Forecasting

A forecast is a frozen snapshot of pipeline at a moment in time. One record per owner per period — typically one per sales rep per quarter or per month. You build a trend (“how did our Q3 number change week-over-week?”) by stacking snapshots, not by re-reading live opportunity data.

This page is about the forecast object that stores those snapshots. For the AI conversation that generates a forecast narrative, see AI Copilot → Revenue Forecasting.

What lives on a forecast record

Pipeline, best-case, commit and closed are independent buckets — they answer different questions:

• Pipeline — every open deal in this period, regardless of confidence.
• Best case — deals the rep believes are winnable with a stretch effort.
• Commit — deals the rep is willing to put their name on (≥ 80% probability by convention).
• Closed — already won; cannot move.

How periods are derived

You enter period and period_start; the system computes the rest. For a quarterly forecast starting 2026-07-01:

• period_end → 2026-09-30
• period_label → Q3 2026

So you'll never see a record labelled “2026-07-01 through ???” — only the human label. The list view and dashboards group by period_label directly.

How forecasts get created

There are three sources, recorded in the source field:

1. Scheduled — a nightly job (built on the platform's flow engine) snapshots every rep's pipeline. This is the spine of the historical trend.
2. AI — the Copilot skill generates a forecast from current pipeline + recent stage moves + similar past deals. The conversation transcript is stored alongside the record.
3. Manual — a manager enters a number directly. Used for adjustments and overrides.

You can have all three for the same owner/period — they sit next to each other in the trend chart, so disagreements are visible.

What you do with them

• Roll-up dashboards — Sales dashboard groups by period_label and sums commit_amount across the team.
• Trend — pick an owner and a period and chart commit_amount over the created_at of every snapshot. Sudden drops trigger the “why did commit fall ¥800k this week?” conversation.
• Attainment — closed_amount / quota is computed in the report layer; no dedicated field.
• AI grounding — the AI agent reads recent snapshots to ground its narrative in real movement, not imagined deals.

Who can edit

Forecasts inherit the standard CRM permission model:

• Sales reps see and edit their own forecasts.
• Sales managers see and edit forecasts for everyone in their territory (via the role hierarchy).
• Sales operations see all forecasts and can override any number.
• All edits are tracked in the platform audit log — every commit change is attributed and time-stamped.

Common questions

Should I snapshot weekly or just at quarter-end? Weekly. The whole value of forecasts is the trend, and a single snapshot at quarter-end tells you nothing.

What happens if a rep moves a deal between snapshots? Both snapshots are preserved. The next dashboard refresh shows the new number; the trend chart shows the old one as a historical point.

Can a forecast roll up from opportunities automatically? The numbers you put on the snapshot are whatever you want them to be — usually computed by your flow or your AI agent from live opportunities. The object itself doesn't recompute them; it preserves the value at the moment of the snapshot, on purpose.

How does this differ from a saved report? A report runs against current data. A forecast is a frozen number — even six months later, looking at last quarter's commit will give you the number the rep was on the hook for, not a number recomputed from records that have since moved.