If you work for a SaaS business, you have likely taken part in a revenue forecasting exercise — and it was probably modeled using spreadsheets. After all, the internet is littered with how-to articles and “plug and play” templates that claim to be your crystal ball into the future.
But keeping spreadsheets up to date is time-consuming and manually error-prone. Almost immediately, the data driving these spreadsheets is out of sync with the real-time data in your operational systems. And your business incurs a cost each time someone has to update the spreadsheets with the latest analysis.
What if you could skip the work of spreadsheet updating and instead forecast your business any time you want with real-time data? We knew Chargify could greatly benefit from a tool to do exactly this — so we built one. And now, we are making it available to our customers.
Chargify’s new Revenue Forecasting Tool provides on-demand revenue forecasting based on real, historical data and actual month-over-month performance — pulled directly from your billing platform. It cuts down the time it takes SaaS businesses to forecast from two months to as little as two minutes. (According to the APQC, it takes companies up to 16 days each quarter, or more than two months each year, to complete a financial forecast.)
Are you ready to graduate from this…
To this…?
Introducing On-Demand Revenue Forecasting
- Use the right data and model
- Easily isolate revenue segments
- Update forecasts over time
As a Billing and Revenue Management Platform, Chargify is uniquely positioned to analyze the past to help you better predict the future — and then track forecast against actual month-over-month progress.
We wanted to provide the industry’s best (and easiest) answer to these forecasting requirements, and it was only a matter of time before we turned our vision into a reality.
Our new forecasting tool automatically pulls baseline metrics from historical growth and churn data with the ability to switch between different on-demand datasets (such as 3, 6, or 12-month averages) to understand how historical trends impact future growth.
Using our tool, you can leverage filters to drill down into specific areas to answer granular questions about your business performance. From there, you can:
- configure your desired forecast,
- view your historical data,
- and adjust metrics (i.e. increasing revenue growth vs. decreasing churn) and models (i.e. linear vs. exponential) to assess long-term impacts.
But these forecasts don’t live in a vacuum. All forecasts in our new tool are savable, giving you the freedom and flexibility to model different outcomes based on different assumptions. Saving any newly created or modified forecast triggers our system to start tracking actual performance over time alongside the baseline forecast, and provides both data sets in a visual graph and tabular view below the fold.
Never again worry about costly, inaccurate forecasts. Say goodbye to week-long forecasting processes, manual imports and copy/pasting financials. And, say hello to automated, historical forecasts that enable your business to make smarter, data-driven decisions.
Start Forecasting With Confidence…
…and leave the spreadsheet to handle your less-important tasks.
Existing customers on Scale and above plans can start forecasting today. If you are an existing customer that doesn’t see Forecasting under the Insights menu, contact us about getting it added to your current plan.
Want to see our Foresting Tool in action or learn more about how Revenue Management is changing how SaaS businesses operate and compete? Let’s schedule a time to connect.
Also, if you happen to be at Web Summit and want to see this feature in action, come see us at booth #E323.
