When building a forecast, you may find it helpful to be able to see historical figures/trends as you are forming new projections for each account in your forecast. If you have a seasonal business, it’s helpful to see the value for the same period (month) from the previous year or to see if February's forecast this year is on par with February from last year.

From the main grid of the forecast you’ll notice that by scrolling to the right there are 12 months of actual financial data flowing in directly from the source system. These can be updated at any point by heading to ‘Step 1 - Update Data’ of your company Settings and selecting ‘Update from [Quickbooks/Xero/MYOB]’.

If you need to make adjustments to your actuals, you can also do that in the ‘Adjustments’ section of ‘Step 1’.

When you click on an actuals range value cell, you’ll see a side panel open that contains a chart of the account values over time. The solid green line represents actuals, while the green dotted line represents forecast figures. This gives you an immediate visual indication of the account values and allows you to identify any anomalies in your actuals or forecast data over time.