Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM 4 For Dummies®

Chapter 11. Setting Sales Quotas and Dealing with Forecasts

Toward the end of every year, our sales team sits down and develops a plan for the coming year. That plan includes the products we will sell, who will sell those products, and a guideline for how much of each product our account managers will sell (we hope). That guideline translates into a quota in Microsoft CRM.

The quota not only helps us budget for the coming year but also gives us a series of quarterly milestones. Failure to meet quotas or milestones causes midterm reevaluations or sometimes something worse. Meeting or exceeding our goals is what keeps our company healthy and happy.

In this chapter, you find out how to set quotas for salespeople, how to log forecasted sales against those quotas, and how to adjust these forecasts and quotas as you go along.

How a Manager Sets Up Quotas

Quotas relate to your company's quarterly fiscal periods. Before you can set up a quota for anyone, Microsoft CRM needs to know your company's fiscal periods. Fiscal periods may be set only once, and the task should probably be performed by someone with a title like CFO.

Fiscal year settings

Quotas are usually related to the time period in which accountants measure profits and losses — that is, the fiscal period. Accountants have devised a variety of fiscal years. They can be based on calendar years or can end on other seemingly random dates. A fiscal year can be divided semiannually or quarterly.

Warning

You can set the fiscal year options only ...