How do I set up a sales forecast to predict sales per hour, when .

[Greg]

I'm trying to make a spreadsheet program that allowes me to predict projected
sales per hour when given a projected total for the day, but I have no idea
of how to make a spreadsheet like that. In addition to this I would like to
add a column that will allow me to write in the acutual sales per hour so as
to decide whether or not I should call more people in or send people home.

 

[Bernie Deitrick]

Greg,

You will need historical data broken out on an hourly basis, then you can
get averages for each time period, and average percentages for each time
period. Then you can predict the amount simply by multiplying percentage by
expected total.

HTH,
Bernie
MS Excel MVP

 

[Barb R.]

Let's say you have the following:

A1: Day (April 15, 2005)
B1: Projected Sales per day
C1: Hours per day available for sales
D1: =B1/C1 ... of course, this assumes that your sales through the day are
linear and I'm guessing they aren't.
E1 could be actual sales per hour.

If you want to look at sales per hour at 8 AM, 9 AM, 10 AM, etc., more would
need to be added. I'm also guessing that certain days of the week would
have higher sales than other days.

 

[Greg]

So how do I do this the only thing I have is the actual forecast for the next
two months and the actual sales for around the same time last year. So using
this info how do I make the hourly forecast given the initial forecast for
the day?

 

[Bernie Deitrick]

Greg,

Unless you have hourly data on which to base your prediction, you can't.
You could assume that your sales are evenly spread across the available
time, but that is unlikely.

If you have 8 hours, simply divide your expected sales by 8, for an hourly
forecast. Likely to be meaningless, but that is as good as you can do.

Bernie