Why are period targets in Advanced Analytics not matching those in Forecast?

Question

Period target amounts in AvA are not the same as the values in Forecast for my retainer project. Why is this so?

Answer

This can happen if you use the "Months in Date" filter in AvA and monthly retainer periods in Forecast do not correspond to calendar months.

In this case, what you see in Forecast would be values for custom periods of 30 or 31 days, while what you see in Analytics would be values recalculated for each calendar month.

AvA "slices" Forecast values to get the equivalent for each calendar month.

Example:

Let's say that you have set up 12 periods of 30 or 31 days and each of these periods' target is 16 hours. You want to report on June's target in Analytics.

These are the retainer periods you have in Forecast:

• Period 1: from 11 May to 9 June = 30 days -> The value for each day is 16/30 = 0.533
• Period 2: from 10 June to 10 July = 31 days -> The value for each day is 16/31 = 0.516

In Analytics:
The "month of June" period takes 9 days from Forecast Period 1 and 21 days from Forecast Period 2.

-> (0.533 x 9) + (0.516 x 21) = 15.64

This is why Analytics will report 15.64 hours instead of 16 hours for the month of June.