About Forecast 5: Our Background
Back a few years when Geof Nightingale, the NZ distributor of Sage Winforecast and a chartered accountant, saw that the future of Sage Winforecast was bleak with no product development and a management change of Sage, he decided that he needed to find another product.
But after extensive searching, he was unable find anything that provided a full budgeting solution as Sage Winforecast did. He considered his options and concluded the best way was to write his own solution. Thus, Forecast 5 was born.
It was an uphill battle from there. He took the complexity of the features and the purpose-built mentality and gave the old, obsolete Sage Winforecast the much-needed face-lift and modernisation. He decided to use SQL Server as the database storage of Forecast 5 resulting in an increase in security and stability, provided a familiar Microsoft office interface for ease of use and simplified the data entry process with a single data entry screen. This was just the start!
Forecast 5 focuses on the delivery of accurate and comprehensive budgets, providing all the logic to complete your budget, cashflow and forecast without the strenuous mental math. The Profit & Loss matches to the Cashflow and the Balance Sheet matches to the Funds Flow. This allows you to not only see what you are spending but where the cash is.
We provide a large range purpose built records, including Sales, Prepayments/Accruals, Stock, Wages, to simplify the process and ensure the budget is as accurate as possible. We have assets, loans and financed assets. Allowing you to take that planned car purchase with hire purchase into account, ensuring that you don’t forget the asset capital expenditure, the depreciation, the debt, the interest, the VAT/GST and the principal repayment and guaranteeing the calculations are all correct.
Since the 2014 release of Forecast 5, we have continually enhanced the product with Geof’s accounting knowledge and great suggestions from our growing customer base. We have added integrations to popular accounting packages, such as Xero and Sage 50 accounts, stock made records for those pesky bill of materials calculations, section summaries so you can see your results at a glance, visual reporting that provide informative charts of your data and much more
Forecast 5 is locally developed, designed and supported right here in New Zealand with sites all around the globe and distributors in Australia and the United Kingdom. In true New Zealand fashion, we strive to punch above our weight and become the world’s best forecasting and budgeting software.
We understand your business and how vital it is for you to produce reliable, accurate, trustworthy forecasts, Cashflows and Budgets for you and your clients.
Forecast 5 can assist with re-focusing your business activities, enabling you to work smarter. A purpose-built budgeting and cashflow solution that is easy to use, affordable yet comprehensive and accurate.
Forecast 5 is the smarter solution.
Contact us today to book in a demo or click to download a free 21-day trial.
