How to Use the Forecast Rollup

Objective

The purpose of this article is to provide Outreach Users with information about how to review, edit, and submit forecasts within the Outreach forecast rollup experience.

Applies To

• Outreach Admins
• Outreach Managers

Overview

When forecasting in Outreach, you can easily review, edit, and submit your call in a simple interface that gives you visibility down to each unique deal that makes up the forecast.

To access the forecasting feature from your Outreach home page, navigate to the “Forecast rollup” page in the global navigation.  This page will be available to you if you are a manager of a team in the user rollup.

Within the forecasting overview, you will see various cards and grid columns that are driven by your Outreach forecast configuration, depicting your forecast calls or other associated metrics that you want to track. In the example below, there are multiple forecast category-level calls (e.g., Commit, Best Case, and Pipeline). However, these are customizable based on your organization’s process and needs. 

If your organization has set up more than one forecast configuration, they will be listed as tabs across the top of the screen.  In the image below, there are separate forecasts for New ARR and Expansion Only.

Forecast Rollup

Each individual rep’s call (an editable forecast metric in this example) automatically rolls up to the next team in your organization’s user rollup (e.g., Forecast Call in the example below). From this level, the sales manager can choose to submit the rollup as their forecast call or enter a new number representing their forecast call.

Filter Opportunities as per metric filters

In the forecast view, users can click on any metric (e.g., closed, commit, best case etc). Upon clicking, the opportunity list automatically updates and gets filtered to display opportunities associated with the selected metric. You can customize the columns, add more filters & sort opportunities by amount, closed date or any other field.

Note that this functionality is supported only for opportunity forecasts.

Viewing a Rep’s Forecast

As a manager, you also have the ability to drill into a specific seller and review their forecast in detail to identify exactly which deals make up the forecast across the various call categories. To dive into additional details for a specific deal,  click on the deal name to access information such as deal health signals and activity history.

This opportunity grid view within the Forecast rollup page supports the same inline editing experience that users have on the main Opportunity page.

Submitting Your Forecast

Once you've finished reviewing your forecast call, click the Submit button to enter supporting comments, which will be saved along with your forecast and visible to others in your organization who can see this forecast. Managers above your team in the user rollup will have visibility to this submitted forecast.

Submitted notes can be viewed by hovering over the note icon & you can click on view all notes to view notes in the enlarged pop-up for better readability

Viewing Forecast History

Forecast submission history is tracked by sales period, forecast configuration, and the team at the user rollup level.  Each row shows a snapshot of all forecast metrics at the time the forecast was submitted, along with any notes.  This table is available for export to CSV.

See all the forecast metrics 

In case you have too many metrics defined, for eg: more than 6 & wants to all the metrics at once then you may click on the highlighted button as shown below:

How are my forecasting category values determined?

Forecast configuration and definitions reside in the Admin experience.  Any customer with an “admin” profile will be able to create, configure, and publish forecasts. Visibility of the created forecasts can be segmented by team/position in the user rollup and is defined by the Outreach admin. For more information on the Forecast admin experience, review Creating and Editing Forecasts in Outreach.

Submitting Forecasts for Future Time Periods

To submit a forecast for a future time period (e.g., Next Quarter), simply select the appropriate period from the Sales Period drop-down list, and then enter and submit your forecast.  

Viewing Last Period’s Forecast

To review your final forecast numbers from the last period, select the last period from the Sales Period drop-down list (e.g., Last Quarter).

Totals for the selected Opportunities

Select the opportunities from the checkbox as shown below to see the totals for the selected opportunities at the bottom of the table

Please see here for more details on how to see totals for a custom currency type field.

Rep Forecasting Experience

Rep forecasting experience is similar to manager forecasting, except the rollup table & rollup hierarchy selector as reps don't have any users reporting to them.

Forecast Inspection

The forecast metric deal inspection and change indicator features empowers sales managers to track and review changes effortlessly through visual cues such as symbols and colors, facilitating easy identification of forecast and opportunity field changes made by their teams. This history log records forecast metric modifications, ensuring accountability and inspectability for sales teams.

View Deals with a Metric

For forecast metrics that are comprised of some pipeline value (e.g. Best Case forecast category), users of forecasting can click on a metric card or a cell in the team rollup grid to see the deals included in that forecast metric.

Forecast Changes

Users have a visual indication of how each applicable forecast metric changed in the last 7 days and a tooltip experience to inspect a summary of the changes made on each day. 

Forecast changes are supported for forecast entry and pipeline filter metrics.  At this time, if a formula is used to create the forecast metric, then it will not display forecast changes.

Forecasting for Multi-Currency Org

Once multi-currency feature is enabled for your org, you would see the currency dropdown on the top right as shown below

By default, user preferred currency will be selected.

Switching the currency

In the currency dropdown, you would see the list of all the active currencies setup in your SFDC by the admin.

Let’s say you selected GBP, now all your metrics & rollups will get converted to GBP as per the dated conversion rates defined in your SFDC.

What gets converted to preferred currency?

• Forecast Metrics
• Opportunity list pop-up associated with a metric
• Forecast submissions
• Submission History
• Opportunity List on Opportunities tab

How are the conversion rates determined?

Calculated metrics

For calculated metrics, the close date field on each Opportunity is considered for the dated conversion rates setup in your SFDC, for eg: let’s say your corporate currency is USD & conversion rates for GBP are:

Any opportunities closing b/w 1st June to 30th June will follow the conversion rate of .85 GBP, where as opportunities closing on or after 1st July will follow the conversion rate of .75 GBP & accordingly the total converted value will be shown in the metrics

Manual user submission on forecast metrics

For forecast metrics where user input is allowed, the submission date of the forecast will be considered to determine the correct conversion rate as per the the dated conversion rates setup in your SFDC

For eg: forecast submitted b/w 1st June to 30th June will follow the conversion rate of .85 GBP, where as forecast submitted on or after 1st July will follow the conversion rate of .75 GBP

Quota

For quota conversion, we use the latest dated currency conversion rate for that particular sales period.