A profit forecast projects what a store will earn in the months ahead, not just what it will sell: forecast revenue run through every cost it brings, the goods, parcels, fees and ads, then the fixed costs, down to EBITDA. It is the forecast that can say whether a busy month is worth having.
Revenue and profit do not move together. A month built on a deep promotion sells more and keeps less; a month of heavy, cheap products can be busy and thin; and a carrier's new rate card or a supplier's price rise changes the profit of every order after its start date without changing a single sale. A forecast that stops at revenue misses all three.
The reliable way to forecast profit is to price the forecast orders exactly as real ones will be priced: each unit at the cost in force on its day, each parcel by the rate card that will apply, each payment by its fee rule, the ad budget by platform, and the fixed costs as they are booked. Anything else is a second set of arithmetic that drifts away from the statement it is meant to predict. The whole method, from last year's orders to a priced month, is set out in forecasting sales from your own orders.
Any forecast is a range, and profit's range is wider than it looks. On the example store the calculators use, a month a tenth short of its €60.000 loses €3.154 of its €9.542 profit, a third, because the fixed costs and the ad budget stay where they are. The honest presentation is a likely range around each month, widening the further ahead it goes. The profit forecast calculator carries one month of a statement twelve months forward, orders and ad spend each growing at their own rate, so the arithmetic can be tried before any store is connected.
That is how the Forecast page in nouz builds it: the store's own past orders move forward and are priced by the same engine as the P&L, so a cost rule that starts next month applies from its own first day. Last year's busy season is found in the orders and repeated on its weekdays, or switched off if it will not come again, and What if scenarios and Goals adjust the months ahead without ever touching the days already booked.