual months LivePlan will make a backup copy of the company which can be found in the account archive with the previous forecast timeline still in place. You can learn more about restoring plans from your archive here: How to restore a company from the archive
Was this article helpful?
6 out of 13 found this helpful