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Revenue planning takes you from contracted ARR through to recognized P&L revenue. Several forecast methods coexist, so you can plan the way your business actually plans: weight a pipeline, build capacity bottom-up, model contracts line by line, or set top-down targets and let the model allocate them. Whatever method you use, the result expands into recognized revenue and derives into the GL, so revenue lands in the same P&L as everything else.

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The Sub-Sections

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Ways to Forecast

Pipeline-based

Weight opportunities by deal stage and roll them into the forecast.

Driver-based

Build ARR bottom-up from productive reps, quota, and attainment by cohort. See ARR Studio.

Top-down targets

Set quarterly CARR add targets and let the model allocate them down to months and dimensions.

Contract-level

Model ramps, expansions, modifications, pauses, and churn per contract line.
These methods are not exclusive. Per period you decide how they combine: a quarter can be pipeline-only, driver-only, target-only, or a floor-fill that takes the larger of the two so you never double-count a rep’s quota against deals already named in their pipeline.

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Pipeline Stage Weights

Pipeline opportunities are weighted by deal stage, not treated as committed. A lead counts for a small fraction of its amount, a committed deal for most of it, a won deal for all of it. Stage weights are configurable, so the weighted forecast reflects your own win-rate reality.

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Streams and Recognition

Each revenue stream (subscription ARR, one-time bookings, usage, marketplace, other income) has its own forecast method and recognition schedule. Recognition turns ARR events into recognized revenue:
  • Immediate recognizes the full amount in the booking month.
  • Monthly straight spreads an amount evenly over its term.
  • Percent complete recognizes a services project against milestones.
  • As consumed recognizes usage as it is metered.
  • ARR balance monthly recognizes the active ARR balance divided by twelve each month, the run-rate model an FP&A team uses for subscription revenue.
The model expands each event into the right number of monthly postings and derives them into the GL tagged as revenue-derived, so a P&L built on the GL ties back to the source events.

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CARR, Live ARR, and Recognized Revenue

Contracted ARR (CARR) is what you have booked at signing. Live ARR is what is actually live, derived from CARR through a per-cohort activation curve so you can model the lag between booking a deal and revenue going live. Recognized revenue then follows from Live ARR. This three-layer model is documented in full on Recognized Revenue.
With the default “Instant” activation curve, Live ARR equals CARR at every account-month, so a plan with no activation lag behaves exactly as it would without the activation model. You only see a difference when you assign an onboarding curve.

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Common Questions

ARR is the annualized run-rate of your contracts (a balance). Recognized revenue is the P&L revenue you actually book each month. For subscription ARR under the balance model, recognized revenue is roughly the active ARR balance divided by twelve. See Recognized Revenue.
Only if you tell them to. Set the period’s treatment to floor-fill and the model takes the larger of pipeline and drivers, not the sum, because a rep’s quota already implies they close some of the deals in their own pipeline.
Renewal NDR and churn are set in Assumptions and can be period-scoped, so an account can upsell in one year and downsell in another. You can also pin total annual churn to a base balance and distribute it across months with a churn plan. See ARR Studio.
Yes. The Contracts section models per-line ramp periods, expansions, contractions, pauses, resumes, and churn as an append-only lifecycle, and re-derives the GL after each change.

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If the Numbers Look Off

  • Recognized revenue reads as zero for a stream: confirm the stream has a recognition schedule enabled. A stream with no schedule produces ARR events but no recognized postings.
  • ARR looks too high in late months: cumulative ARR folds in renewal amounts. Check the ARR waterfall on Overview to see which movement bucket is driving it.
  • A forecast method change did not move the number: re-run the revenue forecast so the engine regenerates events and the derive bridge re-posts to the GL.
  • Two surfaces disagree on ARR: confirm both are on the same budget version and period range, and that one is not reading a locked snapshot while the other reads live.