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    • Fiscal Focus Financial Statement AnalysisUnlock the hidden numbers in your P&L and balance sheet to see how you’re performing in 11 vital metrics.
    • Should We? / Can We?View, in real time, the actual financial impact of the hundreds of business decisions your team makes every month.
    • 24 Month Rolling ForecastingBlend your trailing twelve months with a rolling 12-month forecast to get a complete financial picture of your business.
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    • Return on Operations – ROOView your return on operations percentage — your ROO % — the most powerful number to measure business success.
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  • About Us
    • Nick Setchell – RealTime CEO
    • Vistage & TEC WorkshopsNick Setchell has been working with Vistage, the world’s largest CEO organization, since 2001.
    • NewsSee what’s happening with RealTime CEO.
    • Economic Update Report
    • Contact UsReach out to us. If you’re interested in booking Nick to give a keynote address or workshop at your conference, please include the date and location.
  • Concepts
    • Fiscal Focus Financial Statement AnalysisUnlock the hidden numbers in your P&L and balance sheet to see how you’re performing in 11 vital metrics.
    • Should We? / Can We?View, in real time, the actual financial impact of the hundreds of business decisions your team makes every month.
    • 24 Month Rolling ForecastingBlend your trailing twelve months with a rolling 12-month forecast to get a complete financial picture of your business.
    • J Curve ManagementTrack the number of investments you’re undertaking, the 3 phases of each, and the 5 rules for managing them.
    • Return on Operations – ROOView your return on operations percentage — your ROO % — the most powerful number to measure business success.
    • CEO Performance AnalysisBenchmark your performance as a private-company CEO against others in your industry.
  • Resource Center
  • Blog
  • Login
  • SUBSCRIBE

Information You Need

  • Financial Forecasting
  • Financial Scenarios Planning
  • Investment Performance Tracking
  • Financial Benchmarking
  • CEO Performance Rating

Financial Forecasting

Traditional forecasting and budgeting provides little value to forward-thinking companies. It takes sophisticated modeling to understand exactly how your business will look in the next 30, 90 & 365 days.


Budgeting and Planning

How frequently do you budget? How often do you update your financial forecast?

Budgeting and forecasting is the first financial area to address in order to find more meaningful numbers to confirm your everyday decisions.

In many businesses, budgeting is:

  • Completed only once a year
  • Focused on the income statement
  • Driven by the CFO

Many companies often create an annual forecast during the budgeting process. After each month concludes, they record their results and track their progress against the original forecast. When the year concludes, management spends precious time and energy trying to explain variances that resulted due to circumstances changing after the budget had already been set in stone.

Year-to-date budgeting and planning, while better than not budgeting at all, has minimal value. It’s an ineffective tool to assist with current business decisions, displaying past information which sheds little light on current and future business conditions.

Trailing Twelve Months (TTM)

A more powerful method of measuring profit and loss is called Trailing Twelve Months (TTM). TTM is a moving measurement that includes the most recent twelve months of financial statements instead of an aggregate result from a given period of time (such as a month, a quarter, or a year.)

TTM is powerful because it removes the impact of seasonality. When you chart your TTM results each month, you see a moving average of past performance that clearly highlights the trends of your business performance.

Real Time Forecasting

Real time forecasting is a cultural change from traditional budgeting and forecasting. It’s driven by challenging the status quo and discarding ineffective budgeting procedures. It starts by asking the following questions:

  • Who in your business is best suited to predict and influence the future?
  • How often is the landscape ahead of your business changing?
  • Is there a better way to measure the past?
  • Is there a better way to forecast the future?

Real time forecasting modeling combines a constant view of the future with a powerful view of past performance, giving companies a better understanding of the drivers of the business. It’s a mixture of TTM with a continually updated view of the future.

For a deeper look, check out our real time forecasting model called 24 month rolling forecasting.


"Fiscal Focus has provided our management with the tools and the discipline to undertake a strategic planning review for our company every month as part of a 24 month rolling cycle. We are looking 12 months ahead every month, and talking about factors that are critical to our business, our market sectors and our Industry. It is a critical element to the strategic planning process. Nick Setchell engaged our management group from day one and that engagement is ongoing as he interprets our performance data and provides advice and insights from which we benefit in our strategic planning."

- John Kennett, Managing Director, Kennett Pty Ltd


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