Forecasting is an important part of most management positions. Knowing how many products will sell where and when, informs resource decisions like staffing and inventory. It is also an intuitive way to compare performance between different business units, product categories etc. For P&L owners it is an essential tool to proactively manage their margin by adapting investment levels.

n the September 2016 update of the Power BI Desktop, the Power BI team took the first step toward providing Power BI users with the possibility to add forecasting to charts. Forecasting, a fundamental component of data mining, is one of the first steps towards providing artificial intelligence to users of Power BI.