Weekly Sales Forecasting and Budgeting for a Retail Company

What is a Weekly Sales Budget?

Detailed price and quantity sales estimates are considered a critical part of a retail company’s budget and forecast processes, and are often used by regional sales executives and store managers to capture expected product sales in future weeks and months. Key functionality in this type of model automatically pulls up the item price and cost (entered in a different template) and then multiplies it with the quantity figures entered in the form seen below. This drives the expected sales amount per product, per store and in total for the company. As seen below, the input forms allows for 4-4-5 breakdown of weeks. You will find an example of this type of model below.

Purpose of Sales Planning by Week

Retail companies use Sales Planning by Week to simplify the data capture of volume estimates from regional or store managers, and to get a detailed view of expected sales quantities and revenues by product. When used as part of good business practices in a Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) department, a company can improve its sales forecast accuracy which helps to budget for expenses and investments, as well as, reduce the chances that sales revenues become sub-optimized due to poor inventory planning.

Sales Planning by Week Example

Here is an example of Sales Planning input form that captures expected sales quantities by week.

Weekly Sales Budget for a Retail Company - Example

Weekly Sales Budget for a Retail Company – Example

You can find hundreds of additional examples here.

Who Uses This Type of Model?

The typical users of this type of model are: Budget managers, regional sales managers, product managers.

Other Models Often Used in Conjunction with Sales Planning 

Progressive Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) Departments sometimes use several different Sales Planning templates, along with product price and cost budgets, capex, operating expenses, cash flow plans and other management and control tools.

Where Does the Data for Analysis Originate From?

The Actual (historical transactions) data typically comes from enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems like: Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365) Finance, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (D365 BC), Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics SL, Sage Intacct, Sage 100, Sage 300, Sage 500, Sage X3, SAP Business One, SAP ByDesign, Acumatica, Netsuite and others.

In analyses where budgets or forecasts are used, the planning data most often originates from in-house Excel spreadsheet models, professional corporate performance management (CPM/EPM) solutions, or other retail budgeting systems.

What Tools are Typically used for Reporting, Planning and Dashboards?

Examples of business software used with the data and ERPs mentioned above are:

  • Native ERP report writers and query tools
  • Spreadsheets (for example Microsoft Excel)
  • Corporate Performance Management (CPM) tools (for example Solver)
  • Dashboards (for example Microsoft Power BI and Tableau)

Corporate Performance Management (CPM) Cloud Solutions and More Examples

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