Enhancement in Zoho CRM: Control who gets to participate in a forecast by customizing the user hierarchy

Enhancement in Zoho CRM: Control who gets to participate in a forecast by customizing the user hierarchy

Include only users from the sales function; exclude the rest 

Dear Customers,

We hope you're well!

We started this year with a series of exciting enhancements to Zoho CRM and to this list, we are thrilled to add an enhancement to forecasting.  Let's talk about goal setting!
 
Sales forecasting refers to the process of systematically predicting and planning your business's financial and quantitative goals. Although the term "forecasting" often implies a focus on a high-level business target, not all users, teams, or functions participate in the pipeline; forecast targets are actually tailored for organizations' sales teams.
 
Currently, however, Zoho CRM uses all active users in an organization to determine targets—from sales reps to inventory managers.


This creates confusion and leads to misinterpretations of data. Imagine an engineering lead—with no role to play in the sales pipeline whatsoever—is identified as having performed poorly, which subsequently affects their budget allocation.

Thus, we bring you the ability to customize hierarchies for forecasting.
 
As an activity, forecasting deals with the distribution of revenue targets across the workforce. To ensure we're only including participants who are involved in the forecast, we've come up with the ability to exclude participants that aren't relevant to pipeline generation.
 
As discussed above, forecast reports include all active users by default; but based on the hierarchy preferences you select in your CRM organization, you can do the following:

  • Exclude entire roles.
  • Exclude entire territories.
  • Exclude only selected individuals.

 
If you're using the reporting-based hierarchy option, you can exclude senior team members and their subordinates.

To understand how these exclusion functions work, let's look at a couple of examples:

Let's say you operate an online learning platform operating worldwide. Your CRM hierarchy includes your primary sales function and vendor/faculty management. Your faculty management department has a role to play in Zoho CRM but doesn't actually contribute to the pipeline. Accordingly, you can exclude the skills officer role from the forecast. With this setting, no user in this role is included in Zoho CRM's forecasting.


In another scenario, let's say only one of your sales interns sells, while the other intern assesses the company's sales trajectory. In this case, you can select only the intern that sells to be included in your forecast.

Likewise, you can exclude user groups or territories from your hierarchy. Say, for example, you don't expect a country country will contribute to your revenue because of its socio-economic conditions, you can exclude that territory from your forecasting altogether.

Including users, roles, or territories
All the instances of exclusion in your hierarchy are denoted by a visual cue for quick identification. If you'd like to include the role, territory, or users back your forecasting, you can do so by clicking on the "include" button next to them, or bulk-include them from the manage user options.


Notes
Note:
An excluded user cannot view forecast reports.
 
That's all for forecast hierarchy customization in Zoho CRM. If you have any questions or feedback, let's connect in the comments section.

Feature availability:


Release plan: This is available for all users in AU, CA and SA DCs. For the rest of the DCs we will gradually open and update in the comments section. 
 
Resource to refer: Help doc: Creating and working with forecasts

 
Thanks and have a good one!
 
Kind regards,
Saranya Balasubramanian
CRM - Marketing

    • Recent Topics

    • Invalid scope choice: Workdrive integration in CRM

      Bug: There is an invalid option in the permission choices for Workdrive integration in CRM. If the entry "WorkDrive.teamfolder.CREATE" is selected, it will return a message indicating invalid OAuth scope scope does not exist.

    • How to add line breaks in zoho.cliq.postToUser(...) message?

      In a CRM function using Deluge I'm sending this message and attempting to add some line breaks but they are ignored. Is there another way to add these breaks? My message: message: New urgent task\nDescription \nThis is a fake description.\n A new line?

    • Enable Free External Collaboration on Notecards in Zoho Notebook

      Hi Zoho Notebook Team, I would like to suggest a feature enhancement regarding external collaboration in Zoho Notebook. Currently, we can share notes with external users, and they are able to view the content without any issue. However, when these external

    • emailing estimates

      Shows up in the customer mail logs as sent but nobody is receiving them, even when I send them to myself I don't get them ??? Something wrong with the mail server or my end ?

    • Powering Customer Support with our women

      In Zoho Desk support, women make up 50% of our team. We see this as one of our strengths, reflecting the spirit of this year’s theme, "Give to Gain". Our women find their balance Women carry many responsibilities — they represent frontline support, lead

    • How to use OR when filtering using two fields

      I want to create return a list of Account Names by filtering on Field1 = "yes" OR Field 2 = "no" I can't see how to use the OR in the filter.

