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Use the Business Roadmap

View a timeline or plan of your microforecasts and explore when a microforecast starts to drive key decisions

Updated this week

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.

How to use the Business Roadmap

The Business Roadmap is a timeline view of your microforecasts. From the Business Roadmap, you can add, manage, and edit microforecasts and change their start date by simply grabbing and sliding the applicable microforecast block.

Any movement to a microforecast on the Business roadmap will change the start date of the microforecast in the main forecasting grid for your baseline forecast or scenario. This helps you determine if and when it should take place for the best impact.

When should a business event or initiative take place?

The Business Roadmap also determines your cash position or other Quick Metrics. As you make changes to the timing of events or microforecasts on your Business Roadmap, you will see the key business metrics on the Quick Metrics bar update. This allows you to explore pathways and better understand how the timing of each microforecast event or action impacts the forecast.

To explore the timing of initiatives:

  1. Expand the Quick Metrics bar at the bottom of the Business Roadmap by selecting the ^ icon next to the primary quick metric name

  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 re-calculate and update with each microforecast movement so you can determine if a microforecast should take place and when it would have the greatest positive impact on the business.

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:

  • Movements in earnings

  • Custom journal entries

  • Any direct entries in balance sheet schedules

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 the periods represented by the bar on the Business Roadmap.


Customise the Business Roadmap

You can remove, rename, or change the colour of entire categories in the business roadmap. To do so,

  1. Hover over the name of the microforecast category

  2. Select the Three dots icon that appears to the right of the category name

  3. Choose the appropriate option from the drop-down menu

The colours of the categories will carry through to reporting. If you add the Business Roadmap chart to a report, the chart will mimic the look of the Business Roadmap in the Forecasting tool. You are unable to change the category colors from within reporting and can only change the microforecast category colors from within the Forecasting tool.

You’re also able to create a microforecast directly from the roadmap:

  1. Hover over the name of the microforecast category

  2. Select the green + icon that appears

  3. Name the microforecast

  4. Select Create Microforecast to begin defining the microforecast data

View inactive microforecasts by selecting the ‘Microscope with a slash’ icon at the top of the list of categories and next to the ‘Search’ option.

You can turn microforecasts on and off by hovering over the microforecast name in the category list and selecting the toggle. If the toggle is green, then the microforecast is on or active.


Scenarios in the Business Roadmap

Each scenario or version of your forecast can have its own rendition of the Business Roadmap, allowing you to layer and time microforecasts differently in different scenarios. Any changes you make to the Business Roadmap will only impact the version of the forecast you are viewing, whether that be the baseline 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 to open the Scenario Manager

  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

  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.


Next steps

Continue the 'Forecast Creation & Setup 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

Report on the forecast you've created to show others your findings


Learn more

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