- [Narrator] Forecasts are a relatively new feature

in Salesforce,

which allow you to predict sales into the future

versus customizing reports to create forecasts.

Forecasts allow you to predict your sales cycle

from pipeline to closed sales

and to manage sales expectations

throughout your organization.

A forecast is a visual representation of expected revenue

based on the sum of a set of opportunities.

So if you already have opportunities

in your Salesforce pipeline,

you will see them in the forecast tab.

This is an area that your Salesforce administrator

can assist with, but I know how important forecasts are,

so I want to show you the basics.

You can enable multiple types of forecasts in your account.

Each type of forecast has its own quota and adjustment data.

Sales managers can look at an individual forecast,

forecast by team, revenue, and by opportunities.

If you're a sales manager,

you may want to view team and individual forecasts.

In fact, this is a great tool

for managers to review with members of their team

if they have a weekly status meeting.

Forecast is a tab in the main navigation bar in Salesforce.

So if you've not yet set up Forecast,

you'll simply see the demo information

that Salesforce has already provided in your account.

You will see the Forecast setup tab

in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.

Let's click on that now.

So you'll see here Forecast has been enabled,

if it hasn't, you can simply check that box.

You'll see forecast types,

and you'll see a few different things.

One of the most important here

is enable forecast adjustments.

Adjustments are important

because there are always factors that are unique

that can not be factored into a forecast.

Maybe you need to manually adjust a forecast

because you know a key team member

is leaving at one of the companies you put in your forecast,

or maybe a company is in the process of being acquired,

so there's a lot of uncertainty

about the future of the relationship.

These are common issues in sales,

so Salesforce allows both the manager and the individual rep

to make adjustments as necessary.

You'll also see enable cumulative forecast rollups.

By default, the forecast area displays one type of forecast,

closed committed best case,

but you can choose to display cumulative rollup columns,

which include opportunities in more than one category.

You can also configure the default display.

So for example, you can look at monthly or quarterly,

you can look at the current quarter or one quarter ago,

and you can display as many quarters

or months as you choose.

There's also a check box to show quotas.

This can be very helpful

if you want to see quota attainment for an individual

or a team.

Now I can hit the Save button

and you may get a warning

about changing your forecast settings.

Salesforce always likes to inform you

of any changes you're making it

and how that will affect your data.

I'm fine with this, this is initial setup,

so I'm going to click, Okay.

And now I've set up a simple forecast.

So that's a quick review of how forecasts are used

and how to view them in Salesforce.

So take a few minutes

to play around with forecasting for your organization.

(soft music)