Hi Simon

I don't think using the "super" opportunity is good idea as it will mess up pipeline and forecasting features.  I think adding a child entity called something like "Target" under the company may be a better idea.  You could have a a different financial target record for each financial year - allowing a history to be kept.  And the opportunities would also be a child of the target.  This keeps all the existing reporting, pipelines and forecast feature but then adds the ability to see how targets against individual companies are being met over the years.

Hi Simon,

Really depends on what you want the outcome to be. You could create a custom field on the Company record for Yearly Forecast - and just revisit this each year (if historic numbers don't matter). Then in reports you could compare against this, if you're using the Account Manager field as well. 

As then you could create a report that Sums all of the Opportunities YTD for Sales Person A and then look at at the Sum of all their accounts 

Or if just wanting to check against the customer, then Sum all of the opportunity YTD and compare that to the value held on the Company record 

If you're wanting to hold historic information, then you're looking at a Custom Entity potentially (e.g. Target) and associate that to Company and have that hold Year, Value and use that in reports. 

I've done the Custom Entity route for users when the standard forecasting feature isn't enough. As they might be targeted on the number of comms, or the forecast value per month for the team not the individual etc. So build a record around this. 

Both Sage CRM  and Matthew Shaw  have solid suggestions.

If you want traceability of YOY performance of forecast vs. actual - what the Sage CRM team suggests is the better path forward. It allows you to set automation standards around each fiscal year's settings.

If retrospectives/historical references aren't needed, what Matthew suggested is solid, but would require discipline around your operating procedures to ensure that a deadline is set for each fiscal year's conclusion to run a report against performance, create your outputs, and adjust forecasts on a customer by customer basis (either manually or programmatically). Qmulus used to have an automatic report delivery tool that could likely be a big benefit for automating reports if you don't have something like Sage Alerts and Workflows.

Things you do NOT want to do... a) break native functionality (once broken in any system, it's hard to unbreak), and b) trying to find a middleground between the two options. The middleground option will place an unnecessary burden of customization with diminishing returns for something you don't even know will be used (lots of "best of intentions" turn into stagnant customizations).

If you want a practical approach, try Matthew's method first. See how the team handles the minor customizations and uses the data. It's less immediate impact on the CRM and easier to unwind if the team ultimately doesn't use it. However, if they use it heavily, great! Explore whether the method Sage CRM offered is viable for what the team wishes (history is a BIG gain if you want YOY analysis over time). Converting the features Matthew suggested to the one that Sage CRM offered gains the benefit of clarity from having been used and allows you to manage investment in customization upfront.

Thank you very much! That's the way we will go

Thanks for your input Matthew

Thank you for your analysis  Basil

I ran into the same supply chain headaches, and using tools that handle engineering change orders and product configurators made a big difference. I ended up using acupowererp.com because it gave me cleaner tracking and fewer mistakes during custom builds, especially on tight deadlines. It kept our quality checks consistent without adding extra busywork.