    • Mobile phone version not working well

      I am working on the Zoho Site Builder. In the preview the desktop version looks okay, but in the mobile phone preview many words are cut off in the weirdest (wrong) way. How can I fix that?

    • Zoho - Please explain difference between Thread view and Conversation view on Ticket

      I have reviewed the help document here but am still not clear on the difference between the two views. As an example, I just had a back and forth on a ticket: - Customer emails support email. - I email back from Desk. - Customer responds back. - I email back from Desk. On the upper left drop down box on the ticket Zoho Desk now says this is "4 Threads" and "4 Conversations" . How is that 4 threads?? By my count it is 1 thread and 4 conversations (assuming by "conversation" Zoho means number of total

    • Can't rename groups on Mac desktop app

      I'm working on an up-to-date Mac with a freshly downloaded Notebook app. I'm trying to rename a group within a notebook. Here I have, left to right, a note, a group, and a note. I select the group. On the top left, I select Action. On the dropdown, "Rename"

    • Zoho Forms - Feature Request - Year Field

      Hi Zoho Forms Team, You currently have the following date and time fields: Date Time Date and Time Year and Month It would be useful if you could include a "Year" field For example a recent application I completed said "What year was your house built?"

    • I need help to take Reports for tickets moved between departments.

      Hi, I need help to take Reports for tickets moved between different departments. Pls guide Shyam

    • Export to excel stored amounts as text instead of numbers or accounting

      Good Afternoon, We have a quarterly billing report that we generate from our Requests. It exports to excel. However if we need to add a formula (something as simple as a sum of the column), it doesn't read the dollar amounts because the export stores

    • Increase Round Robin Scheduler Frequency in Zoho Desk

      Dear Zoho Desk Team, We hope this message finds you well. We would like to request an enhancement to the Round Robin Scheduler in Zoho Desk to better address ticket assignment efficiency. Current Behavior At present, the Round Robin Scheduler operates

    • Automation #6 - Prevent Re-opening of Closed Tickets

      This is a monthly series where we pick some common use cases that have been either discussed or most asked about in our community and explain how they can be achieved using one of the automation capabilities in Zoho Desk. Typically when a customer submits

    • Zoho Desk EU slow/unresponsive

      Has anyone else got issues with ZohoDesk today in the EU? It takes an age to come back and if you do start typing something and try and send or save it looks like it times out. We are also getting this pic. ot I can't see anything on https://status.zoho.eu/

    • EU DC Partial Outage Resolved: A Detailed RCA

      Incident Summary Due to an overload on one of the nodes in the EU DC for Zoho Desk, the system was unable to handle the heavy load, causing a slowdown in requests and resulting in a partial outage for customers with data residing in that node. On May

    • Use Zoho Creator as a source for merge templates in Zoho Writer

      Hello all! We're excited to share that we've enhanced Zoho Creator's integration with Zoho Writer to make this combination even more powerful. You can now use Zoho Creator as a data source for mail merge templates in Zoho Writer. Making more data from

    • Perfomance Management - Zoho People

      Hi team, I am looking for performance management data such as KRA, goals, feedback, appraisals, etc., in Zoho Analytics. However, I am unable to find these metrics while editing the setup. Could you please confirm whether these fields are available in

    • Deprecation of the Zoho OAuth connector

      Hello everyone, At Zoho, we continuously evaluate our integrations to ensure they meet the highest standards of security, reliability, and compliance. As part of these ongoing efforts, we've made the decision to deprecate the Zoho OAuth default connector

    • Good news! Calendar in Zoho CRM gets a face lift

      Dear Customers, We are delighted to unveil the revamped calendar UI in Zoho CRM. With a complete visual overhaul aligned with CRM for Everyone, the calendar now offers a more intuitive and flexible scheduling experience. What’s new? Distinguish activities

    • Zoho Mail iOS app update: Display recipient's nickname on contact suggestion

      Hello everyone! In the most recent version(v3.3.1) of the Zoho Mail iOS app update we have brought in support to display recipient's nickname in contacts suggestion. Please update the app to the latest version directly from the App Store or using the

