The last category we will cover here is that of revenue trends. These reports are used by management to make decisions on where to invest money in marketing, as well as where to cut funds from non-productive initiatives. Revenue trend reports can be based on actual historic data, projections of future data, or a combination of the two. When generating revenue trends for the future, it's a good idea to first plot a graph of the actual historic data. You can then apply the graph to predict the future revenue.
When analyzing historic data in order to predict future data, be careful to spot and avoid anomalies. These are factors that are one-time events that have a significant impact on a particular trend, but that cannot be counted on in the future. An example might be a worldwide pandemic. This would obviously cause a significant drop in bookings for...
