The forecast bar sits above Open deals ↗. The question behind it is simple: what can you count on this month and next?
Contents
- What the bar shows
- The three quantities
- How the forecast stays usable
- The stored benchmarks
- Forecast and Home are not the same thing
- Next
What the bar shows
On the left the Open volume - the sum of all open deals, unweighted, plus the count.
On the right two buckets, one for this month and one for the next, each with Exp. {month}, the number of deals and the note weighted.
Below it sits a footnote with the assumed durations for Send offer and Closing and a note that weighting is by Confidence. The link next to it is called Open performance settings and takes you straight to where those values can be changed.
The three quantities
Confidence
Your estimate in percent of how likely this deal is to happen. The value sits in the Pipeline & status block and can be changed at any time. A new deal starts with a default; change it as soon as you know better.
Weighted value
Deal value times Confidence, divided by 100. Business worth 50,000 euros at 40 percent probability gives a weighted value of 20,000 euros. The field is not editable - it always follows the other two.
The forecast works with this weighted sum, not with the full value. That is why the monthly bucket is always smaller than the Open volume.
Expected close
Decides which monthly bucket a deal falls into. inDeal goes about it like this:
- If the Expected close field is filled, that date applies.
- If it is empty, inDeal takes the moment the deal entered its current stage and adds the Sales cycle benchmark from the settings.
On the card in Kanban, the resulting month appears as Exp. {month}.
How the forecast stays usable
- Fill in Expected close. Without that date inDeal works with a benchmark that may be too short or too long for your business.
- Keep Confidence current. A deal at 80 percent that has been sitting for three months distorts the whole number.
- Close what is closed. As long as a deal sits on Send offer although it was lost long ago, it inflates the forecast for no reason.
The stored benchmarks
The Sales cycle benchmark and the rates sit in Setup under Performance & conversion ↗. You find there:
- Lead → meeting booked
- Show rate - share of booked meetings that actually happen.
- Pipeline conversion - from completed discovery to sent offer.
- Deal conversion - from sent offer to won deal.
- Sales cycle - average time from offer to close.
- Customer lifetime value - average value of a won customer.
Below the fields, inDeal works an example through 100 leads so you can see what your values mean. These settings require permissions - with the Sales role the area is not visible.
Forecast and Home are not the same thing
The forecast bar looks forward: what is likely to come. The Business outcome section on Home ↗ looks back: what was actually won. The two numbers have to differ, and neither is wrong for it.