The forecast and its error

Open Analytics › Forecast. The forecast estimates revenue per day. It does not predict guests or individual items.

What you see

• At the top, the expected revenue for the coming days and next to it Typical error ±… % or Error not reliable yet.
• Per day the columns Basis, Trend, Days and Expected: where the value comes from and how many comparison days it rests on.
• In the overview, the forecast is shown dashed behind the daily chart, for today and the days after.

How it works

The forecast compares a day with the same weekdays before, so a Saturday with Saturdays, and takes the trend into account. The details are in the Hub under How the forecast works.

It does not account for public holidays, school holidays or weather. A guessed holiday list would be worse than none; that is why the error is always shown next to it.

The error

The Hub replays its forecast for past days as it would have been made at the time and compares it with actual revenue. That gives the typical error and on how many back-tested days the forecast came close. Rest days do not count as a missed forecast.

When there is no figure

• “Only … matching weekdays, too few”: there are not enough comparison days for this day yet; instead of a figure you see a dash.
• No forecast yet: the history lacks matching weekdays. That resolves with every week your till delivers.