Our Forecasting Tool has one goal — to accurately predict future sales so that you can make informed decisions. For example, knowing the number of units you will need to order to stay in stock, or understanding your business’s potential revenue for the upcoming months.
First, we clean up each product’s historical sales, flagging any stockouts, sales spikes, or sales peaks/dips.
Next, we establish a baseline sales velocity for each product. The baseline reflects the number of units expected to sell on a normal, uneventful day. We project this baseline into the future, adding in any sustained periods of high sales (peaks) that were detected in the historical data.
Finally, for products with at least one year of consistent sales history, we adjust the baseline to match past seasonal trends.
Our team has published a long form blog post walking through the methodologies that underpin sales forecasting.
Short term forecasts, such as the next 3 months, are inherently more accurate than long term. Although our algorithm is designed to be as reliable as possible, many external factors may come into play—market trends, competitor landscape, marketing strategy, and inventory availability are just a few examples. Therefore, our forecasts are only a guide to aid your inventory and cash flow planning.
As a business owner, you know your products best. That is why we will soon allow you to manually adjust any of our automated forecasts. We are also working on an Accuracy Score for each of your products, so you’ll know at a glance which forecasts are most reliable.
The Sales Forecasting tool is absolutely free! We designed these advanced tools to deliver value to sellers of all sizes, complemented by our best-in-class funding solutions to help sellers reach eight figures in revenue and beyond.