How do I make a sales forecast for a business plan in Australia?

Base it on your last 12 months of actual turnover, choose a method that matches your pattern (seasonal for retail/hospitality, regression for steady trends), forecast to the end of the next financial year, and show optimistic and pessimistic scenarios with the assumptions stated. Banks care more about defensible assumptions than big numbers.

Should my revenue forecast include GST?

No — forecast GST-exclusive. The GST you collect is owed to the ATO, and the $75,000 registration threshold is measured on GST-exclusive turnover, so a net forecast is also how you monitor when registration becomes mandatory.

How do I forecast for the Australian financial year (July–June)?

Enter your monthly history and set the horizon so the forecast covers next 1 July – 30 June; this tool highlights July rows as financial-year starts, so FY totals can be read straight from the table or the CSV export.

What is a revenue run rate?

Average monthly revenue × 12. It assumes no growth and no seasonality, making it a conservative baseline — handy for annualising a part year of trading when applying for finance.

Which forecasting method should I use?

Match the method to your pattern: regression or exponential smoothing for 6+ months of trending data, the seasonal method for retail, tourism and hospitality, run rate as a floor. Comparing two methods and treating the gap as your uncertainty beats trusting one number.

How is a cash flow forecast different from a revenue forecast?

A revenue forecast projects sales earned; a cash flow forecast projects money actually moving, including payment delays, GST remittances, wages and costs. Do the revenue forecast first — it is the top line every cash flow forecast starts from.

Sales & Revenue Forecast Calculator – Free Tool (FY Jul–Jun)

Revenue forecasting explained: how to forecast sales for an Australian business

A revenue forecast estimates the income your business will earn over the coming months — and in Australia it does double duty, because everything from your BAS planning to your business plan runs on the July–June financial year. Banks ask for a sales forecast with every finance application, and the ATO’s benchmarking makes wildly unrealistic figures easy to spot.

This free forecaster fits six methods to your actual monthly figures, models seasonality, draws best-case and worst-case bands, labels the financial year correctly (1 July – 30 June), and exports to CSV. Below: the methods in plain English, a worked example in Australian dollars, and the local details — GST, FY timing, realistic growth — that generic templates skip.

What counts as revenue (and what doesn’t)

Revenue (turnover) is your total sales for a period before expenses — not profit. If you are registered for GST, forecast net of GST: the 10 % you collect belongs to the ATO, so a $1,100 invoice contributes $1,000 to turnover. This matters twice over in Australia, because the $75,000 GST registration threshold is itself defined on GST-exclusive turnover — and a growth forecast is exactly the tool that tells you when you will cross it.

Use the same monthly series your accounting software reports (Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks all export monthly income). Twelve months of history is ideal — enough for trend detection and a full seasonal cycle.

The six forecasting methods, in plain English

Straight-line growth — applies a fixed monthly growth rate to your latest month. Best for steady growers and target-based plans.
Moving average — averages recent months and rolls forward. Best for stable businesses with noisy figures.
Linear regression — fits a trend line through your whole history (Excel’s FORECAST maths) and extends it. Best with 6+ months of consistent trend.
Exponential smoothing — weights recent months more heavily to catch changes in momentum quickly.
Seasonal forecast — applies monthly seasonal indices on top of growth (Christmas retail peak, EOFY services rush). Best when some months are structurally bigger than others.
Run rate — holds your average month flat. Conservative baseline; also how part-year trading is annualised.

Top-down vs bottom-up forecasting

The methods above are bottom-up — built from your own data. Top-down starts from market size (“Australians spend $4bn on coffee; we’ll take 0.01 %”) and is best treated as a sanity check only. For a new business with no history, build month one from capacity (covers × average spend, billable hours × rate, units × price) and grow it with the straight-line method, replacing assumptions with actuals as they arrive.

Worked example: a 12-month forecast in Australian dollars

Say last month’s revenue was $14,000 (ex GST), your history supports about 3 % monthly growth, and you forecast 12 months straight-line:

Month 1: $14,000 × 1.03 = $14,420
Month 2: $14,420 × 1.03 = $14,853
Month 12: $14,000 × 1.03¹² ≈ $19,961
Total forecast revenue for the year ≈ $204,600
With a ±15 % band, month 12 lands between roughly $17,000 and $23,000 — plan your costs against the bottom of the band.

Realistic growth rates for Australian small businesses

Established Australian SMEs typically grow revenue at low single digits to high single digits a year: retail 2–5 %, professional services 4–8 %, e-commerce and SaaS often 10–25 %+ while scaling. Compounding is deceptive — 3 % a month is over 40 % a year. If your plan only works at start-up-scale growth, stress-test it against the pessimistic band before committing to leases or hires.

Australian specifics: the July–June financial year and GST

Australia’s financial year runs 1 July – 30 June, and this forecaster highlights July rows as FY starts, so a “next financial year” forecast reads directly off the table — useful for budgets, BAS planning and finance applications that ask for FY-aligned projections.

Remember the GST mechanics: quote and forecast turnover GST-exclusive, and watch the $75,000 registration threshold ($150,000 for non-profits). Seasonality is real here too — December retail peaks, EOFY (June) surges for B2B services and equipment sales, and January quiet patches — which is exactly what the seasonal method models.

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Revenue & Sales Forecast Calculator