FAQs for forecasting

Deal boards are optimized for pipeline inspection, whereas forecast boards are optimized for updating your forecast.

You can generate a deals board for your forecast as follows:

• Drill down into any of the forecast categories, and then click VIEW next to any group of deals.

1. Go to Deals > Forecast.

2. At the top of the page, select the business line you want.

The tab is shown for every Gong user. But only people with a Gong seat and the relevant permissions in their permission profile can enjoy the benefits of the Forecast tab.

The ability to see forecasts of other people and teams is set up in your permission profile. If you think you should see others' forecasts, contact your Gong Business Admin.

If you're not seeing a board, this indicates that nobody has set up a forecast board in your org yet. Contact your Gong Business Admin for help.

Go here to learn how.

Each person can update their own numbers for the current and upcoming months, and managers can make an adjustment at the team forecast level.

The ability to update forecasts for other people is enabled by permission profile. Regardless of who updates the number on behalf of whom, the Update log shows who actually update the number.

The ability to view forecasts of other people is enabled by permission profile.

Forecast cadence is set when setting up a forecast board. Typically, this is set to once a week. Whatever the cadence, Gong uses the time the forecast is due to remind people to update their number.

A yellow clock icon appears on the Forecast tab when a forecast is due, and disappears when the forecast is updated or the org forecast snapshot is taken.

Forecast due and Forecast snapshot are set in each board's settings.

Pipeline changes - Deals that moved in or out of the forecast category are shown in the Changes report. Learn more

Manual changes - Changes made to the forecast and commentary are shown in the Update log tab when you drill into a forecast. Learn more

Good news - Gong stays on top of your org hierarchy to make sure that:

• When someone leaves historical information is kept and displayed with an "inactive user" labe company

• When someone moves teams their pipeline is moved to their new team* and historical info is kept with the old team

  *If you want to keep some of the attained pipeline in the old team, you can create a "dummy user" to own the relevant opportunities and attainment in the old team.

This ensures that you:

• Always see open, won, and lost deals (by settings definition) for any given period

• Always have ever-accurate rollups for any given period

• Can see the performance of people when looking back (e.g. team accuracy, attainment, coverage, & win rate)

It doesn't matter whether the change is made in your CRM or in your user provisioning software. Whatever your process, in Gong Forecast, we take care of handling the change, meaning it's transparent to your process and there's no need to update any forecast settings.

This column shows the progress as deals are closed and you or the person you're looking at moves towards target. The progress bar shows how much is closed in dollar value and % and how much in dollar value remains to hit target.

The calculation is taken from the forecast board settings definition of actual sales, and compared to the target.

The number can be updated manually per person, or bulk-added manually by uploading a CSV file.

Anyone with permissions can update their own target for the current and future months by clicking in the target attainment cell. If you can't do this but think you should be able to, contact your Gong Business Admin.

Coverage shows the value of your pipeline relative to the deals you have to close to reach your target.

Coverage is the total active pipeline (open deals filtered by the coverage filter) divided by the remaining quota to go (assigned target minus deals filtered by the target filter)

For example:

Deals filtered by coverage filter = $250,000

Target = $175,000

Deals filtered by target filter = $100,000

The coverage is 3.3x

Check out the Performance report to monitor accuracy.

The org hierarchy is taken from the org tree known to Gong, which is also shown in the company settings > Team members page. If there are any issues with the hierarchy, contact your Business admin.

The board's top row represents your team’s forecast, and the bottom row is where you can update your own numbers.

If you don’t carry quota, ask your Gong admin to remove the row.

If you want to remove someone from a board, for example, because they don’t carry quota or because they don't need to update forecast numbers for a particular line of business, next to their name, click > Hide from view.

To remove an entire team, navigate to the manager and then click > Hide from view.

You can download a CSV file of the current forecast view.

• Click > Export to CSV.

No, you can create different boards for different needs, for example, new business vs renewals, AMER, vs EMEA, APAC, and LATAM, etc.

To remove people from a particular forecast board, hide them from the view:

In the forecast board, navigate to the manager or person you want to remove, and then click > Hide from view.

Only people with permission to manage forecast boards can manage forecast categories. This permission is part of the permission profile.

You cannot delete a forecast category, but you can hide it from the board. This means that the category is removed from the board, and nobody is reminded to update a number for that category. Historical data is retained and is available if you unhide the category in the future.

Set up forecast categories based on your CRM data to include the deals you want. Add filters per category to narrow the deals included in each category. Learn more about conditional filters.

This shouldn't happen! If you experience this issue, contact Gong Support.

You can remove individuals or entire teams from a board so that they aren't calculated in target and don't receive notifications.

• Next to the name of the individual or team manager you want to remove, click > Hide from view.

You can change the hierarchy via the Team Members settings page. For more information, see: Why is team hierarchy in Gong important?