Feature · CRM Forecasting

A forecast your reps commit to and your CRO can read.

Reps submit a forecast each Friday with per-deal commit, best-case, and pipeline buckets. Managers roll up through the hierarchy; Strkr AI flags risk signals that human review would miss. The lock closes the submission window; variance analysis compares final to actual.

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The submit shape

Three buckets, one call, every Friday.

The weekly submit is the core forecasting motion. Each rep categorizes their open deals into three buckets by close date in the current period: Commit (I am confident this will close), Best Case (I believe this will close with the right push), Pipeline (this is on the roadmap but not committed). The three-bucket shape is deliberately simple; it maps to how reps actually think about their quarter.

Commit bucket

Deals the rep is personally accountable for.

Commit deals carry a personal rep guarantee. If a deal is in Commit at Friday submit, the rep expects it to close in-period. Managers hold reps accountable for commit shortfall at review time. The bucket is small; a healthy quarter sees roughly one quarter of open pipeline in commit by week four, growing to perhaps forty percent by the final two weeks.

Best Case bucket

Deals likely but not guaranteed.

Best Case deals are plausible closes with the right push. The AE has a path and a reason to believe; the deal still carries external uncertainty (procurement, timing, final signatures). Best Case plus Commit becomes the AE call for the quarter; the manager uses the gap between the two as a coaching signal.

Pipeline bucket

Everything else in-period.

Pipeline covers open deals in the current period that the AE does not expect to close this quarter but theoretically could. The bucket is useful for pipeline-coverage math and for conversation about which deals could get pulled forward. Reps rarely move deals out of pipeline mid-week; the bucket is observational, not committal.

Exclude flag

Deals that will not close in-period.

Deals that will slip past the quarter close carry an exclude flag. The deal stays open on the pipeline (next-quarter forecasting captures it) but drops out of the current-quarter number. The exclude flag is a commitment to slip; reps who exclude a deal are accountable for the slip call just as they are accountable for the commit call.

Rep notes

The one sentence that explains the call.

Each categorized deal carries an optional rep note: the one sentence that explains the call. Procurement team has the paper, waiting on legal review or Champion is pushing internally, exec sponsor confirmed or Budget approval is pending CFO review. The note turns a bucket pick into a readable summary for manager rollup.

Submit lock

Friday 5 PM local, no late changes.

The weekly submit locks at a configured deadline (Friday 5 PM tenant local by default). After lock, deal categorization is read-only for the week; changes write to a new week submission. The lock creates the comparable week-over-week trajectory; without lock, a rep could retroactively adjust the Monday-morning view.

Manager rollup

Hierarchy aggregation with manual override.

Managers consume the rep submits and roll them up. The rollup aggregates automatically through the manager hierarchy; managers can override at their level, but each override writes to the audit log with the manager reason. The audit trail keeps rollup math transparent across the chain.

Hierarchy rollup

Up the manager chain, BFS traversal.

The rollup walks the users.manager_id self-reference up the chain. An AE submit flows to their direct manager; the manager rollup includes their direct submits plus every AE on their team; the VP rollup includes their direct manager submits plus everything below. The BFS traversal is consistent regardless of hierarchy depth.

Manager override

Adjust the call, write the reason.

A manager can override an individual rep call at their level: moving a deal from Best Case to Commit (manager has additional context), or dropping a Commit to Best Case (manager is less confident than the rep). The override writes a reason to the audit log; the executive-level rollup sees the manager-adjusted number with the override visible on expand.

Scope divergence

Forecast scope vs quota scope.

Forecast scope and quota scope diverge in some tenants. A sales manager might be responsible for forecasting their direct reports (BFS one hop) while their quota rolls up through two hops (team quota plus skip-level reports). The permission system supports both scope types; the dashboard distinguishes forecast rollup from quota rollup for the user.

Rollup lock

Manager submits after rep submit.

Manager rollups lock on a staggered deadline (Monday morning following the Friday rep lock by default). The gap lets the manager run their Monday review and finalize the manager-level call before executive rollup. The deadline cascade keeps the forecast motion predictable; the CRO sees the fully-rolled-up number by Tuesday morning.

Variance view

Rep call vs manager call vs actual.

The variance view compares the rep call, the manager call, and the eventual actual close. A rep who consistently over-commits learns from the comparison; a manager who overrides repeatedly in one direction learns a bias. The variance is a quarterly coaching input, not a daily surveillance tool.

Historical rollup

Every week preserved.

Each week submit is immutable after lock. The dashboard carries a week-by-week history; a CRO reviewing the trajectory sees whether the number climbed steadily through the quarter or stayed flat until a last-week rally. The posture matters for forecast trust; nobody is reconstructing the trajectory from after-the-fact storytelling.

