Can I use Castaway for weekly forecasting?

As Castaway is designed to support monthly forecasting, there is no feature to allow weekly forecasting.

Although we do not recommend it, there are some users who have built weekly forecasts in Castaway. This approach does require a number of compromises and workarounds and must be very carefully managed to ensure accurate calculations.

To use Castaway for weekly forecasting, you would need to:

1. Conceptually treat Castaway’s monthly columns as if they represent weekly columns instead
2. (optional) Extend the forecast period to enable more columns (Setup > Number of Years)
3. Ignore the report column headers, which will only show month names (or export reports to Excel and change the column headers)
4. Adjust any %-based depreciation and interest rates
5. Adjust the timing of things like Company Tax, PAYG/PAYE and GST/VAT lodgements and payments

You would also need to use modified cashflow timings for all other elements. As a monthly forecasting tool, Castaway uses 30 days to defer cashflow until the next month, 60 for the one after that. To align Castaway’s monthly columns to a weekly forecast, you would need to adjust the cashflow timing you enter to ensure that the cashflow appears in the correct columns.

As an alternative, other users create their detailed weekly forecasts in Excel and then use DataLinks to bring the monthly total values into Castaway.