Forecast Calendars

Inventory Planning > Inventory Forecasting > Browses > Forecast Calendars

Forecast Calendars

You use this program to configure the calendars to use for forecasting. Against each forecast calendar you specify the forecasting periods in terms of size and starting point (for each period) and when the forecasting year begins.

Listview columns

Column	Description
Calendar	Indicates the calendar code of the forecast calendar.
Description	Indicates the description assigned to the calendar code.
Period length	Indicates whether the calendar is defined for monthly or weekly periods.
Period start	Indicates the beginning of the period in terms of a day of the week.
Year start	Indicates the start of the forecasting year for the calendar.

Forecast Period Calendar Maintenance

Field

Description

Calendar

Indicate a code to identify the forecast calendar

Description

Assign a description to the forecast calendar code specified.

Forecast period definition

Forecasting periods use actual years not fiscal years.

If you define a calendar for your fiscal year, the years displayed in the forecasting programs are the actual years.

For example, if your fiscal year starts in September 2014, then the year is displayed as 2014/2015 and not as 2015.

Weeks

Select this to define the settings for a weekly calendar.

Field	Description
First week of the year	These fields enable you to indicate the start of your forecasting year.
Month	Select the month in which the forecasting year begins. This will probably be the same as the start of the company's financial year.
Week	Select the week in the selected month that the forecasting year begins.
Number of weeks in a period	Select the size of the forecasting periods (i.e. weekly, fortnightly and a various patterns of four weeks interspersed with periods of five weeks.
Day of week that period starts	Select the day of the week that each forecasting period starts.

Months

Select this to define the settings for a monthly calendar.

Field	Description
First month of the year	Select the month (January through December) in which the forecasting year begins.
Number of months in a period	Select the size of the forecasting periods (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 12). If you select 12 (i.e. entire year must be treated as one forecasting period) then this will result in the calendar only being available for reporting purposes.
Day of month that period starts	Select this to define the period start in terms of a day of the month. Draft forecasts can only be maintained when the company date is greater than or equal to this date.
Period starts on the	Select this to define the beginning of the period in terms of a day of the week. You can select the week (First, Second, Third, Fourth or Last) of the month in which the period starts and the day of the week (Monday through Sunday) that the period starts. You use this option when you define your periods according to the day on which the period starts.
Period ends on the	Select this to define the end of the period in terms of a day of the week. You can select the week (First, Second, Third, Fourth or Last) of the month in which the period end and the day of the week (Monday through Sunday) that the period ends. You use this option when you define your periods according to the day on which the period ends.

Last Item

Display the last calendar maintained during the current run of the program.

Notes and warnings

Default Calendar

You use the Inventory Optimization Setup program to indicate the default calendar that must be used at company-level. The default calendar can be over-ridden at stock code/rev/rel/warehouse level.
If a default calendar is not specified and you process an item without a calendar, then the system defaults to calendar month periods with the forecasting year starting on January 1.
To view the forecast in different time buckets (e.g. weekly, monthly, quarterly), set the default calendar to the smallest time bucket.

Restricted maintenance

You cannot maintain information displayed in this list view if access to the program is set to Browse only but access to the corresponding maintenance program is not allowed (see Security Access).