What is a sales forecast in Dynamics 365?

The forecasting feature aggregates sales opportunities by period and salesperson, and allows them to adjust their own assessment on top of that.

Two numbers, not one

The calculated figure comes from the sales opportunities. The salesperson’s assessment is additional. Both are useful and should be displayed separately—if they are mixed together, no one knows what they are looking at.

It inherits the quality of the pipeline

If the close dates are unrealistic, the forecast will be too. The forecasting feature doesn’t fix anything—it merely makes the data quality visible, usually at an inconvenient time.

Set up periods that match your cadence

Monthly or quarterly, using the same periods as the rest of the organization. If the forecast period differs from the accounting period, you will end up with two sets of figures that never match.