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Overlay Operations: Scale, Override, Offset

Galdera supports three types of overlay adjustments, each suited to different planning scenarios.

Scale raises or lowers the baseline forecast by a percentage. In the input table, type the percentage directly — "25" means +25%, "-10" means -10%, and "0" means no change.

  • Example: entering "10" in a Scale cell on Subscription Revenue applies a +10% uplift across the selected period
  • Useful for modeling growth rates, price increases, or volume changes

Override replaces the baseline forecast value entirely with a fixed number. Use this when you have a specific target or commitment.

  • Example: Overriding Headcount to 250 for Q3 when you have a firm hiring plan
  • Useful for budget commitments, contracted revenue, or known one-time values

Offset adds or subtracts a fixed amount from the baseline forecast. Use this for incremental adjustments.

  • Example: An offset of +$200,000 on Marketing Spend to reflect a new campaign budget
  • Useful for modeling specific dollar-amount changes on top of the existing plan

A rate per period, or a total to spread? The Distribute toggle

For Override and Offset, the number you type is read as a rate for the table's granularity — "$500 per month", not a bare $500. The Distribute toggle decides what is done with that rate. The same number can differ by a large factor depending on which way it is set, so it is worth being deliberate.

Distribute off (the default) applies the rate to every period the overlay covers. $500/month across January to June adds $500 in each of the six months. If the forecast itself runs at a finer grain than the table, the rate is converted down — $500/month on a daily forecast lands roughly $16.44 a day.

Distribute on turns the rate into a single total and spreads it. $500/month across January and February is $1,000 in total, split across everything the overlay matches rather than added month after month.

"Everything the overlay matches" means the forecast rows inside its date range that pass its dimension filters — across both time and dimension slices. Each row's share is proportional to its baseline value, so a product carrying 60% of the matched baseline absorbs 60% of the total. Where the matched baseline sums to zero there is nothing to divide proportionally, and the overlay contributes nothing.

Distribute is unavailable for Scale — a percentage has nothing to split.

The toggle sits in the input table's own settings, next to its granularity, and belongs to that table rather than to the overlay as a whole — an overlay holding two input tables can have it set one way on one and the other way on the other. To change it on an overlay that already exists, open the overlay and set it on the table itself.

  • "Hire 5 people a month through Q3" → Offset, Monthly, Distribute off. Each month gets 5.
  • "We have $1M of extra marketing budget for the region this year" → Offset, Yearly, Distribute on. The $1M lands once across the year, spread over the region in proportion to existing spend.