What is a company sales forecast? Why is it important to the sales department as well as to the ...

[ 1 ]  A sales forecast is an estimate of the amount of a product or service that an organization expects to sell during a certain period of time based on a specified level of marketing effort. Various managers rely on a sales forecast when purchasing raw materials, scheduling production, securing financial resources, considering plant and equipment purchases, hiring personnel, and planning inventory levels.

[ 2 ]  Although most major city newspapers still include daily stock market reports, investors can now find more current and detailed information about specific stocks on the Internet. On most financial websites, one can find information about a specific stock by typing its stock symbol into a Get Quote box. (A stock symbol is a short combination of letters used to identify the stock of a specific company.) They also provide a variety of statistics such as earnings per share ratio and the price-earnings ratio graphs that illustrate how the stock price has performed over various time periods. Financial websites also provide information about other types of securities such as mutual funds, ETFs, and bonds.