Now I will discuss about the sales forecasting. Sales forecasting is important as a substance for determining the cash or budgeting. Cash is an important thing in business. If the cash calculation is missed, then almost certainly your business operation will be disrupted. An example is if you missed sales forecasts much, there is unmet consumer demand due to the less stock material, then consumer dissatisfaction increases, ultimately the consumer will buy your competitors products. What a terrible moment. Back to topic, what you have to make a sales forecasting every year for? Sales forecasting is required as a standard to set a budgeting, grasp business growth and business profits per year. With these examples, you can conclude that the sales forecasting is a tool to drive your business in the right direction.

Although it is very important and can result in disruption of your business operations in case of forecasting errors, do not think that this forecasting activity requires a very deep mathematical expertise. And also do not think that in making sales forecasting, you must make it perfectly without any errors. As a small business owner, you do not need to have an academic degree in accounting or management, you only need common sense, little research skill, and strong motivation to make forecasting.

These are sales forecasting tips to get started:

1. Began to record
 This step is performed if you are totally new to sales forecasting which means you do not have sales data for the previous month or year. You must record the volume of sales per unit per month. If you are selling services such as IT consultant, you should record the volume of meetings with each client within hours (if you get paid per hour by the client).

2. Collect the data
You can go directly to point 2 if you have a sales volume data. You can use a simple statistical method if you have any past complete data is. I give an example using Microsoft Excel. Suppose you have monthly sales data from 2010 and 2011. And you want to make predictions for five months beginning in 2012. you can use tools and pivot chart trendline. In this case, I use the polynomial method to make predictions of sales five months ahead. You can see the images below for more details.

3. Projecting into currency
 After you perform and calculates the projected sales volume forecasting, you must reflect this volume of data into currency (in my case is $). How? It is easy, the trick is to multiply the volume with unit price in order to get the dollar amount. Why is the graph that you create must consist of two types, namely units and dollars? Here are the answer:  Due to the number of units, you will know how many stock of goods to be supplied. Through forecasting in $, you'll find out how much your money which use as capital for cash flow.

That's the tips to create a sales forecasting. If you have not made ​​it before, immediately collect the data, and perform the easy steps above. You will feel the positive impact when you are working based on data. If you've made​​ it, maybe you can make it with more advanced methods, so that decisions can be completed quickly and appropriately.