How to forecast by expected revenue?

Question

According to the Forecasts Administrator's Workbook - http://login.salesforce.com/help/pdfs/en/forecasts.pdf - it should be possible to forecast by expected revenue (Step 3 on pages 5 and 6).

However, in the Forecasts Settings, I can only select Opportunities Revenue, Opportunities Quantity, Product Families Revenue or Product Families Quantity.

When I google for this problem, I come across the Salesforce Ideas forum, where people request this feature (forecast by expected revenue), but it does not seem to be possible at this moment.

Something else that I tried. I quote from the Workbook: "Custom Opportunity Currency Field - Revenue = The rollup is based on the amount in the custom opportunity currency field that you specify". So I added a custom currency field to Opportunity, filled it for some records, went to Forecast Setup. Only to see that this type also is not available.

Next I enabled Opportunity splits, because https://help.salesforce.com/apex/HTViewHelpDoc?id=forecasts3_understanding_custom_field_forecasts.htm&language=en_US states: "To enable a custom field forecast, your administrator also has to enable opportunity splits for the custom field". That doesn't sound very logical and - surprise, surprise - it doesn't solve the problem. I can now enable additional Forecast types, those that have to do with splits, but I still cannot forecast by expected revenue, or by custom currency field.

Based on the same help page as quoted above and the fact that I can enable Opportunity split forecasting, I can conclude that the org that I am using has Collaborative forecasting.

Can anyone help me please?

Answer 1

So, I finally found it. And the answer was in the workbook, all along. You just have to read it very carefully, it's almost like a Salesforce Certification exam ;-)

In Step 3, section "Expected Revenue", it says: "Regardless of whether you use splits with the Expected Revenue field, your organization must have both Opportunity Spilts [sic] and a custom split type enabled for it."

I already had found out about the splits, but so far I had not made a custom split type. Where is this done? Setup / Build / Customize / Opportunities / Opportunity Splits / Settings. By default, Salesforce has created two split types: Revenue and Overlay. But for some reason, you must create another one, using Edit Split Types, and that split type must use the Expected Revenue field. Then you can add it to the Forecast Types (don't forget to click Save at the bottom of the page) and then you can select it in the Forecasts type.

Well that was easy. Not!

Answer 2

Not easy, but you need to:

1. Make Sure Opportunity Team Selling is enabled
2. Enable Opportunity Splits
3. Then you can add Expected Revenue.

Seems roundabout way to get things done, but....

Note: at each step it also tells you org data may be deleted. I'd suggest doing the above in the Sandbox first!