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Demo: Base sales forecasts and trendlines on data

Applies to: Microsoft Office Excel 2003

 

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Have you ever wished you could look into the future and see what your sales might look like a year from now? You can, with Microsoft Office Excel 2003. You can use current data to project into the future and use trend lines to create a data-based forecast that can take the place of that crystal ball and provide you with more accurate projections of future performance.

 Note   For screen reader text detailing the content of the video and a screen reader version of the audio script, click Demo text version.

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Screen Action Audio Script
Excel 2003 is open, and displays a quarterly sales report in a worksheet.

Have you ever wanted to look into the future and see what your sales might look like a year from now?

Excel 2003 can easily help you calculate business trends and generate business forecasts that are based on data — not on wishful thinking.

The pointer clicks the Insert menu and then clicks Chart to start the Chart Wizard.

On the first page of the wizard, the pointer clicks Next without changing any of the default settings. On the next page, the pointer shrinks the wizard, selects a range of cells in the worksheet, and then expands the wizard again.

The pointer clicks Finish to close the Chart Wizard, and the chart appears in the worksheet next to the sales report data.

 First, let's turn our data into a chart so it's easier to see things.
The pointer clicks a column in the chart to select the data, and then opens the Chart menu and clicks Add Trendline. In the dialog box that opens, the pointer clicks OK, and a trendline appears in the chart. To see the trend in our sales performance, we simply add a trendline to the chart.
The pointer moves over the trendline to view the label. After a right-click on the trendline, a menu appears, and the pointer clicks Format Trendline. On the Options tab of the Format Trendline dialog box, in the Forecast area, the pointer changes the Forward value to 2 and clicks OK.

Now the chart shows us how our sales are doing currently …

… and I can use the same method to forecast sales for the next two quarters.

We see a good positive growth in sales.
The pointer right-clicks the trendline and clicks Format Trendline again. In the Format Trendline dialog box, on the Type tab, the pointer selects Polynomial and then clicks OK. Now I'm going to try it with a different trend type to see if I can come up with a trendline that's even more accurate.
A new trendline appears on the chart. The pointer rests on the new trendline and the label appears. This forecast is not only more accurate, it's also more positive!
Excel 2003 disappears. The animated text Experience your own great moments appears. Under it appears the URL http://www.microsoft.com/office. Excel trendlines made it easy for me to create data-based forecasts so I can plan where to focus our efforts in the coming year.
 
 

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