Gauging the potential of deals in your pipeline and being able to use that to project revenue for a given month/quarter can be handy when it comes to assigning and fulfilling sales quotas. With Freshsales, users can use the Sales Forecast functionality to execute the same.  

In Freshsales, all sales quotas and forecasted revenues can be accessed from the Sales Forecast dashboard.

• Why should I enable the Sales Forecast feature?
  The Sales Forecast feature allows sales managers and reps to keep track of all their numbers from a single dashboard and stay informed of achievements. This helps in planning the sales operations for a month and also enables them to target only those deals that have a likelihood of being successful. This greatly helps optimize efforts and prevents any surprises at the end of the month or quarter when some deals may fall through despite all efforts.
  
  
  
• How to enable Sales Forecast?

In Freshsales, the Sales Forecast feature is powered by Freddy. To enable Sales forecast, 

1. Go to Admin Settings > Sales Forecast. 
2. Click Enable Forecast Categories toggle. This enables the Sales Forecast functionality for your Freshsales account. 
   
   Freshsales offers two types of Forecast categories:
   
   
   1. Commit Deals that sales reps are confident of closing in the month or quarter, or by the expected close date.
   2. Best-case: Deals that sales reps are optimistic about, but are not willing to commit to it just yet. Deals that have an expected close date can be considered best-case.

Once the forecast feature is enabled, sales reps can earmark a deal as a Commit or Best-case.

3. Turn the toggle on for Freddy’s Deal Insights and Commit Suggestions. This enables Freddy to track the pattern of your deals and detect the ones that are likely to convert and, therefore, suitable for sales reps to commit.
   
   

• Adding a quota
  Setting sales quota helps you quantify your team’s sales performance and help motivate your team towards meeting the revenue targets. To add a quota to a team, click the Add Quota button, add the quota details such as period and relevant teams, and click Confirm. This allows you to add a quota. To learn more about quotas, refer to this article. 
  
  
• Committing to Deals
  Freshsales enables sales reps to take up deals that they are confident of closing in the given month or quarter and add it as a part of their deliverables. When the Sales forecast feature is enabled, users can “Commit” to deals by clicking the Commit button. To identify the deals to commit to, they can use Freddy suggestions.
  
• Understanding the Sales Forecast Dashboard: The Sales Forecast Dashboard allows managers to get an overview of the sales cycle to understand ongoing deals. The Sales Forecast Dashboard consists of the following sections:
  
  
  • Sales quota view: The Sales quota view contains details about the quota assigned to the team. It contains the following columns.
    
    
    • Quota: A sales quota is the benchmark value that is assigned by the manager to the team.
      
      Optional: The field also carries details about the product name and the territory for which the quota value has been assigned. 

• Won: This field contains the sum value of all won deals. It also indicates the percentage contribution of the won deal amount to the quota.
  
  
• Committed Forecast: This field talks about the sum of committed deals. This value is subject to change based on the manager’s approval. A manager can override the committed deal value and motivate the sales rep to commit to higher deal value. Sales reps can choose deals that have been suggested by Freddy as Likely to Close and commit to them. To learn more about ‘committing deals’, refer to this article.
  
  
• Best-case Forecast: This field displays the sum value of all deals that have been marked Best-case forecast. Deals that are suggested by Freddy as Trending are usually marked as best-case. To meet increased quotas, sales reps can commit to deals that have been marked Best-case.
  
  
  
• Drilldown view: The Drill-down section corresponds to values clicked on the sales goal section. For example, if you clicked on the ‘Committed’ value field on the sales quota section, you will be presented with all deals that match this criteria in the drill-down view. The drill-down view has the following columns: 
  
  
  
  • Forecast category column: Indicates whether a deal has been earmarked as Committed/Best-case by the sales rep
    
    
  • Deal Insights column: Displays Freddy’s insight about the deal. Shows whether the deal is ‘Likely to close’ or ‘Trending’
    
    

You can resize the sections to bring increase the display size of one of the either views

• Permissions for access: Access to the Sales Forecast feature is governed by the Roles and Permissions. To configure the permissions, go to Admin Settings > Roles > and scroll down to the Sales Forecast section. Click the checkbox to grant permissions for a role. You can also regulate access to view sales forecasts. You can opt between User-level, Team-level, and Company-level access.