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Sale Opportunity Forecasting

Last updated on Sep 22, 2024

Sale Opportunity Forecast in Simply CRM

Introduction

The Sale Opportunity Forecast feature in Simply CRM is designed to help organizations manage and predict current and future sales opportunities. This tool provides insights into your company’s overall sales pipeline, allowing you to view opportunities by team, individual users, and specific stages. It also supports advanced configurations like financial year settings, targets, and opportunity type mappings for more accurate forecasting.

Features of the Sale Opportunity Forecast

Forecast Hierarchy

Simply CRM's forecast allows you to configure teams and users hierarchically, making it easier to manage forecasting across different levels of the organization. The hierarchy visualization includes:

  • Administrator: Shown at the top with all users as subordinates.

  • Vertical Connection: Displays users at the same level.

  • Horizontal Connection: Indicates senior-subordinate relationships.

  • Authorization Levels: Darker blue boxes indicate higher authorization, while lighter blue boxes represent lower authorization.

You can easily add subordinates by hovering over a user and clicking the "+" button, or remove users with the delete button.

FY (Financial Year) Configuration

The forecast includes customizable Financial Year (FY) Configuration options:

  • Period: Choose between monthly or quarterly periods.

  • Number of Periods: Set the number of periods in your financial year.

  • FY Start Date: Define the start date for the financial year to align forecasts with your fiscal periods.

Sales Stage Mapping

This feature allows you to map each sales stage to a broader category (e.g., Pipeline, Best Case, Committed, Closed). This helps ensure accurate reporting by categorizing opportunities consistently across your teams.

Opportunity Type Mapping

Similar to sales stage mapping, opportunity type mapping allows you to categorize opportunities (e.g., New Business, Resale). This categorization improves forecasting accuracy and reporting clarity.

Targets

You can assign targets for each financial year per sales representative or team. These targets can be based on opportunity type or other custom criteria. To adjust a target, simply click on the value, type in the new amount, and click anywhere on the screen to save.

Understanding the Forecast Report

The Forecast Report is where users and managers can view the forecast data in detail. Here’s how it works:

  • View Forecast: Clicking this button opens the forecast report.

  • User and Sales Team List: Located in the left sidebar, this displays a list of users and their teams.

  • Sort by User: Clicking on a user reveals a "speedometer" style graph and their progress.

  • Sort by Period: The period dropdown allows you to sort the report by the financial periods (e.g., months or quarters) configured during setup.

Under the Best Case Chart, you'll find a list view of opportunities, which can be expanded to show details by sales stage or user. You can also sort the opportunities by periods, users, or teams to get a clear overview of the forecast.

Conclusion

The Sale Opportunity Forecast in Simply CRM provides an intuitive and powerful tool for managing and predicting sales performance. By configuring financial periods, sales stages, and opportunity types, you can generate accurate forecasts that help teams stay on track with their targets.

For more information or assistance with setting up your forecast, please reach out to our support team.