Forecasting allows sales managers to predict how much income is projected for a specific time period. Each opportunity stage has a probability that ties into the forecast categories. Salesforce defines the forecast categories as follows:
- Best Case includes the amount you are likely to close, closed-won opportunities, and opportunities in the Commit category.
- Closed includes the total for closed-won opportunities.
- Commit includes the amount you are fairly sure you will close.
- Omitted means the opportunity does not contribute to your forecast.
- Pipeline includes all open opportunities.
The following screenshot shows you how the forecast looks for the GenePoint deal, which is in the Prospecting stage. To get to this page, I navigated to the Forecasts tab:
The deal shows up in the Pipeline category since it is not yet closed and is in a lower Prospecting stage...
