Single Exponential Smoothing Forecast Days Sales Outstanding

Use Single Exponential Smoothing to forecast days sales outstanding when your data do not have a trend or seasonal component.

This example applies to the Supply Chain Module. For more information, go to www.minitab.com/supply-chain-module.

Example

Days sales outstanding (DSO) is the average number of days to collect payment for a sale.

In this worksheet, DSO is the Y-variable in time order.

C1
DSO
38
22
36
35

How-to

  1. Choose Solutions Modules > Functions > Supply Chain KPIs, then click Launch.
  2. Under Cycle Time, select Days sales outstanding.
  3. Select Forecast days sales outstanding, then click OK.
  4. Select Single Exponential Smoothing, then click OK.
  5. In Variable, enter the column that contains the days sales outstanding data.
  6. Select Generate forecasts.
    • In Number of forecasts, enter the number of consecutive time periods that you want forecasts for.
    • In Starting from origin, specify the row number for the first forecast. If you leave this field blank, Minitab starts the forecasts at the end of the time series.
  7. Click OK.
Tip

For more information about this analysis, click Help in the main dialog box.