Prepare the forecast cycle

Step by step

1. Check the calendar and quotas Sales Operations

   Sales Operations confirms period boundaries, grain, currency and submission deadline. Finance Analyst checks that each pilot quota has the intended revenue or bookings basis and effective dates.

   • Period and target basis are ready for the cycle
   • Updates Forecast periods, Quotas

2. Check the management chain Sales Operations

   Admin maintains the user-to-manager relationships. Sales Operations confirms that each rep will reach the intended reviewer and leadership rollup owners.

   • Manager relationships identify the review and rollup path
   • Updates Users

3. Prepare category rules Sales Operations

   Sales Operations reviews the active categories and priority-ordered rules against the pipeline stages. Rehearse an opportunity that matches more than one rule so the winning suggestion is understood.

   • Active rules and their priority are checked
   • Updates Forecast categories, Forecast category rules, Pipeline stages

4. Open the period Sales Operations

   The opening procedure ensures the target period is Open and creates a Draft submission per active rep and period, stamping the manager and seeding category lines. Repeated opening keeps an existing submission.

   • Open period has a Draft call per rep without duplicates
   • Updates Forecast periods, Forecast submissions, Submission lines

5. Classify the pipeline Sales Operations

   The configured categorization procedure evaluates open opportunities and updates the opportunity-period category record. A rep's manual override retains its selected category and reason while the automatic suggestion is refreshed.

   • Automatic category refresh preserves manual overrides
   • Updates Opportunities, Opportunity categorization, Forecast category rules

Sales Operations

, Finance Analyst, Admin, Sales Rep, Sales Manager.