The Hidden Cost of Poor Forecasting

Why Mid-Market Businesses Lose Millions Each Year Without Real Forecasting Discipline

For most mid-sized companies, forecasting still lives in spreadsheets. That means time-consuming manual entry, broken formulas, and a lack of real visibility into what’s ahead. On the surface, it looks manageable. But when you dig deeper, the costs of ineffective forecasting are staggering.

The Problem

1. Cash Flow Forecasting Gaps

Without accurate forward-looking visibility, businesses are blindsided by liquidity crunches. That leads to last-minute borrowing, expensive credit line usage, and damaged supplier relationships. Even profitable companies can suddenly find themselves struggling to meet payroll or cover critical payables.

2. Weak Cash Flow Management

Working capital gets tied up in receivables and excess inventory. Finance teams waste up to 20% of their time updating, reconciling, and troubleshooting spreadsheets instead of focusing on strategic work. Treasury inefficiencies—like poorly timed intercompany sweeps or unmanaged FX exposure—quietly erode margin.

3. Unreliable Revenue & Demand Forecasting

Missed signals mean stockouts, lost sales, and disappointed customers—or the opposite: costly overstocks that require markdowns or write-downs. Staffing and capacity decisions suffer as well, leading to overtime expenses during peaks and idle resources during lulls.

4. Lack of Scenario Modeling

When market shocks or sudden opportunities arise, businesses without scenario planning scramble to react. They either freeze—paralyzed by uncertainty—or misallocate capital into low-return projects. The result is higher volatility, missed opportunities, and reduced enterprise value.

The Financial Impact

Industry data and Dryrun’s own analysis show that ineffective forecasting typically costs mid-market companies 8–25% of their annual revenue.

• Lost revenue: 5–15% from missed demand, stockouts, delayed opportunities.
• Higher costs: 3–10% from financing leakage, process inefficiency, and margin erosion.
• Enterprise value: Lower quality of earnings reduces multiples in M&A.

For a $50M business, that means an annual hit of $4M–$12M.

That’s not just accounting trivia—it’s lost growth, lower profitability, and unnecessary risk.

The Solution

CFOs and finance leaders need tools that go far beyond spreadsheets. Effective financial forecasting should deliver:

• Clarity – a real-time view of cash in and out, modeled across entities, departments, and time horizons.
• Control – the ability to test scenarios, align revenue and demand forecasts with cash flow, and make confident strategic decisions.
• Collaboration – a single, shared source of truth that replaces endless spreadsheet versions and keeps leadership aligned.

This is where Dryrun comes in. Built for CFOs, finance teams, and advisors, Dryrun combines cash flow forecasting, scenario modeling, and multi-entity consolidation in one intuitive platform. It replaces spreadsheets with a clear, dynamic view of the future—freeing finance teams to focus on strategy instead of formula errors.

See the Numbers for Yourself

That’s why we built the Forecasting Impact Calculator above. Enter your company’s revenue, adjust the sliders to reflect your reality, and you’ll see the dollar impact of gaps in forecasting.

Most leaders are shocked by what they discover. The costs are real—and they’re avoidable.

With the right tools and processes, you can move beyond spreadsheets, regain control of your cash flow, and unlock millions in hidden value.

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