Actual vs Forecast Lines

Revenue Management uses your saved revenue recognition transactions and revenue forecast transactions to calculate the variance between actual and forecast values. Variance values are calculated by subtracting the forecast value from the actual value:

Variance = Actual - Forecast

Variance values are stored using Actual vs. Forecast Lines. You can view a record's Actual vs Forecast variance as a chart on the Details Panel which is accessible from the Recognize Revenue and Forecast Revenue pages.

Enabling the Actual vs Forecast Functionality

If you want Actual vs Forecast records to be created, you must enable the custom setting Use Actual vs Forecast Feature in Revenue Management Settings.

If you want Actual vs Forecast records to be created automatically when a revenue or forecast transaction is created and saved, you must also enable the custom setting Create Actual vs Forecast in real time in Revenue Management Settings. If you do not enable this setting, you will need to create Actual vs Forecast records manually using the Manage Actual vs Forecast feature. See Manage Actual vs Forecast Records for details.

Another custom setting, Actual vs Forecast Category in Revenue Management Settings, specifies the category of forecast values that are included in Actual vs Forecast records. This category defaults to Expected. If you create forecast values for another category, such as Worst, revenue forecast transactions will be created for those values (so that you can report on them, for example), but the values will not be included in Actual vs Forecast records. You can change the Actual vs Forecast Category custom setting to use another category if you prefer.

Reporting

You can use Actual vs Forecast lines to create your own variance reports using standard Salesforce reports. See the Salesforce Help for more information.