Creating a Forecast

EDOiQ provides a simple forecasting tool to do a quick evaluation of potential projects.  These forecasts provide metrics on direct benefits such as AD VAL and Sales Tax Revenue, as well as to calculate the impact of incentives, net benefit, payback period, and the potential return on investment to the community.  To create a forecast, click the forecast section from the left navigation.  To create a new forecast click the plus icon at the top right.  Users are then presented with a modal to enter a Forecast name, Duration.. or number of years you’d like to view the resulting metrics, and a brief description if desired.   Users can also copy an existing forecast to start from, this is helpful so that user’s don’t have to reenter property and sales tax rates for the community.  If copying a project, just give the project a new name, duration, and description. Now, let’s enter some information about the potential project.

From the left side of the screen users can edit each section of the forecast by expanding the section and clicking the pencil icon.

For Land and Improvements, add the total acreage of the land, the total appraised value, and an anticipated annual appreciation rate.  In the improvements section, add a name and then click the plus icon to add each improvement you’d like to represent in the forecast.  Each improvement requires an estimated appraised value, any taxable construction material cost, the average taxable sales per square feet, The total square footage, and the year of the project the improvement is completed and would impact valuation.

For Furnitures Fixtures and Equipment, add a start year when the items would impact valuation.  Add an annual depreciation rate for the items,             and an estimated value of the equipment.

In the taxes section, users can add as many tax entities as desired for both property taxes and for sales tax.  For property taxes, Simply click the plus icon and add the name of the entity and the corresponding tax rate (per $100).  For Sales taxes, follow the same method as property taxes and add the taxing entity and corresponding percentage and click save.

Under revenue and expenses, users can select from the system metrics to add any potential revenue or expenses for each year of the duration of the project.

For employment, add the total number of existing full time equivalent employees, which can be 0, as well as any anticipated new full time equivalent employees.  Input the average FTE salary if desired.  Finally, include the breakdown of new FTE’s by year.

If the potential project is a hotel.  Enter the occupancy rate, as well as the yearly room breakdown which includes the total number of rooms, the average cost per room, and the anticipated occupancy rate.

Finally, add your potential incentives by type.  For employee grants, you can create an incentive amount per employee.  Under tax abatements and tax reimbursements, select the property tax or sales tax entity offering the incentive, then select whether the incentive will be a dollar amount, or a percentage of the tax paid for each year desired.  In the other grants section, incentives can be created by dollar amount and added to any year or years of the project.

The only requirements for calculating a forecast is something in the land/improvements section and at least one tax rate.

Once completed, users can see a breakdown of the potential project incuding Total Revenue, Total Expenses, Total Incentives, The anticipated Return on Investment, and the payback period, or when the anticipated revenue surpasses the anticipated incentives and expenses.

Users can also click the report menu item and view the yearly breakdown of all the forecast information in a table.  Users can export this table into excel, and once finalized, cut and paste some key metrics such as the property or sales tax revenue into the forecast metrics when a corresponding project is created.