Your home page as your forecasts grow
Your numbers
This chart shows your revenue against your expenses for the last six months, taken from your connected accounting data, not from a forecast. If you've been connected for less than six months, it shows however many months you have rather than leaving gaps.
Chart labels show pounds in thousands, so a month with only a few hundred pounds in it will show as 0. That's expected: it's a rounding choice made for readability, not a sign anything's missing. Hover over a bar to see the exact figure, for example £116,872.60.
If you haven't added any financial data yet, this space instead invites you to add it. There's nothing to chart until you do.
Starting out: one forecast
The moment you finish onboarding, sherloc builds you a forecast automatically. Since it's the only one you have, it's both your baseline and your active forecast at once, as there's nothing yet to measure it against.
Your home page reflects that: a welcome banner lets you know your baseline forecast is ready, and in place of a chart you'll see an explanation of what a baseline is and a prompt to duplicate it. Once you do, this makes way for a real chart.
Once you duplicate: two forecasts
Duplicating your baseline creates a second forecast. If you duplicate from the Forecasts page, the copy has no label at first; it becomes your active forecast, the one that keeps up to date as real figures land, once you press Set active. (If you duplicate while working through the forecast introduction, the copy is made your active forecast for you.) Your original baseline stays untouched, so you always have something fixed to compare against.
What you'll see
A banner lets you know your overview is ready. A second card, Learn how to forecast your scenarios, opens a short guide; both can be dismissed. A short run of messages explaining assumptions and your forecast also appears the first time you open a forecast, rather than on the overview.
Reading the chart
It opens on cash at bank, and the legend reads Baseline and Active forecast. Your baseline is the plan you set out to hit; your active forecast is how you are actually tracking, built from your latest accounts. Months you've already reached are shown as a solid line; months still ahead are dashed, since they're projections. Your active forecast keeps extending and updating as each month closes; your baseline stays exactly as it was when you created it, so it stops moving forward if you never touch it again.
If you delete a forecast
What you delete | What you'll see |
|---|---|
Your active forecast | You're back to having just your baseline, which is the same "your baseline is ready" view you started with. |
Your baseline | Your home page lets you know you have a forecast but no baseline, and tells you a baseline is missing. Choose Set a baseline to pick one of your existing forecasts. |
Both | Your home page lets you know you have no forecasts yet, and invites you to make one to get started again. |
If you remove your financial data
Removing your connected financial data entirely is a separate, larger step from deleting a forecast. You'll be asked to type the name of the data source to confirm, because it affects more than one place:
Your numbers
Shows the empty state again, inviting you to add your financial data, since there's no revenue or expense data behind it.
Your existing forecasts
The same step lists the forecasts linked to that data and lets you delete them at the same time. Any you keep stay in place, but they stop updating from your books, so we recommend keeping your forecasts and bookkeeping data linked.