D365 Sales is very robust at managing:
*While most organizations don’t use a CRM for Orders and Invoices, D365 is fully equipped to store that data and the entities can be customized/configured organizational needs. Also, the out-of-box integration between D365 and Business Central (that is used for order/invoice management) allows for D365 Sales to hold synced order/invoice data that originates in Business Central.
All the sales data being in one system (D365) is advantageous because it allows organizations to build forecasting around relevant (and real) transactions.
In D365 Sales, the “Forecasts” feature allows:
To learn more about Forecasts: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/sales/configure-forecast
In this article, we’ll focus on how to create a basic sales forecast. There are a lot of variations you can add to a forecast, but creating a simple one will give you an understanding of how the feature works…and then you can add complexity to it!
1- What table will be used to measure the forecast?
2- Is the hierarchy based on:
For our scenario, we’ll use opportunities and organizational structure. Understanding/deciding these points make it more straight-forward during configuration.
1. Since we’re creating a forecast based on organization structure, ensure all users (ie. salespeople) have the appropriate user in the “Manager” field (in the “User” record):
2. Navigate to App Settings à Forecast configuration
Click “Org Chart forecast”
3. Fill out “General Section”
Rollup entity = Opportunity
Hierarchy entity = User
Top of hierarchy = [Select “Manager” from user records]
Once a user is selected (for top of hierarchy), all users that have the selected user as “Manager” will appear in the “Preview” section.
There are several variations to creating a schedule; the one illustrated is commonly-used (fiscal year, divided by quarters).
4. “Permissions” Section
5. “Layout” Section
“Forecast Category” allows you to map different stages to actual fields from the opportunity entity.
For example, you can have the “Pipeline” stage of the forecast sum the value of “Est. Revenue (Total)”.
For other stages (Won Opportunities, Committed, etc), you can select other fields from the opportunity entity.
Not all stages have to be selected (eg. Committed and Best Case may seem redundant).
6. “Filter Data” Section
7. “Drill Down”, “Snapshots”, and “Advanced” Sections
8. “Activate & Add Quotas” Section
Clicking on “Activate” (it’s blue before clicked, becomes “Forecast successfully activated” after clicking) will make another link clickable:
Download simple data column template
An Excel sheet is downloaded onto your computer. This will be manually populated with forecast values and then uploaded back to D365.
In our example, we’re assigning each of the 2 salespeople a quarterly quota of $300. It means that total quota for each quarter is $600.
Once uploaded, you can navigate to Sales -> Forecasts to see the forecast chart. As you add and win opportunities, the “Forecast” and “Won” columns will populate with values.
If you are looking to maximize your D365 experience, feel free to reach out to us!
Also, look for new posts in coming weeks that show you other ways your organization can unlock the potential of D365 suite of applications!
Take care!
Zeshan Raja
Director of Sales
Econix InfoTech Ltd.
zraja@econix.ca
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