Forecast and Monitor Your Key Financial Ratios

July 22, 2015

Forecasting

How key financial ratios can be forecasted with Centage

I recently posted a series of articles on this blog on the importance of forecasting a company’s balance sheet and how the financial health of the organization can be predicted using data available from the actual accounting system and from budget data. Refer to the following articles:

One of the posts was focused on how users of Centage with Analytics can forecast and monitor their loan covenants and detect well in advance when there is deterioration in the financial performance that may lead to breeching one or more of these covenants.

Displaying Forecasted Key Financial Ratios

In this installment we will see how simple it is to display forecasted key financial ratios that will tell management whether the company is improving its financial health or whether certain attributes of the financial health are deteriorating. Using Centage with Analytics, this display is available for the entire budget period (12 months, 18 month, 3 years, etc.) plus any actual and historical periods.

Example Ratios: Current Ratio and Quick Ratio

Two key financial ratios I would like to use in my example here are the Current Ratio and the Quick Ratio. Finance managers and professionals are already familiar with these ratios and are now actually able to display and monitor them using Centage with Analytics (actual, historical and forecasted).

Current Ratio

The Current Ratio is a liquidity ratio and is defined as Current Assets divided by Current Liabilities and measures the company’s ability to meet its current obligations. Both Current Assets and Current Liabilities are available from the actual or historical balance sheet, and Centage users have the advantage of obtaining budgeted values through a system generated forecasted balance sheet for every period of their budget.

Quick Ratio

The Quick Ratio is similar to the Current Ratio except that the inventory balance is excluded from Current Assets when performing the calculation. It is an indication of how likely a company is able to meet its short-term obligations using only its liquid assets (primarily cash and accounts receivable). As with the Current Ratio, Centage users have both Current Assets and Current Liabilities ending balances in each period of the budget, as well as the Inventory balance for each period-end in their budget, obtained from the automatically generated forecasted Balance Sheet. This is also true for actual and historical data, obtained by Centage from the ERP or accounting software.

Setting Up the Template

Once the required data is available in Centage, all that remains now is a one-time setup of a template in Centage as shown in the following example (the format and appearance of this template is only limited to the formatting capabilities of Excel):

The numbers in this template automatically populate from both the actual accounting system (3/31/2015 column) and from the budget plan.
Note that changes to the plan will automatically result in Centage recreating the Balance Sheet and Centage re-displaying the data in the template.
Using the What-if Analysis in Centage or applying multiple plans (e.g., Best Scenario, Average Scenario, Worst Scenario, etc.) will cause the display in Centage to change accordingly.

Creating Graphs for Better Visualization

The following is a simple graph that can be set up as a template in Centage. All changes in the actual accounting data and the budget data will automatically be reflected in this graph.

In this example we can clearly detect deterioration of both the Current and Quick Ratios, well ahead of time.
This decline can be due to increase in accrued expenses or other payables, higher than needed inventory, etc.
Armed with this information, management can contemplate, plan and make changes well in advance of these forecasted adverse events.

Additional Financial Ratios

There are many financial ratios that can be automatically forecasted in Centage. Some of the more popular financial ratios are:

Working Capital to Total Assets Ratio
Debt to Equity Ratio
Debt to Total Assets Ratio
Return on Assets
Return on Equity

A popular ratio is Inventory Turnover that can be displayed using both historical and forecasted data of inventory valuations and cost of goods sold. Here, for example, you can have Centage display the number of times inventory is expected to turn during the budget period with a number at each period end reflecting results based on the 12 trailing periods (months).

Setting Up and Tracking Ratios

You decide what ratios are meaningful to your organization and simply set them up the same way the ratios in our example were set up. There is no limit to how many ratios can be displayed and tracked in Centage. A key concept to remember is that Centage automatically generates forecasted financial statements that contain all the data needed for any imaginable financial ratio; all you do is tell Centage what data to use and how to display it.

Automated Display of Data

Once the display templates and graphs are set up, all relevant data will automatically be placed in these templates using your ERP data (for actual data) and Centage data (for forecasted data). All reports you set up in the system follow the same principle.

Focus on Planning

Centage users only have to focus on creating a plan and budget for their organization, and periodically maintaining it as the needs arise. Centage, using its built in business rules, drivers and automatic generation of reports and financial statements takes care of all the rest. The accuracy and completeness of financial statements, including the Balance Sheet and Statement of Cash Flows are only limited to the accuracy of the data in your forecast, your assumptions and drivers. Monitoring key financial ratios is crucial for business success. The best financial projection software can help you forecast and track these ratios effectively.

As example shows, using Centage makes the automated forecast, display and reporting of financial ratios a reality even for small companies.

See how you can automate your forecasting processes, forecast the impact of multiple scenarios, and quickly identify where, when and why actuals differ from plan, so you can take appropriate action.