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Map out projects & events in your forecast

View a timeline of your microforecasts on the Business Roadmap

Updated over 3 weeks ago

This feature is included with Fathom Pro - the plan with access to all of Fathom's features. Companies on Portfolio can be upgraded to Fathom Pro at any time.

What is the Business Roadmap?

The Business Roadmap is a timeline view of your microforecasts, or the business events occurring on top of your baseline.

It helps you answer questions around the timing of business decisions, such as:

  • When can we hire a new employee?
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  • When can we make a large equipment purchase?
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  • When should we host a fundraiser for our non-profit?
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  • When would the marketing campaign be most effective?
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  • When should we take out that loan?

From the Business Roadmap, you can change the timing of a microforecast by grabbing and dragging the microforecast along the timeline.

Any movement to a microforecast on the Business roadmap will be automatically reflected in the financials of the forecast or scenario you are viewing. This helps you determine if and when the microforecast should take place for the best impact.

Why is my roadmap empty?

Your Business Roadmap will appear empty if:

When should a microforecast take place?

As you make changes to the timing of events or microforecasts on your Business Roadmap, you will see your Quick Metrics bar update at the bottom.

This allows you to explore options and better understand how the timing of each microforecast event or action impacts key metrics, like Cash on Hand.

To explore the timing of microforecasts:

  1. Expand the Quick Metrics bar at the bottom of the Business Roadmap by clicking the ^ icon next to the primary quick metric name
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  2. Grab a microforecast bar and drag it to the left or right to change the timing of that particular microforecast

The Quick Metrics bar will recalculate and update with each microforecast movement, allowing you to determine when the business decision would have the greatest positive impact on the business.

Turn microforecasts on or off on the roadmap

To change the microforecasts on the roadmap:

  1. View inactive microforecasts:
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    1. Click the Microscope with a slash icon at the top of the list of microforecasts and next to the ‘Search’ option.
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  2. Turn microforecasts on and off:
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    1. Hover over the microforecast name in the category list.
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    2. Click the toggle. If the toggle is green, then the microforecast is on or active.

You can also turn microforecasts on and off from the microforecast menu, accessible via the Microscope icon on the left sidebar.

Customise the Business Roadmap

You can remove, rename, or change the colour of categories in the business roadmap.

To customise the microforecast categories:

  1. Hover over the name of the microforecast category in the Business Roadmap.
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  2. Select the Three dots icon that appears to the right of the category name.
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  3. Choose the appropriate option from the drop-down menu.

The colours of the categories will carry through to your reports. If you add the Business Roadmap chart to a report, the chart will mimic the look of the Business Roadmap in the Forecasting tool.

📝 Note: You cannot change the microforecast or roadmap category colours from within reporting. You can only change the microforecast category colours from the business roadmap in the Forecasting tool.

Common Questions

Can you have multiple versions of the Business Roadmap?

Yes. Each scenario can have its own rendition of the Business Roadmap, allowing you to layer and time microforecasts differently within each scenario. You can then compare these scenarios in a Pro report.

Any changes you make to the Business Roadmap will only impact the version of the forecast you are viewing, whether that be the main forecast or a scenario.

There are two ways to apply scenarios to your Business Roadmap:

Option 1 -

  1. Select the Thought Bubble icon from the left sidebar.
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  2. Choose the scenario you want to apply to the Business Roadmap.

Option 2 -

  1. Select the Thought Bubble icon in the upper right corner of the Business Roadmap.
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  2. Choose the scenario you wish to apply to the roadmap.

You’ll be able to tell that a scenario is applied to the Business Roadmap because the name of the scenario will appear in a green box in the upper right corner of the Business Roadmap.

You can turn a scenario off and return to the baseline forecast by selecting the 'X icon' next to the scenario name in the upper right corner of the Business Roadmap.

How long or short is a microforecast on the Business Roadmap?

A microforecast will always be at least one month long, but it will be longer based on periods in which there are:

You may have movements in your microforecast that do not fall into one of the above situations (e.g. a loan repayment schedule). Therefore, your microforecast may have movements outside of the periods represented by the bar on the Business Roadmap.

Next steps

Continue the 'Forecast What-ifs' workflow by choosing from one of the next steps below:

What you want to do:

Where to go:

Create different versions of your forecast to explore multiple scenarios

Create Forecast Scenarios

Ready to report on your forecast? Learn how.

Learn more

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