Forecast correction events on the calendar

Forecast correction events on the calendar improve the accuracy of your forecast balances. Learn about the different types of forecast correction events and how to add or modify your own events to keep your forecast in line! 📈

Balances on the calendar

Actual balances

Each account in PocketSmith has a record of daily closing balances based on your bank transactions - these are your actual balances.
Your actual balances are shown on the Calendar when the Show actuals in history checkbox is ticked.

Forecast balances

There is also a separate record of your daily forecast balances based on your scheduled budgets. Based on your scheduled budgets for a particular account, these are the balances you were predicted to have. To view your past forecast balances, ensure that Show actuals in history is unticked.

Red and green forecast correction flags on the Calendar

To start the projection from your account's current actual balance, PocketSmith automatically makes an adjustment to today's forecast balance to bring it to that amount. The adjustment informs you how far ahead or behind your forecast you are, and is marked by a red or green flag.

A red flag means that the actual balance is less than the forecasted balance.
A green flag means that the actual balance is greater than the forecasted balance.

Click a red or green flag event to view more information about the balance correction.

The forecast balances aren't permanently changed to match the daily forecast correction, as we'd like to give you the option of preserving your original forecast balance so that you can compare your historical forecast figures to your actual figures.

However, if you'd like to reset your forecast to match your actual balance, you can click Reset past forecast. Clicking Reset past forecast will make the balance correction permanent and will create a blue flag event. This is useful if your forecast figures have diverged from your actual figures over time.

Blue flag forecast events on the calendar

Blue flag events on the Calendar page are adjustments to, or markers for, the forecast balance. These act like checkpoints for the forecast balance, with the historic forecast calculated from the most recent blue flag event up until the current red or green forecast flag.

Blue flag forecast adjustments are only visible when Show actuals in history is unticked.

How Blue flag forecast events are created

There are a few different ways that Blue flag forecast events can be created:

Automatically:

When creating the opening balance of an account
After about three months, a forecast checkpoint is automatically added at the end of each month to help with the forecast balance calculation.

Manually:

When resetting the forecast balance to the account balance from a red or green balance correction event
When manually adding a forecast correction event to reset the forecast to match your actuals on a particular date

You may wish to manually create a blue flag forecast adjustment to bring your forecast in line with your current actual balance as outlined here: Steps to reset the forecast to today's balance.

If you wish to review your past performance from a particular point in time, you can learn how to reset the balance on a particular date here: Steps to manually set the forecast balance.

Note

Resetting the forecast balance for an account does not affect your actual balance.
If your actual balances, either current or historic, show incorrectly, you can learn how to fix this here: Troubleshooting balance issues.

Forecast correction events for grouped accounts

Forecast correction events for grouped accounts will show per account, rather than for the grouped account as a whole.

This allows you to see which accounts within the group are ahead or behind their forecast amounts, and allows you to correct the forecast for the accounts individually.

For example, if you have three accounts within your Account group; a Spending account, a Savings account, and an Investment account, these would each have their own forecast correction event on the calendar.

Steps to reset forecast to today's balance

If your historical forecast and your actual balance history have diverged over time, you can reset the forecast to today's balance. This means that your forecast will begin again from your current balance. The difference between your past and actual balances will be preserved in your graph's history.

1: Make sure you are viewing the individual account on the Calendar, and that show actuals in history is unchecked
2: Click on the red or green forecast adjustment event that appears on today's date. This is the adjustment event that PocketSmith uses to bring the forecast balance to the account's closing balance.
3: In the window that appears, click the Reset past forecast to reset the past forecast balance to match the current actual balance; Your forecast balance has now been reset to be calculated from the date of the adjustment going forward.

Steps to manually set the forecast balance

If your historical forecast and your actual balance history have diverged over time, and you'd like to reset your forecast balance to match your actuals on a specific date, you can do so as outlined below:

1: Make sure you are viewing the individual account on the Calendar, and that Show actuals in history is unticked
2: Head to the date on which your forecast began to diverge, or the date you'd like to reset your forecast from, and click on the balance
3: In the window that appears, type in the amount you'd like to reset this balance to and click Update Balances; Tip

To find out the actual balance for the date, tick 'show actuals in history' when viewing the calendar. Make a note of the actual balance so that you can reset the balance to this amount.; Your forecast balance has now been reset to be calculated from the date of the adjustment going forward.