Quarterly, Trailing, and Seasonal Forecasting
When certain calculation happen on a non-monthly basis, Runway can support formulas that allow for this lumpier calculation.
In cases of seasonality, lumpy cash, or trailing basis, it’s important to be able to specify where you’d like certain calculations to hit. Because Runway formulas function on a per-row basis rather than a per-cell basis, it requires us to build in a supporting driver that we’ll call an index. Once this index driver has been created, however, it can be leveraged anywhere in your model.
In the example below we’ll walk through the use case of having viewing your revenue hit on a trailing 3-month schedule.
- Create an index driver. For our quarterly example, we’ll index the months in the quarter with accompanying values that will repeat through the year (i.e. Jan = 1, Feb = 2, March = 3). Once you have set these values for the starting point of your index, we’ll add the formula to reference this driver’s value from 3 months ago. You’ll see that this repeats the indexing into perpetuity once set.
- In the driver we want to sum on a trailing basis, build an
IF()statement referencing the the quarterly index. For instance, if in the first month of every quarter we want to sum the past three months, the formula will look like this:
- If more than one condition is required, continue nesting the
IF()statement as deeply as needed, repeating the same structure above.
The example above can be followed in a similar way for an annual basis or even in a non-linear basis, as long as the index driver is updated and repeated properly.