Trouble Forecasting

[PaulW]

Not only trouble with Excel, but with Maths I fear.

I am currently tracking the number of hours worked on Field Advisors. And
these are currently being stored in a [h].mm format. While this is important
the real importance comes from the average over a 17 week period, this
information is in row 3, and works on the last 17 weeks (so in V3, the
formula is AVERAGE(F2:V2) )

Also set up, is an =FORECAST() that looks at these overall averages to
predict what the advisors average will be in 1 month, 3 months and 6 months.
Here is where I start to have trouble, since FORECAST takes an average of the
values, does this mean i'm taking an average of an average, which isn't
correct?

What I want though is some way of entering a number of values, these being
"Hours per week", "Date" and "Target Average" and getting returned any I
haven't entered. The Target Average will more than likely be fixed. So if I
enter say 01/09/06 the "Hours per week" might say -2, indicating that that
advisor should 2 less hours a week to reach the Target Average. Or I could
enter -3 in the Hours per week, the date might say 19/07/06, telling me the
target would be reached by then.

I have a feeling there is some function in Excel to do this for me, but my
Maths is limited, so I don't understand half the functions in the list, even
looking at the help file.

Cheers for any help!

[robert111]

The hours worked will always vary week by week, and there will be a near infinite number of data patterns, each of which will give a different future forecast. You cannot predict random variation. You can determine the average hours worked, and the extent to which "performance" varies.

look on the WEB under control charts or process behaviour charts.