Financial Forecasting in the Focus of Accounting and Analytical Support

Abstract

Unprecedented global events in recent years have forced many companies to identify clear shortcomings in their financial, planning and analytical processes. Constant changes in the business landscape require an expanded "inclusion" of forecasting tools in the justification of financial management decisions. The focus of the accounting and analytical system on information support for financial forecasting is a potential technological opportunity in favour of accounting, which necessitates further scientific and practical research in this direction. The purpose of the article is to further study the accounting and analytical support of financial forecasting in the context of growing volatility of the business environment, as well as to apply mathematical methods to building a forecast of financial indicators based on the financial statements of an enterprise. The article presents views on the attitude of business owners to the role and importance of accounting and analytical support for financial forecasting. The obtained results demonstrate that practical skills in the use of financial forecasting by business owners still require further development. Therefore, we focus on the sufficiency and quality of accounting and analytical support, which will allow to form relevant forecasts that will serve as a roadmap for making informed decisions for strategic planning. The article develops a scheme of correspondence of stages of financial forecasting and tasks of their accounting and analytical support, in which financial forecasting is presented as an iterative process. A forecast of the net profit of enterprise based on the financial statements data using the method of autocorrelation has been built. Thus, the author sought to provide future researchers and practitioners with a programme of action to obtain more generalisable knowledge on the accounting and analytical support of financial forecasting.