Chapter 8: Managing Sales Forecasts

Forecasting provides real-time insight for tracking the sales numbers against quotas, probabilities, plans, etc., which helps organization to fine-tune the organization-level sales process. For sales mangers forecast feature provides an overall picture of company sales pipeline, as well as those of each individual sales staff performance. Sales Representatives can use forecasting to meet/exceed quotas assigned to them and in turn increase company profits.

Note: In the Zoho CRM system you cannot consolidate the individual sales persons' forecasts and provide the organization-wide forecast.

You can perform the following operations in Forecasts module:

• Navigate forecasts
• Search forecasts (Alphabetical or Advanced search options)
• Create list views
• Create new forecasts (Form filling, quick create, or duplicate options)
• Associate forecast with other records
• View forecast reports
• Delete forecasts (individually or in bulk)

Navigating Forecasts

(Access Privilege: Read permission)

You can navigate the forecasts according to the status of the forecasts.

To navigate forecasts

1. Click the Forecasts tab.
2. In the Forecasts Home page, under the Forecast List section, select one of the views from Select View drop-down list to display the list of forecasts according to the status of the forecasts (For example, Contacted, Hot, Won, and others).
3.  In the Forecast List section, click the Start, Previous, Next, or End links to access the respective list of forecasts.

Searching Forecasts

(Access Privilege: Read permission)

You can search forecasts alphabetically are filling the required information in Search box.

To search forecasts

1. Click the Forecasts tab.
2. In the Forecasts Home page, under Search section, do one of the following:
3. • Specify the search criteria in the Search field and click the Go button. Or
   • Select one of the alphabetical search links.
3. In the Forecast List page, a list of forecasts is displayed as per search criteria.

Creating List Views

(Access Privilege: Read/Write permission)

In the Forecast List you can create/modify/delete the custom views, sort columns in the list view (ascending/descending order), search the records available in the current list view. In addition, you can modify some of the columns in standard list views. By default, the following standard list views are available in the Forecasts module:

• All Forecasts
• My Forecasts

Note: User created list views are displayed under User Created Views category in View drop-down list.

To create custom views

1. Click the Forecasts tab.
2. In the Forecasts Home page, under Forecast List section, click the Create View link.
   
   

   Note: Under the Forecast List section some of the standard list views are displayed. You can only rearrange the order of the columns and add more columns.

   
   
3. In the Create New View page, do the following:
   • In the View Information section, specify name of the custom view in the View Name (mandatory) field. The custom view name appears in the View drop-down list. You can also set the custom view as a default list view by selecting the Set as Default View check box.
     
   • In the Specify Criteria section, specify the filter criteria. For more details refer to the Specifying List View Criteria section.
   • In the Choose Columns section, select the columns to be displayed in the List View. For more details refer to the Selecting List View Columns section.
   • In the Accessibility Details section, select the users to whom custom list view has to be enabled. For more details refer to the Enabling View Access section.
4. Click Save. The custom list view is displayed in the View drop-down list.

Creating Forecasts

(Access Privilege: Read/Write permission)

In Zoho CRM, you can create forecasts for a financial year and for each quarter by entering data manually in forecast details.

If you have already created forecast for a specific quarter, you cannot create forecast for the same quarter. For example, first you have created a forecast for the Quarter 1 in Year 2006, then you cannot create a new forecast in the same quarter. You can only modify the existing quarter details.

Note: You cannot customize the fields in forecast module.

List of Standard Forecast-related Fields

In the Forecast: Edit form, you need to specify the forecast-related information. The following table provides descriptions of the various standard fields in the form.

By default, the person who creates the forecast owns the forecast. If you want to assign the forecast to a different user, select the user name from the Change Owner field in the forecast details view.

To create forecasts

1. Click the New Forecast link.
2. In the New Forecast: page, select the mandatory forecast-related fields, such as Year and Quarter.
   
   

   Note: The Year and Quarter fields are mandatory. Refer to the List of Standard Forecast-related Fields section for more details.

   
   
3. Click Save. Forecast details for the three months and forecast history are displayed in the forecast details page.

Associating Forecasts with Other Records

(Access Privilege: Read/Write permissions)

After creating forecasts, you can add potentials in each month. Once the potential is closed it is automatically displayed under forecast history. All the potentials created/followed-up are displayed under sales person's monthly forecast list.

To associate forecast with other records

1. In the Forecast: <Forecast Name> page, you can update the following details:
2. • Months list Potentials: To display the potentials in each month. You can also add new potential to the month.
   • Forecast History: To display the historical data of the forecasts.
2. After updating the associated records, you can move to the next record.

Viewing Reports

(Access Privilege: Read/Write permission)

You can directly access some of the standard reports pertaining to forecasts from the Forecasts Reports section. By default, the following reports are displayed under Forecasts module:

• Quarterly Sales Forecast
• Forecast History
  

To view forecast report 

1. Click the Forecasts tab.
2. In the Forecasts: Home page under the Forecasts Reports section click the required report link. The report is displayed in Reports page, which can be further customized as per your requirements.

For more details about reports customization refer to Chapter 19: Working with Reports.

Deleting Forecasts

(Access Privilege: Read/Write/Delete permission)

Occasionally you may need to remove some of the unnecessary forecasts from the Zoho CRM system for a better user experience. You may consider removing forecasts that are not useful for future reference.

Warning: The forecast details are deleted permanently, hence use the delete operation carefully.

To delete forecasts individually

1. Click the Forecasts tab.
2. In the Forecasts: Home page under the Forecast List section, select the forecast.
3. In the Forecast: <Forecast Name> page, click the Delete button.
4. In the Confirmation dialog, click OK to remove the forecast permanently.

To delete forecasts in bulk

1. Click the Forecasts tab.
2. In the Forecasts: Home page under the Forecast List section, select the check boxes corresponding to the forecasts to be removed.
3. Click the Delete button.
4. In the Confirmation dialog, click OK to remove the selected forecasts permanently.