    • Digest Février - Un résumé de ce qui s'est passé le mois dernier sur Community

      Bonjour chers utilisateurs, Le 26 février, nous avons organisé notre première session Ask the Expert de 2026. Nous sommes heureux de partager que ce fut une session très interactive, avec de nombreuses questions intéressantes posées par nos clients. Si

    • Zoho CRM Case Notes - Share to Customer

      Hi team does anyone know the Api to set a note, against a case, to shared with customer? i cant seem to find it  cheers 

    • Zoho Forms - Feature Request - Past Into Scanning/OCR Field

      Hi Zoho Forms Team, You recently introduced the OCR/Scanning field which I have found great use for with one client who receives work orders as a screenshot from one customer. I want to raise a feature request here which would make that field even more

    • Synching changes to Stripe when changes are made in Zoho Billing

      We have a situation where we have merged customers in Zoho BIlling and then found out later that the payment in Stripe was not updated and still associated with the old customer record. The card gets updated and billed, but that payment is still associated

    • Send out follow-up email in the same thread (threaded conversations in individual emails) from Zoho CRM

      Hi, I'm new to Zoho. I'm trying to send individual emails to my leads one by one. And I'll send out follow up email if I don't hear back from them later. However, instead of sending a new email, I want to reply in the same email thread so that the recipients

    • Depositing funds to account

      Hello, I have been using Quickbooks for many years but am considering moving to Zoho Books so I am currently running through various workflows and am working on the Invoicing aspect. In QB, the process is to create an invoice, receive payment and then

    • Is Zoho Sites still actively being developed?

      Hello, Is Zoho Sites still actively being developed as part of the Zoho ecosystem? I noticed that the What's New page (https://www.zoho.com/sites/whats-new.html) does not show any updates since Q1 2025. We were considering migrating our website from Squarespace

    • FSM integration with Books

      Hi, I have spent a few months working with FSM and have come across a critical gap in the functionality, which I find almost shocking....either that, or I am an idiot. The lack of bi-directional sync between Books and FSM on Sales Orders/ Work Orders

    • web to lead

      Can anyone help me how to create web to lead from zoho marketing automation

    • Introducing Workqueue: your all-in-one view to manage daily work

      Hello all, We’re excited to introduce a major productivity boost to your CRM experience: Workqueue, a dynamic, all-in-one workspace that brings every important sales activity, approval, and follow-up right to your fingertips. What is Workqueue? Sales

    • UI issue with Organize Tabs

      When looking at the organize Tabs window (bellow) you can see that some tabs are grayed out. there is also a "Add Module/Web Tab" button. When looking at this screen it's clear that the grayed out tabs can not be removed from the portal user's screen

    • I created a signup form in Zoho Marketing Automation with the correct field mapping, but the data is not being reflected under Leads in Zoho CRM.

      web to lead from zoho marketing automation

    • Pasted Images not being embedded in custom mail

      Hi, I'm making a custom report by email based on commentaries. I have the email ready, all working great except for images that are being pasted in the commentaries. Zoho deals with them as temp images and so it requires authentication to view them, something

    • Kaizen #232 - Building a Ticket Escalation Mechanism from Zoho CRM

      Howdy, Tech Wizards! Picking up the thread from last week, we will continue our Zoho CRM and Zoho Desk integration. In Kaizen #231 - Embedding Zoho Desk Tickets in Zoho CRM, we built a Related List widget that displays open Zoho Desk tickets within the

    • Inactive License for free account.

      I recently upgraded my Cliq subscription not my team (on the free version), are unable to login to their accounts. The error message received is Inactive License Looks like you have not been covered under the current free plan of users. Please contact

    • Deluge scripts

      Why is there not a search function to make it easier to find the script of interest when modifications are required.

    • Zoho Sheet for Desktop

      Does Zoho plans to develop a Desktop version of Sheet that installs on the computer like was done with Writer?

    • Zoho Books (and other Finance Suite Apps) - Clickable Item Name on Invoices and Reports

      Hi Zoho Books team, It would be really helpful if the Item Name on Reports were clicable to take me to the item. The same on Invoices, often I am looking at an invoice and I want to look at the deails of a product. A link here would be helpful to jump

    • Zoho Books - Payment Gateway - Revolut

      Hi Books Team, My feature request if to include the popular platform Revolut as a payment collection option on invoices in Zoho Books. Please upvote if you are also looking for this option.

    • Next Page