Scenario, the lanes of a plan
Budget commits, Forecast moves, Actual arrives. Each lane has its own time range, and that range, not security, is the usual reason a cell will not take a number.
Note: In Planning, Oracle's budgeting and forecasting module, a Scenario is a lane of data: Budget, Forecast, Actual. Each lane has its own time range and rules about what can change. This page is how scenarios work and how to cut them.
The whole module is mapped on the Planning index.
◆ The three lanes, budget, forecast, actual, and the range mechanism.
| Lane | What it is for, and its edge |
|---|---|
| Budget | The committed lane: 842.0M revenue in the sample world. Its time range is the fiscal year, and once approved it should stop moving; version discipline, next page, is what enforces that. |
| Forecast | The living lane: 851.4M as of June, a 9.4M and 1.1% move against budget. Rolling ranges are steered by substitution variables, not by editing the scenario every month. |
| Actual | Loaded, not planned. Its presence in the cube is what makes budget-versus-actual a retrieval instead of a reconciliation project. |
A scenario's start and end period bound where data entry is allowed. This range, not security, explains most blocked-cell support tickets. And every approval unit, an entity in a scenario and version, rides a scenario: starting approvals for Budget FY26 touches nothing in Forecast, which is why the approval status report always names its lane.
The problem: The forecast-against-budget comparison is rebuilt by hand every month.
What we build: The nightly export carries Scenario as a plain column, and the variance view is built once in your warehouse.
What you get: 851.4M against 842.0M, and the 9.4M move behind it, refresh themselves every night.
- lane
- A scenario. Data with its own range and rules.
- range
- Scenario start to end period. The typing boundary.
- rolling
- The range that moves by variable, not by edit.
- 9.4M
- The sample forecast move. 851.4 against 842.0, +1.1%.