Purpose
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.
Intended Audience
- Outreach Admins
- Outreach Managers
How to review, edit, and submit forecasts in Outreach
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.
Below, you will find an example of a team-level forecast view where the rep team rollup is $648.5k, while the manager’s submitted forecast is $615k. This may be because the manager isn’t optimistic about a deal that one of their reps has submitted and has chosen to omit it from their call.
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.
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.
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).
Rep Forecasting Experience
For an overview of the rep forecasting experience within Outreach, click here.
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