Define Forecast Rollups and Default Date Ranges

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Describe the two types of forecast rollups and the advantage of each.
Choose a forecast rollup type for your team.
Define a default forecast date range for your team.

What’s a Forecast Rollup?

To best meet your business needs, you can choose between two ways of showing how opportunities roll up into forecast amounts: by individual forecast category or by cumulative forecast.

Type of Rollup

This Type Combines...

Individual forecast category

The opportunities from each forecast category into separate forecast amounts for each category.

With this type, each total and subtotal represents opportunities from only one of the forecast categories. You get a clear idea of where your opportunities are in the sales cycle right now.

Cumulative forecast

Opportunities from multiple forecast categories into cumulative forecast amounts.

For your sales pipeline, the forecast columns show cumulative amounts from the opportunities in:

The named forecast category
Subsequent categories(Open pipeline rollups include open opportunities only.)

This view makes it easy for sales teams to see the total numbers that they’re likely to bring in without combining the category totals themselves.

Let’s compare two views of the same situation. We use US dollars in this example. Of course, you can choose the currency that’s relevant to your forecasts. Individual Forecast Rollups

	Closed	Commit	Best Case	Pipeline
Forecast amounts	$50	$150	$100	$200
Opportunity amounts	$50	$50	$50	$50
		$50	$50	$50
		$50		$50
				$50

Cumulative Forecast Rollups

	Closed Only	Commit Forecast	Best Case Forecast	Open Pipeline
Forecast amounts	$50	$200	$300	$450
Opportunity amounts	$50	$50	$50	$50
		$50	$50	$50
		$50		$50
				$50

Nigel wants to show cumulative forecast rollups. Now it’s time for Lauren to set it up. This is easy: On the Forecasts Settings page, select Enable cumulative forecast rollups and click Save.

The Forecasts Settings page with Enable cumulative forecast rollups selected

Lauren gets a warning about deleting forecasting data. It’s OK for her to accept it and move on, because she doesn’t have any forecasting data yet. At I understand that this action will delete data, check the box and click Change and Delete.

Set a Default Forecast Date Range

The forecasts page shows forecast amounts for individual months or quarters and a range of months or quarters, depending on the settings you choose. Typically, the default date range you select coincides with your team’s sales cycle.

For example, in November you can select “Current month” for your beginning month and “3 months” for number of periods displayed. Now your team sees monthly forecast data for November to January. They can also see forecast amounts for the total for 3 months.

On the forecasts page, your team members can use the default range or set a different range for their own forecasts.

Time for Lauren to set the default range that Nigel requested: 6 months, starting with the current month.

On the Forecasts Settings page, under Configure the Default Forecast Display, select Monthly as the forecasting period.
For Starting on, select Current month.
For Display, select 6 months as the number of periods to show, and then click Save.

Now Lauren’s team can see cumulative rollups and forecast data for 6 months starting this month. They’re almost ready to start forecasting!

Nigel’s forecasts page reflecting the date range and rollup selections Lauren made in Forecasts Settings

Now you can give it a try.

Topics

Define Forecast Rollups and Default Date Ranges

Learning Objectives

What’s a Forecast Rollup?

Set a Default Forecast Date Range

Resources