Forecasting

Forecasting in Monitr lets you build financial projections on top of your actuals data. Instead of a single static budget, Monitr uses a three-level hierarchy that supports multiple scenarios, version management, and modular budget building.

The hierarchy

Forecast
  └── Scenario (one or many)
        └── Budget Version (one or many, spanning modules)

Level	What it is
Forecast	The top-level container for all your planning. An entity typically has one Forecast.
Scenario	A version of your plan — e.g. Base Case, Optimistic, Pessimistic. Each scenario has its own set of budgets.
Budget Version	A named period of budget data (e.g. "FY2025 Annual Plan", "Q3 Rolling Forecast") containing budget modules.

Why scenarios?

Scenarios let you maintain multiple parallel forecasts without duplicating everything. You can:

• Link budgets between scenarios — a linked budget inherits all values from the baseline. Changes to the baseline ripple through automatically. This is useful for keeping common assumptions (e.g. fixed costs) in sync across scenarios.
• Duplicate budgets per scenario — each scenario has its own independent copy. Use this when scenarios diverge significantly (e.g. different revenue growth assumptions).
• Promote a scenario to baseline — once you've decided which scenario becomes the official plan, you can promote it. This locks it as the reference point for comparisons.

Setting up your first forecast

1. Go to Forecasts in the sidebar
2. Click Create forecast (or the plus icon)
3. Name your forecast (e.g. "FY2025 Plan")
4. A Baseline scenario is created automatically
5. Add budget modules to the baseline scenario (see Budget Modules)

Once you have budget data, the Forecast view in Reports shows actuals through LDA (Last Date Actuals) and budget values for the remaining periods.

Navigating the Forecasts page

The Forecasts page has three tabs at the top:

1. Forecasts tab — view and manage all your forecasts, scenarios, and their budgets
2. Budget Accounts tab — create virtual accounts for forecasting at a finer level of detail than your GL chart of accounts
3. Budget Versions tab — manage time-based periods of budget data and upload bulk budget data via CSV

Use the Forecasts tab as your main working area; the other two tabs are reference and setup tools you use less frequently.

Global vs. Scenario budgets

Budget versions can be:

• Global — shared across all scenarios. Changes to a global budget affect every scenario.
• Scenario-specific — assigned to a single scenario. Useful for scenario-specific assumptions that don't apply to all versions of your plan.

Premium vs. Lite

Feature	Lite	Premium
Forecasting	Yes	Yes
Number of scenarios	Unlimited	Unlimited
Budget modules	All	All
Consolidation forecasting	No	Yes