Introduction

In the first part of this chapter we will focus on how to perform some of the typical business analyses such as forecasting, allocating values, and calculating the number of days from last sale date.

To forecast future business we frequently use linear regression to calculate the trend line which can tells us how the business will be likely doing in the future, if everything continues the same. Many businesses have a cyclic behavior, and the cycle period can be a year, a month, a week, and so on. If we can calculate the values for the next cycle using the trend line from the previous cycle, we will have a better approximation of the future results than we would be able to get from simply using a linear trend. We will learn how to do forecasting using both the linear regression and the periodic cycles.

Businesses can have unallocated expenses, such as Operating Expenses that are charged to corporate, but not allocated to individual departments. The key to allocating theses expenses...