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Creating a forecast for yourself
To work with forecasting, the System Administrator must give you rights to access the Forecasts tab. A quarterly forecast is based on existing opportunities whose Close By date falls into the quarter you're preparing your forecast for.
To prepare a forecast for Q4 (October to December) this year:
- Click My CRMForecasts to display your list of existing forecasts.
- If there is no entry in the list yet for this quarter, click New Forecast. The Forecast Entry page is displayed, defaulting to the current quarter.
- Set Select Required Quarter to the quarter you want to enter a forecast for. The Forecast Entry page is refreshed to show the months in the selected quarter. Opportunities are listed under the month in which their Close By date falls.
- The forecast scenario for every opportunity is set to Exclude by default. This means that none of the opportunity forecast values have been included in the forecast figures yet.
- The Weighted Forecast is the Forecast figure multiplied by the Certainty %.
- Regardless of what currency the forecast figures were entered in, they are converted to the forecast currency specified in the top panel. The forecast currency is specified by the System Administrator for each user. If the user sets their preferred currency to a different currency in My CRM | Preferences, the forecast still uses the defined forecast currency. However, the user can view the totals in the top Summary panel in their preferred currency as well.
- The pipeline figure in the Forecast Summary page is the total weighted forecast by month of everything in the pipeline, regardless of the scenario.
- Update the forecast scenarios against the opportunities that you included in the forecast. If you do not want to include an opportunity, leave the scenario set to Exclude.
- Commit indicates this business will definitely close. The weighted forecast figure is included in the Commit, Likely, and Best Case fields.
- When you update the forecast scenarios, click the button against each month to display the effect the scenario has on your forecast in the Forecast Entry panel.
- Update the forecast scenarios against the remaining opportunities that you want to include in the forecast.
- Likely indicates that the business will probably close. The weighted forecast figure is included in the Likely and Best Case fields.
- Best Case indicates that the business may close. The weighted forecast figure is included in the Best Case field only.
- If you have the appropriate rights, you can manually override the forecast figures in the Forecast Summary panel. You can also add your monthly sales quota for comparison against the forecast figures. Click Save to save the overrides you have made.
- Click Continue to return to the Forecast list.
- Click New Forecast to add a forecast for another quarter and work through the steps described above. Otherwise, to go back and edit the forecast you have been working on, click the forecast in the Forecast list.
See Also:
Submitting a forecast
Sales forecasting terminology
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