Forecast is a cloud-based project management solution that helps assist a variety of businesses in planning and executing their projects. When you have a workforce with different employees working on several tasks simultaneously, having a flexible solution becomes an essential tool in your daily operations. This allows you to have several tools and functionalities such as Kanban boards, budget and forecasting applications, rate cards, issue trackers and much more.
With powerful and accurate features as well as an easy-to-navigate interface, Forecast provides users with a system that’s simple to set up and easy to keep running.
Forecast Features
While it provides a wide variety of capabilities, these are some of the top features offered by Forecast:
Resource management
Forecast offers a variety of features to assist with resource management. You’ll be better equipped to handle scheduling, assigning roles to your teammates, utilizing your resources and managing the capacity of your workload. This makes it easier to keep track of materials, tasks, staff, projects and other factors in relation to your projects.
Project management
Under the project management category, you can benefit from several features. Gantt charts, Kanban boards, project templates and statements of work are just some of the tools that are at your disposal. This makes it easier to view and track your projects since they offer simple visual and progress tracking representations.
Team collaboration
With team collaboration-centric features, you have functionalities related to tasks, prioritizations, role-based permission levels, guest users, file sharing and storage, project workspaces and notifications. The previously mentioned tools make it easier to keep track of your team’s progress in all your projects. This makes it easier to communicate and focus on tasks that need to be prioritized more.
Time tracking
Time tracking is useful in knowing when projects are expected to finish or when deadlines are fast approaching. It comes with a handful of useful features such as a day, week and month timesheets, suggested tasks, suggested time entries as well as an automatic timer.
Financial management
Under financials, you have project accounting, budget tracking, rate cards, expense management and invoicing. This allows users to benefit from accurate invoicing and price rates. This is useful for those businesses that don’t have their own accounting department and also don’t want to spend time switching between various software solutions.
Business intelligence
Forecast comes with business intelligence capabilities that facilitate real-time reporting, resource utilization tracking, shareable insights, data visualizations and CSV data exports for distribution.
Integrations
Forecast lets you make use of third-party integrations, an open developer API and the benefit of a single sign-on feature. It should be noted that for the Standard pricing package, you can only use the first two of the enumerated features.
Service and support
With Forecast, you don’t have to worry about not knowing how to use your software solution, especially since it makes sure you will always be supported. Support comes in a variety of ways—chat and email, the availability of a Help Center, training videos and tutorials and webinars. Some pricing packages also include 1:1 assistance from the Forecast Customer Success team and phone support.
Compliance
You don’t have to worry about staying in compliance with certain rules and regulations. Forecast comes with state-of-the-art security and redundancy, audit logging, GDPR, uptime SLA and data encryption.
Forecast Benefits
Highlighted below are some of Forecast’s key benefits:
Efficient project management
By having a visual platform to view all tasks, projects and assigned team members, managers can experience efficiency and organization. It also ensures you and your teammates stay on the same page with each other, ensuring a successful team collaboration. Some of the tools also allow you to plan and schedule events and tasks ahead of time. This supports complete control and flexibility over how your business operates.
Real-time reporting
Real-time reporting paves the way for better decision-making, accuracy in data and transparency in terms of your progress. With the visual aspect and the dashboard experience, users need only to take a quick glance at the graphs and charts to stay updated. You can even build and customize live reports.
Increased customer satisfaction
At the end of the day, you want your customers and clients to have their vision achieved. This can’t be done unless you have complete control over each step of the project. People want quick but accurate results. With this software solution, you are given an adaptive work process that automates manual labor, increases project agility and monitors project risk.
Forecast Pricing
Forecast has three pricing packages that differ based on the number of users and the features made available. If you’re confused about which pricing plan to use, then you can go to Forecast and input the number of users you have. The solution then suggests a pricing plan to fit your business’ requirements. It also lets you know which features and functionalities you’ll be paying for with your plan. In line with this, you have two pricing methods to consider as well—monthly and annual. Forecast encourages you to choose the annual plan as you can save 20%. Furthermore, each plan offers a free trial.
Standard
Standard is the first pricing plan offered to newcomers. It’s priced at $30 per month and is suitable for companies where happy employees, successful projects and client success matter the most. Each virtual seat costs $2.5. You need at least a minimum of 10 seats. Additionally, this plan includes the following features:
- AI-powered features
- Resource management
- project management
- Team collaboration
- Time tracking financials
- Business intelligence
- Unlimited storage and projects
- Support
- Integrations
Premium
The second pricing plan is suited for companies where advanced integrations are needed and compliance is paramount. It starts at $49 per seat and per month. Each virtual seat also costs $2.5. It has the same features offered by Standard but with a few additional ones such as:
- Premium integrations
- Single sign-on
- Compliance
- 1:1 assistance from Customer Success
Enterprise
The last pricing plan is catered for companies where an SLA (service level agreement) is needed and highly valued. Compared to the first two pricing plans, there is no fixed price. You need to contact their customer support to receive a quotation. This solution is perfect for people who need specific features and tools integrated in their system.
Conclusion
When it comes to creating successful projects and managing your employees, Forecast offers users transparency and insightful data. It offers these values through a series of useful tools such as project scoping, time tracking, resource allocation and team collaboration. With these tools, you can efficiently manage projects, collaborate well with teammates and generate real-time reports. Overall, at the end of the day, you’ll increase client satisfaction with the projects you push through.
The whole point of project management platforms is to ensure your projects are created and managed according to your standards. You don’t want to rush what the client wants but you also want to ensure each step or task is properly finished. With Forecast, you can get quick overviews of your projects and view past cards, deadlines, milestone plans and project timelines.
