The Two Bases
One run produces two numbers for every seller, and every screen in the module states which one you are looking at. Reading the wrong one is the single easiest mistake to make here.
The target basis is always the larger of the two when attainment is at or below 100 percent. Publishing the forecast basis would hand a rep a number already discounted for the chance they miss it, which is why the Publish page warns you when the forecast basis is selected.
The Sub-Sections
How to Use It
1
Set the assumptions
On Assumptions, set the annual target per role and region, spread it across quarters with a seasonality profile summing to one, and set expected attainment, quarterly attrition, replacement delay, hiring delay, and OTE. Attainment and attrition feed the forecast basis only, so the targets you publish stay free of both.
2
Set the ramp rules
Ramping depends on the kind of move a person made, not only the role they landed in. A promotion from AE to Senior AE carries no ramp at all, while a promotion into AE restarts partway rather than at zero. Rules are keyed by the role someone moved from, the role they moved to, region, and event type, and the most specific match wins.
3
Record leaves
Parental and extended leave is entered by hand, because the HRIS lifecycle status only flips retroactively. A leave with an expected return date inside the window produces a return-to-work ramp at the return month, resolved through the same ramp rules as any other transition.
4
Run the forecast
The engine resolves each person’s role, region, and ramp state month by month and writes both bases in one pass, keeping every multiplicand so any number on any screen can be traced back to its inputs.
5
Check coverage before publishing
Overview compares the quota you are handing out against the top-down revenue target. Scenarios shows the headcount gap if coverage falls short, and what closing that gap would cost.
6
Publish the quarter
Publish rolls the monthly plan up to the quarterly number sales and commissions work from, and exports it as typed numbers so a reviewer can total the quota column rather than fighting text cells.
The KPI Strip
The Plan Grid
The Plan tab shows individual quota for every carrier and open requisition. A Group By control at the top of the grid lets you choose the grouping level:
The Annual Target column is excluded from the totals row because it is a per-subject annual figure that repeats across that subject’s quarter rows - summing it would overcount it by the number of quarters. Quota WARR stays summable and appears in the totals normally. The selected grouping is saved in the URL, so sharing a link preserves the view.
Assumptions - What Lives Here and What Lives in Revenue
The Assumptions tab owns the numbers that are specific to the quota engine: the annual target per role and region, the seasonality spread, expected attainment, attrition rates, replacement and hiring delay, and OTE. An Inherited from Revenue card at the top of the tab shows the assumptions that come from the Revenue Drivers module rather than from quota - things like ASP, cohort mix, ramp curve shapes, and retention. These numbers are set in Revenue and flow into the quota engine automatically, so the card exists to make the linkage visible without requiring you to switch modules. If a number in that card looks wrong, follow the link to Revenue Drivers to change it. Ramp rules on the Ramp Rules tab map each role transition (from-role, to-role, region, event type) to a ramp curve. The curve shapes themselves - the monthly or quarterly productivity percentages - are defined in Revenue Drivers, and a note on the tab links there. What quota owns is which curve applies to each transition. Per-quarter attrition is now supported: instead of a single blended annual attrition rate, you can set separate rates for Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4. The forecast engine applies each quarter’s rate compounded month by month over the months that fall in that calendar quarter, so a back-half-weighted attrition shape (for example, 0% in Q1 and 10% in Q4) is reproduced correctly. If you leave the per-quarter fields blank, the single blended rate applies as before.Why Ramp Anchors on the Role Date
A ramp starts from the date someone’s role changed in the HRIS, never from a position or requisition date. A seat move that leaves the job unchanged, an overlap seat converting to a permanent one for example, is structural and should not restart a running ramp. Anchoring on the role date is what keeps a purely administrative change from resetting a seller to zero.Attainment Stops at the Close Boundary
Actuals are read only through the org-wide close cutoff, the same cutoff the GL and headcount use. An open month holds partial actuals by definition, so measuring attainment through it draws a collapse in performance that is really an unfinished month. Every surface here honors that boundary, so the KPI, the chart, and the treemap cannot disagree about the same quarter.Review Gates on the Actuals Tab
The Actuals tab surfaces two review banners when the plan may be out of date. Revenue update banner: When the revenue forecast has changed since the last quota forecast run - new contract events, updated ARR, or a re-run of the revenue model - a banner appears at the top of the Actuals tab. It summarizes what changed (new, changed, and removed revenue rows, with the delta) and offers a “Review and Re-run” button. Clicking it opens a detail dialog showing each changed row, then lets you re-run the quota forecast to incorporate the new revenue picture. Dismissing without re-running leaves the banner in place so no one forgets the plan is stale. HC movements banner: When the live headcount roster has changed since the last quota plan - new carriers joined, sellers departed, or someone had a role, region, or status change - a second banner appears below the revenue banner. It lists each movement by type (New Carrier, Departed, Role Change, Region Change, Status Change) and prompts a “Review and Run Forecast” to adopt the updated roster. The two banners are independent; either can appear without the other.Both banners compare the live headcount and revenue data against what the last forecast run used. A banner that says “in sync” means the last forecast run matches the current inputs - not that the inputs themselves are correct.
Corrections
Two correction layers exist and they answer different questions.
Split deals matter more than they sound. A CRM usually cannot represent one, so commissions splits by hand and the rep shows as missing quota while being paid as though they made it. Recording a split here writes both halves at once, as a transfer that nets to zero at company level. Neither half can exist alone, and deleting one deletes the pair.
Leavers Keep the Quarter
A rep who leaves at the end of February worked February and carries February’s quota. On the target basis the quarterly rollup keeps their full quarter, at the run rate they carried before leaving, because that is the number sales and commissions agreed to. The forecast basis reflects the departure as it happens.Territories
Territories are the shared book of business. Rules claim accounts by region, country, and segment, a pin overrides a rule for a single account, and rep assignments say who carries each territory. Every one of them is effective dated, so a realignment is a change from a date rather than a rewrite of history. The balancing view puts the resulting coverage on a country map so you can see which territories are carrying too much and which are thin. Changes reach live surfaces at the next quota forecast run, and a locked version keeps the attribution it was published with, so last quarter’s numbers survive this quarter’s realignment.Quota planning is enabled per workspace. If Quotas is not in your Planning nav, ask your administrator to turn it on.