Plan Generation

You can generate a plan either manually, as described in this section, or automatically, by scheduling the Forecast Generation task in Job Scheduler. See Generating a Plan Using a Scheduled Task.

Generating a plan means that you are doing one of these operations:

  • Creating a new plan based on a reference budget and a forecast method. You decide whether the reference budget is an actual budget or a set of actuals from a previous year.
  • Updating an existing plan by updating data in a specified time period in that plan.

You generate plans using a forecast method, which specifies which input data and algorithm to use to generate the plan, and how the generated data is stored.

The Budget Management module supports three forecast methods for generating a top-down forecast.

The Budget Creation module supports two forecast methods for generating a bottom-up projection.

After the plan is generated, it is displayed on the Worksheet, where you can edit the data. After generating a plan in the Budget Management module, you also can begin the solicitation process. See The Solicitation Process.

Notes

  • To perform a solicitation process on a plan generated in the Budget Creation module, you must first export it and then import it as a budget into the Budget Management module. See The Solicitation Process.
  • The accuracy and completeness of historical data in the Timesheet and LFSO determine the accuracy of the generated plan data. Similarly, the accuracy of generated plan data determines the accuracy of the schedules generated by LFSO that use a generated plan as a scheduling constraint.
  • Generating a plan creates a system lock on the Master version of the plan. For information about system locks, see System Locks. For information about versions, see Versions.