Blogs

Booking Forecast in Zuora Revenue

By Lana Lee posted 05-17-2023 12:44

  

On May 11th, the Zuora Community hosted a Revenue Workshop on Booking Forecast with Nikki Wong, Senior Director of Product Management where she walked through the steps to setup, generate, and report your booking forecast.  Additionally, Nikki shared a Revenue Tool Tip on how to prepare for an external audit in Zuora Revenue using commonly-used reports which you can read more about here.  Check out the presentation here.

Forecasting



Forecasting in Zuora Revenue puts an ease on Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO) reporting by doing three kinds of waterfall:

  • Actual waterfall - POBs that have met all revenue recognition criteria 

  • Forecast waterfall - POBs that have not met any revenue recognition criteria but has integrated into Zuora Revenue as bookings 

  • Backlog Waterfall - POBs that have only partially met revenue recognition criteria where bookings are partially backlog


How to Setup and Generate Forecasting

Setting up and generating forecasting can be done in 3 simple steps:

  1. Setup: Define a forecast template

  2. Setup: Associate the forecast template with the POB template

  3. Generate: Run the RevPro3.0 Generate Forecast Master program

STEP 1: Define a forecast template


Before you begin, follow the steps outlined in this Knowledge Center article.



  • Forecast using Revenue Start/End Date.  

  • Adjust the under/over recognized revenue from the last period.

  • This is usually apply to POBs where delivery event  is the trigger for revenue release


  • Forecast using Sales Order Date for 6 periods of predefined revrec percentage.  

  • Adjust the under/over recognized revenue from the last period.

STEP 2: Associate the forecast template with the POB template

Pick a predefined Forecast Template from this dropdown shown in the image below:



STEP 3: Run the RevPro3.0 Generate Forecast Master program


  • POB Template: The program will identify the POBs that are associated with the specified POB template name, and then generate forecast based on the forecast schedule assigned to the POB template.

  • Forecast Template: This program will filter the POBs that have the forecast template associated to generate the forecast.

  • Override Manual Forecast: When this parameter is set to Y, the program will consider the forecast schedules that were manually uploaded and deleted from the system, and regenerate the forecast schedule based on the configuration else the transactions are not considered for systemic forecast generation.

Reporting

There are 3 views available:

Workbench

Forecasting in workbench shows up in waterfall where you have actual and forecast view:



Revenue Analytics

This view gives you a forecasting view by period or by product family at a high-level:



Waterfall

Similar to the Workbench view, this view gives you an overview of all of the revenue contracts by line based on your layout - actual, forecast, or actual and forecast.



RPO

Your Remaining Performance Obligations can tie back to the forecast + actual waterfall:



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