Using executive summary reports

Executive summary reports are rollup reports designed to help you understand and evaluate your forecast results for your entire organization or specific departments. These reports can help you:

  • Complete the forecast by providing easy-to-view summarized data from previous and current months and quarters to ensure data accuracy and completeness.

  • Improve your review process by providing reasonableness checks of the data so you can locate data outliers and fix those items before finalizing the period or quarter.

  • Improve forecast integrity by enabling you to determine how closely forecast periods compare to actual postings.

With these flexible reports, you dynamically control the data displayed and the way it is displayed so that you can view it in different ways, and in line with your priorities.

Report features

Each report has its own set of configurable criteria, but all reports have the following in common:

  • A top filter group that defines the rest of the groups in the report. Groups available for selection are set in the Refresh variable for RFGroup Grouping Columns setting in the Planning Configuration utility’s Report Options.

  • Subgroup filter made up of items in the top filter group. Items in this group are used in report row headers.

  • Ability to select actual and forecast time periods.

  • Option to view data by month or quarter (except the Actual Compared to Prior Forecast report, which is monthly only).

  • Scenario that determines the driver settings for the plan file data in the report.

  • Option to include data from approved initiatives.

  • Summation level that defines the group by which the data is summarized.

Executive summary reports include the following:

  • Actual Compared to Prior Forecasts – Improve your forecast integrity by assessing how well your forecasts have held up over time, and how close those forecasts came to what was actually posted.

  • Consolidated Summary IS and Key Metrics – View statistics and fix problem areas before finalizing a forecast.

  • Labor Summary – View labor-related trend data that compares actuals to forecasts for selected periods.

  • Code Trend – Select any cross-section of RFCodes and RFGroups to view code trends.