Introducing Forecast Snapshots: Compare actuals, budgets and forecasts

Fathom’s approach to forecasting – and the next step

When we first designed forecasting in Fathom, we made a deliberate choice: rolling forecasts instead of static ones. Why? Because traditional, static forecasts become outdated almost as soon as they’re created. They’re rigid, time-consuming, and make it hard to respond to change.

Rolling forecasts solve those problems. They:

• Stay current by updating automatically with live financial data from your accounting software.
• Save time by eliminating the hours spent building static three-way cash flow forecasts.
• Enable agility by letting you model “what if” scenarios and adapt to unexpected events in real time.
• Provide a holistic view of profit, balance sheet, and cash flow impacts – all in one place.

This approach helps businesses make faster, data-driven decisions and move beyond complicated spreadsheets. But there was still one gap…

The problem we needed to solve

Rolling forecasts are powerful because they stay live and relevant as the months tick by. But that flexibility came with a catch: you couldn’t easily lock in a static version for later comparison.

So when stakeholders ask, “How did our Q2 forecast stack up against actuals and budget?” the answer often involves digging through old exports or rebuilding reports manually. Hours lost, insights delayed.

The problem was clear: as months rolled forward, your forecasted periods disappeared when actuals came in. You had two bad options:

• Accept the data loss. Let forecasts vanish or overwrite your static budget, and never know how accurate your January projections were.
• Live in Excel. Export everything, build manual variance reports, update them monthly (3–5 hours you’ll never get back).

And if you worked with consolidated groups? You couldn’t save group forecasts as budgets at all, making organization-level variance reporting basically impossible.

We knew there had to be a better way.

Introducing Forecast Snapshots

Meet Forecast Snapshots, now live in Fathom.

REGISTER FOR THE LIVE WEBINAR ON THIS NEW FEATURE: THURSDAY 30 OCT

Snapshots let you freeze any forecast at a point in time, without overwriting your budget or losing historical versions. You can save up to 25 snapshots per company or consolidated group, and they’re available right inside your reports for variance analysis, accuracy tracking, and side-by-side comparisons.

Think of them as time capsules for your forecasts. Create a snapshot today, update your forecast tomorrow, and next month you’ll have both versions ready for analysis. No more choosing between keeping your annual budget or having useful forecast comparisons.

What you can do now

Here’s what just became possible:

• ‍Run three-way variance analysis
  Compare actual vs. budget vs. forecast in one table. It’s the report your stakeholders have been asking for, done in seconds.
• Compare any forecast versions side by side
  Pit Q1 Forecast against Q3 Forecast against actuals. See exactly how your projections evolved and where they diverged from reality.
• Project year-end with current data
  Combine YTD actuals with your latest Q4 forecast to show where you’ll actually land, not where last year’s budget hoped you’d be.
• Track forecast accuracy over time
  Save snapshots quarterly. Come December, review all four and spot the patterns: Were you consistently over-optimistic about revenue? Did certain expense categories always surprise you?
• Report on consolidated groups
  Save group-level forecasts as snapshots and run variance analysis across your entire organization. What was impossible is now possible!

And yes – your annual budget stays clean as the baseline reference point. Snapshots handle everything else: monthly reforecasts, scenario planning, and variance analysis.

A few technical notes

• Limit: 25 snapshots per company or consolidated group
• What’s saved: Rolled-up values at account level (not microforecast details)
• Updates: Snapshots can be updated to retain report links
• Chart of accounts: Structure updates automatically; values stay frozen
• Filters: Snapshots don’t work with division filters, they’re saved at company level

Full details are in our Help Centre article.

Try it today

Forecast Snapshots functionality is live now for all Fathom users at no extra cost. Before you update your next forecast, create a snapshot. Save that version. Then do the update. Next month, you’ll be able to compare what you projected against what actually happened, all in Fathom. It’s a small change that makes a big difference.

Login to Fathom to try it today.