Our latest Joiin Live webinar put three-way forecasting centre stage, with a practical look at how to build and adjust forecasts using your actual financial data.
Lucien Wynn, CEO and Co-founder, and Harry Symons, Head of Customer Success, showed how to create a P&L forecast in Joiin, see the impact on your Balance Sheet and Cashflow, apply rules across accounts and use AI to turn written assumptions into forecast rules.
And there were plenty of questions. Here, we’ve brought together some of the most useful answers from the session.
Can I try Forecasting now?
Yes. Forecasting is live in Joiin and available on our Pro plan. You can also explore it during a free trial.
Rather than starting with a blank spreadsheet, you can build your forecast from your existing actuals. Choose from linear regression, percentage growth or AI-generated rules based on assumptions you describe in your own words. Or start with a blank forecast and enter the figures yourself.
How flexible are the forecast rules?
Rules can be applied to one account, selected account types or every account at once. You can set different percentages for individual accounts and months, and choose the period each rule covers.
This is useful when a client contract ends partway through the year, for example. You can apply an account-level rule that reduces the revenue to zero from the relevant month, while leaving the rest of the forecast unchanged.
Can I move an underspend into a later month?
This is not automated yet. You can adjust the relevant figures directly within the P&L forecast, or download it to Excel, make the changes and upload it again.
Automating timing adjustments is an area we’re exploring, including how AI could make this easier.
Can I change which companies a forecast covers?
Yes. You can change the company or company group after creating a forecast, although this will change the figures shown.
You can also save the updated version as a new forecast, allowing you to keep both versions.
Can I forecast across a group of companies?
Yes. You can create a forecast for a single company or a company group.
For group forecasts, Joiin works from your consolidated actuals and applies your existing FX treatment, eliminations and account mappings. You can then view the consolidated P&L, Balance Sheet and Cashflow for the group.
Can I forecast a group cashflow?
Yes. Choose the relevant company group when creating your forecast and Joiin will build the Cashflow from the group’s consolidated actuals.
You can also use payment patterns to control when forecast income and expenses are expected to affect cash.
Can I forecast by tracking category or individual employee?
Forecasting currently works at company, group and account level. You can create rules globally, by account category, account type, individual account or individual month.
Forecasting by tracking category is not available yet. More detailed driver-based planning, such as forecasting headcount by individual employee, is also outside the current feature. These were popular requests during the webinar and both are areas we’re looking at for future development.
For now, teams can keep that detailed planning in a spreadsheet and bring the final account-level figures into Joiin.
Does a change flow through all three statements?
Yes. Joiin’s Forecasting feature connects your P&L, Balance Sheet and Cashflow.
Make an adjustment to your P&L and Joiin automatically shows how it affects the other two statements. This means you can work from one set of figures, without updating three separate reports each time something changes.
What is currently modelled in the Balance Sheet and Cashflow?
Joiin derives several core Balance Sheet accounts from your P&L forecast, including cash, accounts receivable and payable, retained and current-year earnings, and accumulated depreciation.
Some items are not yet projected, including loans, VAT and tax, stock, prepayments and accruals, fixed asset purchases, dividends and new investment. This means their cash impact will not appear in the forecast.
You can click any Balance Sheet cell to see how the figure has been calculated. And expanding the accounts that Joiin can model is an active area of development.
Can I use a fixed FX rate for my budget while actuals use monthly rates?
Yes. Budgets can use a specific rate while your actual figures continue to use monthly rates.
You can select a rate from your existing FX rate sets and apply a single month’s rate across the full budget by changing its FX treatment.
Can I import a forecast from Excel?
Yes. Download the P&L forecast from Joiin, add or adjust your figures in Excel, then upload it again.
You only need to complete the P&L. Joiin uses those figures to build the Balance Sheet and Cashflow automatically.
This also gives you a route for adding calculations that are not currently supported by Joiin’s built-in rules, such as setting marketing spend as a percentage of revenue.
How does Joiin Forecasting work alongside Xero?
The two work together. Budgets created in Xero can be imported into Joiin and refreshed alongside your company data. Joiin then adds the consolidated group view, including FX and eliminations, and lets you forecast across all three financial statements.
Forecasts created in Joiin cannot currently be sent directly back to Xero. You can download the P&L forecast to Excel and import it into Xero’s Budget Manager, or report forecast against actuals within Joiin.
Does Joiin connect directly to Google Sheets?
Not at the moment. Forecasts cannot currently be downloaded to or uploaded from Google Sheets through a direct connection.
You can create a manual connection using Joiin’s public API, and broader Google Sheets support is something we’re looking at.
Can forecasts be used with Joiin’s Claude connector?
Forecast figures can be pulled into reports through the Joiin MCP connector, although the Forecasts module itself cannot currently be opened or managed through Claude.
You can ask for a P&L, Balance Sheet, Cashflow or KPI report containing forecast data, including forecast-only views, forecast against actuals, or actuals for previous months followed by forecast figures for future periods.
Watch the recording
Missed the webinar, or want to revisit part of the demo? You can watch the full Three-way Forecasting session on demand.