Strkr AI risk signals

The things a human reviewer would miss.

Human forecast review catches obvious risk: a deal with no activity in 21 days, a deal with no decision maker identified, a deal with a close date in the past. Strkr AI catches subtler signal: tone changes in the last three emails, specific objection phrases in the last call transcript, stakeholder churn on the account. The AI signal supplements human review, not replaces it.

Activity signal

Recency, cadence, and reciprocity.

The activity signal reads last activity date, cadence over the past six weeks, and reciprocity (prospect-initiated activity vs rep-initiated). A commit deal with declining reciprocity surfaces a yellow flag; the AE opens the account and sees the pattern explicitly rather than reconstructing the gut-feel.

Email tone

Shifts in language reveal engagement.

Strkr AI reads the last three email threads and flags tone shifts: shorter responses, delayed replies, hedge language (let me check with the team), introduction of competitor names. The signal lands on the deal detail with the thread link. The AE sees the pattern before the end-of-quarter surprise.

Call signal

Objection moments from the transcript.

Call transcripts feed into the risk model. Pricing pushback, procurement delay keywords, we need to think about it phrases, missing next-step commitments at call end all contribute. A commit deal with an unresolved pricing objection on the last call surfaces as yellow; the AE opens the clip and responds.

Stakeholder watch

Champion departure flags the account.

The account-level stakeholder watch flags executive-sponsor or champion departure (contact marked Inactive, employer changed, title shift away from the project). A commit deal whose champion left the company last week is a red flag that no amount of pipeline review would catch without the stakeholder monitoring layer.

Composite score

One number per deal, four signals combined.

The deal risk score composites the four signals (activity, email, call, stakeholder) into a single 0-to-100 risk value. Deals above 70 flag red; between 40 and 70 flag yellow; below 40 are green. The score is a prioritization aid; the AE sees the top ten yellow-and-red commit deals and triages them first on Monday.

Explainability

The AI shows its work.

Every risk flag carries a explanation: which activity gap, which email thread, which call moment, which stakeholder change. The AE sees the evidence, not just the score. The explanation lands on the deal detail with deep links to the records. Reps challenge or confirm the score with context; the pattern builds trust in the signal over the first quarter of use.

Comparison and reconciliation

Weekly, monthly, quarterly, actual.

A forecast is only as useful as its calibration against actuals. Strkr forecasting carries week-over-week, month-over-month, and against-plan comparison views. The reconciliation to actual happens at quarter end automatically; the variance writes to a learning record that feeds the next-quarter model.

Week trajectory

Watch the number climb or stall.

The week trajectory chart shows commit, best case, and pipeline totals week-over-week through the quarter. A healthy trajectory climbs steadily; a stalling trajectory in weeks six through eight is the leading indicator of a miss. CROs read the chart in 30 seconds and know whether to lean in or stay the course.

Vs plan

Forecast against quota plan.

The vs-plan view compares the current forecast to the straight-line pacing against the quarterly quota. Reps see their individual pacing; managers see the team pacing; executives see the overall pacing. A rep running 110 percent of pacing stays unflagged; a rep running 60 percent surfaces on the manager coaching list.

Period lock history

Every week submission preserved.

Week-by-week submits are immutable after lock. The history view shows which deals moved buckets between weeks, which were added or removed, which were overridden by manager. The lineage matters for forecast quality coaching: a rep who moves deals from Pipeline to Commit on week ten but misses them is distinct from one who stays steady throughout.

Variance to actual

Quarter close reconciliation.

At quarter close, the final forecast reconciles to actual close. The variance view shows commit variance, best-case variance, and the deals that missed or overachieved. The reconciliation drives the next-quarter rep accuracy conversation; reps who called the number within three percent get a different coaching conversation than reps who missed by twenty.

Rolling forecast

Next quarter visibility.

Rolling forecast extends the current-quarter view with a next-quarter preview. Deals with close dates in the next period show pipeline buildup; the preview helps teams plan hiring, inventory, and quota setting. The rolling view updates weekly with each submit; it is not a separate submission motion.

Attribution

Who moved the needle?

The attribution view breaks the final number into the reps that drove it: top five contributors, top five misses, biggest week-over-week movers. The pattern surfaces the individuals whose work made the quarter; recognition and coaching both land on the contributions, not on an averaged team report.

Forecast permission model

Who sees what and who edits what.

Forecast access needs to split along different lines than record access. A rep sees their own deals and their own forecast. A manager sees their team deals and their team forecast. A CRO sees everyone. The forecast.* permission group ships with sensible defaults and lets admins fine-tune per role.

