How is the Forecast Amount calculated in Salesforce?

Question

This is related to another question of mine: Adding new custom column to Forecast Type in Forecasts

And basically I have the ad-hoc notion that the Forecast amount already covers the requirement, it is my understanding that Salesforce calculates the Forecast amount taking into account the Forecast Category, the Opportunity amount and the probability that is set up on each pick-list value of the Stage on Opportunity, and I wanted to verify if this is true using Salesforce documentation, but I couldn't find any article explicitly saying how the Forecast amount is calculated in Salesforce, does anyone know?

Answer 1

The Forecast Amount is customizable, as explained in Forecast Types in Collaborative Forecasts. The default revenue model just sums Amount without consideration for Probability (%). You can add Expected Revenue as explained on that page:

Expected Revenue

If the value of the Amount field and the actual revenue brought in by the opportunity often differ, the Expected Revenue field on opportunities is useful. If your sales team anticipates this difference, consider using the Expected Revenue field and forecasting on it.

Note that when you run reports, you can include Expected Revenue to see the weighted probabilities, thus, the expected revenue, assuming your probabilities are configured correctly.