Salesforce offers its users a predictive way to view the future sales movements of their organization. This is done through Customizable Forecasting. Forecast categories are used in this process, and this post will define what these categories are.
Defining Forecasts and Forecasting Categories
Forecasts are a type of data that represents opportunity stages, dates and amounts. Forecast amounts are listed alongside their corresponding forecast categories.
Forecast categories defines the predictive actions that could happen to the opportunities listed on the Stage Name. Forecast categories work alongside Probability to provide an overview of how the stages of sales movements will come out. Here’s a list of the forecast categories used in Salesforce:
- Best Case – This category includes closed/won opportunity amounts, as well as amounts that are likely to get closed. Amounts in the Commit category also fall under Best Case.
- Commit – Included in this category are amounts that a user is confident about closing. This also includes closed/won opportunity amounts.
- Closed – Closed/won opportunities fall under this category.
- Pipeline – Amounts from opportunities that are still open fall under this category.
- Omitted – Amounts that will not contribute to the forecast are placed under this category.
Forecasting Category Considerations
In Customizable Forecasting, the Forecast Category and the Probability can be edited to change their values according to the specific business process it represents. But then, the Stages and the Status Category retains their original values. Changes will be visible in the reports, opportunity searches, list views, detail pages, and edit pages.
Forecasts always rely on how the values for the Opportunity Stage are mapped to the Opportunity and Forecast Category values. Opportunity Stage picklist values are automatically mapped to both their corresponding Probability and Forecast Category values. If the values under the Stage are edited, the values under their respective Probability and Forecast category will also be changed.