Setting up forecast boards

Business admin, RevOps

Gong Forecast*

Deals > Forecast

Forecast boards give team members with forecasting permissions the insights they need to call out their number with confidence. Typically, each line of business (new business, renewals, etc.) has its own forecast board, including its designated forecasting categories.

To set up a forecast board, go to Deals > Forecast, click > Add line of business.

Note:

To manage forecast boards, you need "Manage forecast settings" permissions

Basics

In the Basics section:

1. Give the line of business a Name and a Description.

2. Under Show deals where team members are:

   1. Under In a specific role, pick the CRM user field associated with the deals in this line of business. For example, if CSMs handle renewals in your company, pick CSM as the associated team member.

   2. Under Show deals by date, select the CRM date field associated with deals in this line of business (created date, close date, etc.)

   3. In the Amount dropdown, select the CRM amount field by which to show deals in the forecast board and associated deal board.

      Note:

      You can customize the amount field per column, as described below. If you don’t customize the amount field, amounts will be derived from the field set in Basics.

Categories

When the board is displayed, each category shows the dollar value and number of open deals that make up the category.

Target attainment

Target attainment displays team members’ closed-won deals against their periodic target with a progress bar depicting how close they are to hitting their target.

To set your target attainment category:

1. Select the CRM field associated with your closed-won deals, and set how they’re filtered. For example: “deals where Deal status is Closed won”: .

2. Click  to filter the deals included in this category. Learn more about conditional filters.

3. Next to Measure against, select the target to measure your closed-won deals against.

Note:

As of October 2024, targets are managed centrally under Company settings > Revenue analytics > Targets. Learn about managing targets here.

Coverage

The Pipeline coverage category will show the total active pipeline divided by the remaining quota in the selected period:

.

To set your coverage category:

1. Select the CRM field associated with open deals in the pipeline.

2. Click  to filter the deals included in this category. Learn more about conditional filters.

Other categories

By default, the board includes Commit, Best case and Pipeline categories.

1. Select the CRM field and values associated with each category.

2. Click  to filter the deals included in each category. Learn more about conditional filters.

3. For each category, click and select:

   1. Hide to remove the category from the board so nobody is reminded to update a number for that category. Any data collected while the category is hidden remains accessible if you unhide it again in the future. To preserve historical data, hide categories rather than deleting them.

   2. Autofill (block editing) to automatically fill the forecast category with the total value of deals in this category in your CRM. When this option is turned on, people can’t edit their forecast number and aren't alerted to update their forecast for the category.

   3. Customize amount field to set the CRM field mounts in this category are derived from. If you don’t customize the amount field, amounts will be derived from the field set in Basic.

4. To add more categories to the board, click Add category.

5. To reorder the categories, click , drag and drop the categories in the desired order.

Advanced settings

In the Advanced settings section:

1. Select the forecast period that you forecast for.

2. Select Autocalculate quarterly totals to automatically calculate the quarterly forecast number for each category from the closed-won deals and the forecast number for open months in the quarter.

   This action locks the quarterly number so that it can’t be edited. The only way to change this number is by changing the forecast number in the open months. The total of closed-won deals is always shown in green for each month in the quarterly view drilldown. This number shows the total for closed-won deals, the definition of which is set by you for target attainment.

Cadence

In the Cadence section, toggle on/off Send a reminder when forecast is due and set the day and time when team members would get a notification reminding them it’s time to submit their forecast numbers.

Forecast snapshot

In the Forecast snapshot section, set your Company snapshot - the time when forecast numbers are locked for the week, typically right before the weekly forecast meeting. Team members can change their numbers at any time, but the numbers taken at the time of the snapshot are used to calculate progress in your forecast trends, week over week.

Columns

For every forecast board, we automatically generate an equivalent deal board so team members can drill into the deals included in their forecast categories. The generated board is visible when viewing deals from within the forecast board and in the list of deal boards.

1. Column types are indicated with labels such as and .

2. Add columns by clicking ) ,  remove them by clicking . Columns with a next to them can’t be removed.

3. Under Add suggested updates, select a column in which you want to suggest updates based on conversations from the current and previous week. The update will be suggested to the team member viewing the board in the selected column.

Update CRM

In the Update CRM section, define the CRM fields you want to appear in the Update CRM tabs in the forecast and generated deal boards.

Warnings

In the Warnings section, toggle on/off the warnings you want to include in the board and the time threshold for each warning. Learn about warnings here.

Click SAVE.

*The features available to you depend on your company’s plan and your assigned seats.