Sales Forecasting Reports from your CRM
The Sales Forecasting Reports Writer is a dedicated report writer for producing sales forecasts of your Opportunities.
With the Forecast Report Writer you can use pre-defined reports, create your own custom reports, and download reports to your screen, or export as a CSV file.
The Forecast Report Writer is available in all of our CRM Price Plans. Advanced Reporting options are available in the Enterprise plan, giving additional reporting fields and functionality to report on different value fields and activity dates.
The Forecast Report Writer can be accessed from the Reports option on the main menu.
Pre-defined Forecast Reports
When you start with your CRM you’ll find some pre-defined reports that might be useful to you. You can run these reports or edit them to suit your needs.
To run an existing report, simply select the report from the summary list and click the blue arrow in the right hand column. Then select the output type required, i.e. if you want the report to display on your screen or as CSV file. Then click “Run Report”.
Run Report
Click the Run Report button to have the report run and shown in your browser window. Note that if it’s a large report containing more than a thousand lines, this could take some time and it would be better to download it as a data file.
Run-time Fields
All forecast reports are configured to automatically prompt you to update the report start date each time you run the report.
With the report displayed on your screen, you can select how many rows you want to show and you can click through on the account records, as required, by clicking on the account name.
Dashboard Widgets
You can add your reports to your dashboard widgets so you can quickly edit and run the reports as you wish. The My Reports widget selects your 5 most recently run reports. To add reports to the Company Reports widget, set the option “Include in dashboard widget Company Reports” to “yes”, when creating/editing a report.
Report Log
Report Title: The title that you would like displayed on the report
Scope: You can report on data from just your own Accounts, or from your User Group’s Accounts, from all Accounts, depending upon your security settings. Account and User data is available in each Scope.
Report Owner: Report Owner defaults to the creator or you can change this to another user.
Forecast Value Field: With Advanced Reporting (Enterprise plan), instead of using Opportunity.Value this field allows you to use any numeric field. Useful if you don’t want to use Opportunity Lines and just have a value on the Opportunity, or if you want to use another field on the Opportunity Line, such as a base or foreign currency value.
Forecast Date Phase Field: With Advanced Reporting (Enterprise plan), instead of using the Close Date to phase the forecast on, you can use any date on the Account, Opportunity or Opportunity Line. This is useful when you have an Opportunity that you want to split across multiple periods – you have a custom date field on each Opportunity Line and split the Opportunity over multiple lines, each with different dates.
Include non-forecast opportunities: Set this box to “no” to report only Opportunities with a Forecast value. Click the toggle to “yes” if you would like your report to include all opportunities.
Include in dashboard widget “Company Reports”: Click the toggle to “yes” to include the report in your dashboard widget.
Months and Values
Number of Months: Choose between 1 and 48 months for the reporting period.
Unweighted Values: This shows the Unweighted values of the Opportunities, calculated as Quantity x Unit Price
Weighted Values: This shows the Weighted values of the Opportunities, calculated as Quantity x Unit Price x Probability
Opportunity Count: This shows the number of Opportunities
Months: This shows Months as columns, starting from the Start Month up to the Number of Months selected
Quarters: This shows any Quarters that occur in the range of months as determined by the Start Month and the Number of Months. Quarters are determined by the Year End defined in Settings / System Settings / Company Settings.
Half Years: This shows any Half Years that occur in the range of months as determined by the Start Month and the Number of Months
Years: This shows any Year Ends that occur in the range of months as determined by the Start Month and the Number of Months
You can select both Months and Quarters or Half Years or Years at once to provide column subtotals
N.B. All opportunities that close in a Quarter, Half Year or Year will always be shown regardless of the Start Month selected.
Report Permissions
Access: If you are using the User Permissions Levels feature, select who should have access to the report using the dropdown list.
Permission Level: If you are using the User Permissions Levels feature, select what permission level you want to grant using the dropdown list.
Available Fields
Available Fields: The tabs show a the list of fields available to report on. Use your mouse to drag and drop the fields you wish to report on into the Selected Fields table. With the Free, Starter and Professinal plan you can choose up to 10 fields to report on from the Account, Opportunity and User records. With the Enterprise plan, you can choose up to 20 fields.
Subtotal: Choose to subtotal your report by ticking the checkbox adjacent to the Field Name you wish to subtotal by. For example, to subtotal your opportunity by your sales people select User.Intials.
Report Buttons
Run Report: Runs the report, allowing you to first select an output type, e.g. to your screen, PDF or as a CVS file.
Save: Save the report to your Report Summary Table.
Creating a new Forecast Report – Step by Step
To create a new Forecast Report, on the Report Summary Table, click ‘+ Add Forecast’.
Report Log
First, complete the Report Log by giving the report a title and selecting the Scope. The Scope lets you select just your own accounts, your group’s accounts or all accounts.
If you are using Advanced Reporting (Enterprise plan) you can select to report on either the total Opportunity Value or with a breakdown by Opportunity Line Value. The Forecast Date Phase Field allows you to run reports from various activity dates, for example, Account.CreatedDate or Opportunity.CreatedDate.
You can select whether to include your non-forecast opportunities and, if you are likely to be running the report frequently, you might want to add the report to your dashboard widgets.
Months and Values
Next, select the options of how you want your report to be displayed. You can choose how many months to report on, whether you want the data displayed by month, quarter, half-year etc. and whether to include Weighted or Unweighted Opportunities. Selecting “yes” for Opportunity Count will include the number of Opportunities you have open.
N.B. You can select both Months and Quarters or Half Years or Years at once to provide column subtotals.
All opportunities that close in a Quarter, Half Year or Year will always be shown regardless of the Start Month selected.
Report Permission
If you are using the User Permissions Levels feature (available in Professional and Enterprise plans) you can select who has access to the report. If you are giving access to other users you can select whether they are able to simply run the report or if they also have permission to edit the report.
Building the Report
The fields you can report on will display the list shown in Available Fields. They are grouped on different tabs so you can find what you want more easily, or you can use the search box.
To build your report, simply “drag and drop” the fields you want to report on from Available Fields to Selected Fields, on the right-hand side. To “drag and drop” click your mouse on the arrow icon in the left-hand column, and slide the field across.
In the Selected Fields table to can choose to subtotal on fields by cklicking the Subtotal checkbox.
Save the Report
Once you have all the fields you need, click Save at the top of the screen. Once saved, a new button of Run Report will appear.
Run Report
Clicking Run Report will bring up a box where you can select the Start Month for your report and the Output Type, i.e. to your screen a CSV file.
Click Run Report and your report will appear on your screen or present you with a download file.
