Customizable Forecasts vs Forecasts

Question

I have been digging deep into the annals of Forecasting features lately, and have found myself swimming in a sea of confusing documentation. So far I have come across three flavours of Forecasting:

1. Classic (pre customizable forecasting feature)
2. Customizable Forecasting (not available to customers after Winter '12)
3. Forecasts (released in Winter '12)

Presumably Forecasts is the latest version, and should be used for new orgs, however if you contrast the features of Customizable Forecasts (CF) vs Forecasts, you can see that CF has more features than Forecasts.

How is this possible? Is my analysis wrong, or is the documentation out-of-date?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You are correct. Forecasts was released with Winter '12, but I would consider it to be still in beta. It is not possible to combine with certain other high-impact features such as Territory Management and multi-currency (as your table clearly states).

If you are not currently using e.g. Territory Management or multi-currency, or any of the other features incompatible with Forecasts, I'd suggest going with Forecasts anyway. They will surely be adding on features to it with later releases, to get it up to par with Customizable Forecasting.

Answer 2

As far as I can tell, only Collaborative Forecasts work with Multi-Currency... not Customizable Forecasts.
http://login.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/forecasts3_multiple_currencies.htm