Question

Sales forecast MMR

  • 30 November 2021
  • 3 replies
  • 169 views

Hi,

we are having an MRR business and would like to get a monthly sales forecast in Cooper.
We have set up opportunities with the value of one month of revenue. Once the opportunity is won, this monthly revenue occurs every single month. However, the sales forecast in copper only reflects the revenue once in the month when its won. 

How can we change this so we the sales forecast recognizes the revenue every month?

Iam sure we are not th only MRR business using Copper. ;-)

 

Thanks

Alex 


3 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +7

Hi @Alex Heil, this is a really good question that has a couple of nuances. I’m going to split my response into headers for readability.

 

Is Copper the right place to forecast MRR?

Reporting on MRR in Copper (or any CRM) is tricky because it’s not designed as a revenue reporting system. It’s best for tracking new deals that generate that MRR, but not for tracking that MRR over time. I’d recommend tracking the overall revenue and forecast in a platform that’s designed for that (e.g. Quickbooks) or through your billing provider (e.g. Stripe).

If you’re looking for in-depth analytics for your subscription revenue, you could look at a platform like BareMetrics or Chart Mogul.

 

If you really think Copper is the best place to forecast on that MRR, there are some sort-of solutions you could implement. I’ll outline some options below.

 

 

Option 1: Forecast based on a Subscription Status field

If you have a field for Subscription Status, you could create a report that sums up the MRR value of all Active subscribers.

Filter: Subscription Status = Active

Company Value
Acme $55.00
Bond Corp $55.00
TOTAL $110.00

Whether you can use this as a forecast depends how you’re tracking subscription statuses (e.g. Churning in 1 Month). But even then, your forecast wouldn’t account for upcoming changes in the subscription value.

This is the simplest solution, but it relies on having up-to-date subscription statuses and values for each account. This becomes harder to manage as accounts grow or shrink.

 

 

Option 2: Building custom fields

You could build a custom field to store the revenue information for each calendar month. This would allow you to pull those values into a report and forecast your revenue to a certain extent. Here’s an example of what that would look like on a company record - 

Acme Corp

  • Revenue 2021-11: $55.00
  • Revenue 2021-12: $55.00
  • Revenue 2022-01:  $55.00

Of course, there are some pretty major downsides:

  1. You’ll need to build a custom field for every month
  2. You’ll need to populate the field every month
  3. It doesn’t account for different renewal dates within a month

 

 

Option 3: Create a pipeline with opportunities for each month

Once you win an initial sale, you could have a workflow automation create 12 new opportunities - one for each month. You can then report on the value of the opportunities within that pipeline based on their close date (which can be populated by that workflow automation).

Acme Corp - Month 1

  • Close date: 12/30/2021
  • Value: $55.00

Acme Corp - Month 2

  • Close date: 01/30/2021
  • Value: $55.00

[repeat for X number of months]

The plus side is you won’t have to deal with a bunch of custom fields since all the monthly information lives in each individual opportunity. And you’ll have more granularity as for when that revenue is realized. The downside is maintaining the opportunities. A workflow automation can help with this by creating the first X number of opps, but you’ll need to continually ensure that an opportunity exists for every month of every subscription.

 

 

TLDR; it’s possible, but it’s not what Copper is designed for, and if you choose to do it in Copper you’ll have to manage it closely.

HI @Michelle from Copper 

thanks for the details. This is very helpful. Lets discuss option 3 in more detail. 

If the close date for an opportunity is Jan 30, 2022, the workflow should setup monhtly opportunties for Feb, March ect. 

  1. these monthly opportunties should be set up automatically at the moment the opportunty is created and 
  2. the value of these opportunities shall reflect the respective value of the opportunity. As the value changes in the sales process,
    1. the value of those monthly opportunities shall increase if the probability increases
    2. the value shall decrease if the probability decreases 

If the above is possible we should be able to track MRR for the opportunities.

Thanks

Alex 

Userlevel 7
Badge +7

 @Alex Heil 

Great, let’s talk through each point there.

If the close date for an opportunity is Jan 30, 2022, the workflow should setup monhtly opportunties for Feb, March ect. 

This is possible with but there’s nuance - we’d have to set the close date for those new opportunities by adding X number of days to the original close date. So in your example of Jan 30 2022, the automation would set up new opps with close dates of [Jan 30th + 30 = March 1st], [Jan 30th + 60 = March 31st], etc. As you see this does not perfectly align with months, so you’ll need to keep an eye on them if you use this method.

 

these monthly opportunties should be set up automatically at the moment the opportunty is created

Yes, we can have it trigger as soon as the opportunity is created. Do you generally fill in the close date when you create the opportunity? Or do you create the opportunity first and then fill it in later?

 

the value of these opportunities shall reflect the respective value of the opportunity. 

We can carry over the value of the original opportunity into the new opportunities - but only at the moment those new opportunities are created. If the original opportunity changes in value, that change will not carry over to the 12 other opps.

 

As the value changes in the sales process, the value of those monthly opportunities shall increase if the probability increases / the value shall decrease if the probability decreases 

As mentioned above, any changes in the original opportunity won’t carry over to the 12 monthly opps. So this piece is not possible unless you manually update it or you use an external automation tool like Zapier.

[note: if you want to peg value against the win probability, I recommend storing that in a custom field for Weighted Value as opposed to the default Value field]

Reply