Understanding the Sales Pipeline

You use sales pipelines to help you forecast the amount of revenue that is associated with active sales opportunities. Active sales opportunities are those that have a probability greater than zero and less than 100. The Sales Pipeline program (P90CB128) displays potential revenue amounts in a graphical bar chart. Each bar in the chart represents a probability range. You can click on each bar to review the opportunities that are associated with that probability range.

You can review the sales pipeline for these entities:

• Employees

• Customers

• Contacts

• Competitors

• Forecasts

• Territories

• Industry Groupings

Each pipeline includes these probability ranges:

• 90–99 percent

• 80–89 percent

• 70–79 percent

• 60–69 percent

• 50–59 percent

• 40–49 percent

• 30–39 percent

• 20–29 percent

• 10–19 percent

• 1–9 percent

The system uses the probability associated with the sales cycle steps on the opportunity to calculate the amount of revenue to enter into the pipeline. The probability is multiplied by the value in the Potential Amount field. The system then inserts the calculated amount into the pipeline section that is associated with the opportunity's probability. The Line Item Total field is not used to calculate pipeline amounts.

This table shows how pipeline amounts are calculated for opportunities:

Opportunity Probability	Line Item Total	Potential Amount	Calculation	Effect on Pipeline
55 percent	Blank	100,000 USD	100,000*.55=55,000	55,000 USD is entered into the 50–59 percent section of the pipeline.
55 percent	100,000 USD	Blank	Blank*.55=0	Nothing is entered into the pipeline because the calculation resulted in a zero amount.