Consolidated Forecasting P&L Template For Excel & Google Sheets

What's inside the Consolidated Forecasting P&L Template?

Consolidated Forecast

This tab consolidates your income statement numbers from your various entities and shows actuals when available and forecasts for the current fiscal year. Column A provides an overview of all your Profit and Loss accounts, while Column B and others show the monthly financial data corresponding to each item in Column A. In Column O, you can see the expected consolidated figures for the entire fiscal year. In Row 13, you can select monthly actuals and forecasts, according to your preference. The forecast numbers for a month are calculated based on the actual numbers for the previous month and the growth rates of each item defined in the “Growth Rates” tab.

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Growth Rates

This tab contains historical monthly changes for all P&L accounts (on a consolidated basis) for the last fiscal year. Then the sheet calculates the average monthly change (or growth rate) for each item (on a consolidated basis), which is shown in Column O. The computed average percentage for an item is summed up with an expected change (or growth) rate manually input in Column P. (Note: please input expected growth rates on a consolidated basis) You have expected monthly growth or change in Column Q as a result. The numbers in Column Q are used in the formula on the “Consolidated Forecast” sheet to compute the forecasted figures for each month.

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Entity (1 to 4)

By default, these tabs contain monthly income statements of each entity for the current and previous fiscal years. The data on these sheets is pulled from your Quick Books accounts and refreshed automatically according to your setting. The date on these sheets is referred to in the formulas to show consolidated numbers on “Consolidated Forecast” and ones to calculate monthly changes (%) in each accounting item on “Growth Rates”.

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Consolidated Chart of Accounts

The accounts listed here are those you'll see in Column As on “Consolidated Forecast” and “Growth Rates”. This tab exists to ensure you don’t miss any accounting items when you consolidate the financial data of your entities.

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Consolidated Forecasting P&L 101

Introduction

Thank you for your interest in learning more about Consolidated Forecasting P&L and its role in the core consolidation reports stack. In this post, we will provide all the information you need to know about Consolidated Forecasting, including what to watch for and how to create your own. We will also offer tips to help you increase your workflow efficiency by 10x.

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What is Consolidated Forecasting P&L

The Consolidated Forecasting P&L Statement combines multiple income statements from different entities or subsidiaries of the same company. For example, let's say that your company group has the following entity structure:

1. A US-based holding company
2. A UK-based subsidiary wholly owned by the US holding company
3. A French subsidiary wholly owned by the US holding company

To comply with local financial reporting requirements, you need to report your P&L separately in the US, the UK, and Germany. As a result, you must generate income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements independently and in different currencies for each entity. You also require the consolidated financial statements to show, analyze and report your financial data on a consolidated basis.

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How do you create a Consolidated Forecasting P&L?

Creating a consolidated profit and loss statement can be challenging, time-consuming, and require manual effort, particularly when consolidating figures from different currencies. On top of that, you may need to think about future projections on a consolidated basis, which is further complicated. Fortunately, you have LiveFlow’s simplified template - Consolidated Forecasting P&L Statement Template, which offers the essential components of a consolidated financial forecast in a faster and more user-friendly manner.

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How do you make your forecast better and more accurate?

In the template, you think about future financials based on a consolidated basis. You can take more than a couple of approaches to improve your forecast. One of the methodologies is to build up the forecast for each entity first and then combine the forecasts to create the consolidated income statement forecast. This approach may be effective when each entity has a different trend and tendency in its P&L. Also, regarding the growth rates of each item, you can use more reasonable assumptions (if any) instead of the combination of average monthly change rates and expected change rates manually input.