Forecast Building Blocks

This article covers the field types and configuration options you can leverage to build Forecast Tabs.
 

Types of Forecast Fields

• Quota
• Call
• Read-Only CRM Data Field
• Reference Field
• Composite Field
• Adaptive Revenue Metrics (ARM) Field
• Additional Forecast Capabilities: Relative Date Ranges

 

Quota Field

A Quota Field allows you to upload a goal and track progress against that goal.
 

Quota Field Configuration Options

 

Label	Change the label of "Quota" to anything you'd like (i.e. Goal, Plan, etc.)
Time Frame	Set the Quota Field to be a monthly goal or a quarterly goal.
Display Gap	Allow an additional column to display the gap between what you've closed and your Quota.

Call Field

A Call Field allows you to enter your call, or estimate, for where you think you’re going to finish by the end of the time period. 

Click the edit icon on a field, make your call update, and save:  
 

Read-Only CRM Data Field

A Read-Only Field displays additional reference information from CRM in the Grid, making it easier to see all of the necessary information in a single view. You can't edit read-only fields.

Reference Field

A Reference Field can display the information from a field in another Forecast Tab.

 

Updating Your Call and Other Reference Fields

When you look at the grid, all the editable fields have an edit button     in the top right of the field. To update the field directly, just click that edit button and make your changes. 

 

Composite Field

A Composite Field is a field whose value is the aggregate of multiple other fields. Here are some examples of the different kinds of Composite Fields we can calculate:
 

• Monthly forecast calls sum to a forecast call for the quarter.
• Forecast calls for New Business, Renewals, Upsells, and Churn sum to an overall forecast call for the quarter.
• Forecast calls for different product lines sum to a summary forecast call for the quarter.

 

Composite Field Configuration Options

 

Strict	The value in the Composite Field must be the sum of the components. Strict Composite Fields are not editable.
Not Strict	The value in the Composite Field may be different than the sum of the components. Not Strict Composite Fields are editable. Users can copy the strict sum into the field or enter an amount of their choosing

 

A Note on Read Only Fields

Read Only Fields are now allowed as components in subtype compositions. One or more components can be readonly fields — this means you can have components be all readonly fields, all forecast fields or a combination of both readonly and forecast field types. 

 

Adaptive Revenue Metrics Field

An Adaptive Revenue Metrics (ARM) Field uses simple arithmetic on Quota, Call, and Read-Only Fields to calculate key metrics. Here are some examples of the different kinds of ARMs we can calculate:
 

Use Case	Example Adaptive Revenue Metric
What is the coverage of my pipeline to my total forecast?	Showing a coverage of 4.5x or 450% when you have $2.2M in total pipeline and have a forecast of $490K.
What's my pipeline coverage against my quota?	Showing a coverage of 3.2x or 320% when you have $1.6M in total pipeline and have a quota of $500k.
What's the difference between our Base ARR and our Renewal ARR?	Showing a difference of $1M when Base ARR (CRM Totals) is $2M and Renewal ARR (CRM Totals) is $1M.
What's the weighted forecast with an 80% weight?	Showing a $800K weighted forecast when you’ve forecasted $1M against a 0.8 weight.
What's our expected forecast coverage for the entire year?	Showing a 95% coverage when you’ve closed $800K YTD, Forecast $150K for Q4, and you have a quota of $1M.
What's our gap to the forecast (or quota)?	Showing a gap of $500k when your total closed-won amount is $35.5M and your Forecast $36M. Showing a gap of $2.5M when your total closed-won amount is $35.5M and your quota is $38M.
What's the difference between our forecast and our quota?	Showing a difference of $700k when you're Forecast $3.3M against a quota of $4M.
What's the average amount for our open opportunities in Commit (or Best Case, or Pipeline)?	Showing $600k as the average deal size of the open opportunities in Commit for the quarter.
What's the Average Selling Price (ASP) for our closed opportunities?	Showing $450k as the average deal size of opportunities that have been closed as won in the quarter so far.

Additional Forecast Capabilities: Relative Date Ranges

Relative date ranges in Forecast allow you to easily access any set of deals (i.e. next quarter, the next 2 quarters including this quarter, or the same quarter last year) relative to the quarter you've selected to power up your future pipeline or historical performance use cases in Forecast.
 

 

 

Here are some examples of what you can do with relative date ranges:

 

Have visibility into future quarter deals that impact your workflow:

• Example 1: Show me Q2 commit deals on its own when we’re in Q1 so I can potentially pull in those deals into my current quarter forecast.
• Example 2: Show me the combined pipeline for Q2 & Q3 when we’re in Q2 so I can have visibility to my full pipeline coverage across a rolling 2-quarter period.
• Example 3: Show me the total pipeline for Q3 & Q4 separately when we’re in Q2 so I can have a sense of the pipeline we're building for future quarters.

Have visibility into historical deals that impact your workflow:

• Example 4: Show me Q3 2019 closed-won deals when we’re in Q3 2020 so I can have a sense of seasonality.
• Example 5: Show me Q3 2019 - Q2 2020 closed won deals when we’re in Q3 2020 so I can see the performance of the last year relative to the current quarter.