View scope

Own, direct reports, hierarchy, all.

Four view scopes cover the common access patterns: own (reps see their own forecast), direct reports (frontline managers see one hop), hierarchy (senior managers see the full BFS below them), all (CRO sees everyone). The scope is a permission attribute; admins assign per role or per user.

Edit scope

Submit, override, lock, admin.

Edit scopes split into submit (reps categorize their own deals), override (managers adjust rep submits at rollup time), lock (admin controls the submission deadline), admin (adjusts the forecast categories, periods, and plan). The permissions compose so a role can carry multiple scopes without a bespoke custom role.

Attribution scope

Who gets credit for a split deal.

Deals with multiple contributors (AE plus BDR plus overlay) carry attribution weights. The forecast respects the weights: a 60/40 split credits the AE 60 percent and the overlay 40 percent of the deal in their respective forecasts. The split lives on the deal record; the forecast reads it without additional configuration.

Audit coverage

Every submit, override, and unlock.

Forecast actions write to the standard audit log: who submitted, when, what buckets, which deals; who overrode and why; which deadline the admin extended. SOC 2 Type II (in progress through 2026-Q4) activity logging reads this ledger. Compliance review traces any forecast number back to the actions that produced it.

HIPAA posture

Forecast data under BAA.

Teams in regulated verticals run forecasting under the standard Strkr BAA. Deal notes, call transcripts, and risk signal explanations that reference protected health information carry the same handling as the record-level data. The compliance posture is uniform across the record, the forecast, and the audit log.

API access

Forecast exports via open API.

The forecast surface exposes a documented API (OpenAPI 3.1 at the trust center) for read, submit, and attribution operations. Teams integrating forecasting with external BI tools or finance consolidation systems pull through the API. SDKs cover Node, Go, and Python. The pattern avoids locking forecast data inside Strkr for teams that need it elsewhere.

Run a mock Friday submit on your actual pipeline.

Fifteen minutes: load three sample deals, categorize into commit, best case, pipeline, trigger the Strkr AI risk signals, roll up to the manager view, close with the lock behavior.

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Common questions

What buyers ask about this feature.

Does the forecast engine replace rep judgment with AI?

No. The forecast engine supplements rep judgment. Reps submit the categorization each Friday; the AI surfaces risk signals that human review would miss (tone shifts, objection moments, stakeholder changes). The AE still owns the call; the AI shows the evidence they might have overlooked. The pattern is calibration, not substitution. Teams that try to run forecasting purely from AI predictions typically find the number drifts from reality faster than human-plus-AI.

How often do forecasts actually get reconciled against actual close?

Quarterly reconciliation runs automatically at the quarter-close event. The variance view compares the final forecast call to the actual close for each deal and each rep. The reconciliation is a leading input to the next-quarter accuracy conversation. Teams that run the reconciliation discipline (not just the forecast) typically see rep accuracy improve by 15 to 25 percent over the first three quarters.

Can we customize the forecast categories beyond commit, best case, pipeline?

Yes. The forecast categories are tenant-configurable. The default three (commit, best case, pipeline) fit most sales motions; some teams add a fourth (upside, strongest, slippage) for finer gradation. The categories map to internal probability bands that drive forecast math. Changing categories writes to the audit log; the tenant can revert to prior categories without data loss.

What happens when a deal changes close date mid-quarter?

The close date change writes to the audit log with the user, timestamp, old date, and new date. If the new date falls outside the current quarter, the deal drops from the current-quarter forecast on the next week submit (or immediately if the rep updates the submit); the exclude flag is implicitly set. The manager rollup reflects the change; the CRO sees the deals that slipped out of the quarter on the slip-report view.

How does the Strkr AI risk signal handle a brand new rep with little historical data?

The composite score weights the four signals (activity, email, call, stakeholder) based on data availability. A new rep with limited email history and few recorded calls gets a score weighted toward activity and stakeholder signals; the score still provides directional risk guidance. Over the first quarter, as email and call data accumulate, the composite calibrates to the rep behavior. The explainability panel always shows which signals contributed; new reps see transparent attribution.

Does forecasting support multi-currency sales teams?

Yes. Each opportunity carries a transaction currency; the engine rolls forecast totals up to the tenant default using an FX rate configured by the admin (daily refresh or locked at period open depending on policy). Reps work in the deal currency on their own forecast; the CRO rollup renders in the house currency. Multi-currency behavior stays uniform across dashboards, reports, and the forecast surface, so finance teams reconcile from one FX policy rather than three.

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