Forecasting helps to provide an estimate of the possible revenue for a time period. Forecasting can be done using custom-defined fiscal quarters or a standard fiscal year. It rolls up the amounts from opportunities. A forecast can be on opportunities, product families, and also on opportunity splits. With Salesforce.com, two different types of forecasting are possible:
Customizable forecasting
Collaborative forecasting
As the name suggests, customizable forecasting allows forecasting as per custom-defined quarters. Let's see how we can enable customizable forecasting in our Salesforce instance. To enable this feature, you will need to navigate to Customize | Forecasts (Customizable) | Forecasts Hierarchy | Enable Customizable Forecasting.
The following screenshot shows the options to configure forecast settings once the forecast feature is enabled:
The Forecast Data Aggregation section will define the date range for which the forecasting report will be formed...