topic Re: Forecast Close Date in Dashboards & Reporting

Forecast Close Date

tjsimpson — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 19:13:00 GMT

All,

I am confused with the Forecast tool. The default 'Forecast category' of 'Pipeline', 'Best Case', 'Commit' are all based on the 'Close Date' but none of these are actually closed yet. Would it not be best to list the stages/forecast category based on the 'Create Date'? Is there any way to change this?

Thank you in advance!

Re: Forecast Close Date

karstenkoehler — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 19:22:23 GMT

Hi @tjsimpson,

Happy to help here.

The forecast tool relies on the close date, correct, and this cannot be changed to the create date, as far as I know.

One of the reasons for this is that the forecast tool is supposed to show you when you can expect a certain amount of revenue to close. The assumption is that the information when revenue will close is much more insightful and important then the information about when potential revenue entered the system. As a sales manager or CEO, you want to know when you can expect a certain amount of money to come.

The create date wouldn't provide this information. It would simply tell you that in a given month you entered opportunities of value X. With each passing week or month, these would move into the past in your fictional create-date-based forecast – and now you would have to look in the past to see revenue that's closing now.

This article also explains this: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/forecast/use-the-forecast-tool

If you want a report that shows you deals by amount and create date, this can be created easily in the custom report builder: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/reports/create-reports-with-the-custom-report-builder

Best regards!

Re: Forecast Close Date

tjsimpson — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 19:33:47 GMT

@karstenkoehler Thank you for the explanation and the article! This makes sense.

Re: Forecast Close Date

MK_Nolan — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 16:46:44 GMT

Hello, forecasting PM here! Agree with what @karstenkoehler said above. Also wanted to flag that you can now create custom forecast types based on a date property of your choice, so if you did want to view in forecasting by create date you now can do that. More info here.