The best sales forecasting tools help business owners make data-backed decisions when developing sales quotas, setting business goals, or making finance-related decisions, like hiring new employees. You can also integrate forecasting tools with other apps to process customer data from various sources. We evaluated dozens of sales forecasting software tools to identify the top 10…
The best sales forecasting tools help business owners make data-backed decisions when developing sales quotas, setting business goals, or making finance-related decisions, like hiring new employees. You can also integrate forecasting tools with other apps to process customer data from various sources. We evaluated dozens of sales forecasting software tools to identify the top 10 options.
*Pricing is based on annual billing on a per-month breakdown. Monthly billing is also available at a slightly higher rate. Zoho Analytics offers a 15-day free trial to test its four paid plans. While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing here.
The pricing plans are based on Zoho Analytics Cloud. It also offers on-premise pricing on the website. Zoho Analytics Cloud is a cloud offering, priced based on number of users and data storage. Zoho Analytics On-Premise is an installable version priced based on users and with unlimited storage space.**
Applying forecast over Zoho Analytics what-if analysis (Source: Zoho Analytics)
Zoho Analytics view mode of forecasted data points (Source: Zoho Analytics)
Our Expert Opinion
Zoho Analytics is a sales forecasting and analytics software that allows users to process customer data from multiple business tools, enabling them to produce well-rounded sales reports and analytics. Aside from its top-notch sales forecasting tools, it offers artificial intelligence (AI) through its conversational sales assistant, Zia. You can ask Zia questions about sales forecasts and data analytics by typing into a search bar on the reporting page or calling Zia using your Zoho mobile app.
Up to five custom fields for deals, contacts, and accounts
Sales dashboard
Mobile app
24/5 support via email, chat, and phone
*Pricing is based on annual billing on a per-month breakdown. Monthly billing is also available at a slightly higher rate. Freshsales offers a 21-day free trial. While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing here.
Sales forecast allows committing to deals with Freddy suggestions (Source: Freshsales)
Sales forecast dashboard for sales cycle overview to understand ongoing deals (Source: Freshsales)
Our Expert Opinion
Freshsales is the most user-friendly sales forecasting software due to its clean, simple, and intuitive user interface design, which doesn’t require a steep learning curve. Moreover, its territory management tools allow you to create territories to seamlessly combine any number of rules for lead segmentation. This feature helps increase the productivity of sales reps by restricting their access to outside records to focus more on internal sales operations.
*Pricing is based on annual billing on a per-month breakdown. Monthly billing is also available at a slightly higher rate. Pipedrive provides a 14-day free trial. While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing here.
Pipedrive mobile app with sales forecasting and management (Source: Google Play)
Creating a revenue forecast report in Pipedrive (Source: Pipedrive)
Our Expert Opinion
Pipedrive’s mobile app is designed to reflect its desktop app, making it easy for users to view forecasts and use customer relationship management (CRM) features in either tool. The mobile app includes sales forecasting functionality in its Professional and Enterprise plans, basing predictions on the number of opportunities, length of deals in a pipeline stage, and historical activities. Users can also generate visual sales forecast reports to help users understand business performance better.
monday CRM: Best for Cross-department Collaboration
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monday CRM Pricing Plan & Overview*
Cost:
$12 per user, monthly
Key Features:
Unlimited contacts, customizable pipelines, boards, docs, and free viewers
Customizable industry templates
Mobile apps
File storage and activity log
Web forms for lead capture
Embedded documents and whiteboard collaboration
Kanban view to prioritize tasks according to team’s capacity
Self-serve knowledge base and 24/7 customer support
*Pricing is based on annual billing on a per-month breakdown. Monthly billing is also available at a slightly higher rate. This provider offers a 14-day free trial to try all features. All plans have a minimum of three seats. While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing here.
Sales forecasting template for better board visualization (Source: monday CRM)
Sales team performance dashboard (Source: monday CRM)
Our Expert Opinion
monday CRM is an excellent tool for collaboration between departments within a company. Sales managers can easily post their reps’ performance and others can see it on the platform. Its forecasting and sales analytics tools are available with its Pro and Enterprise plans. You can customize its prebuilt templates to manage, track, and adjust your predicted sales revenue. Its real-time dashboard provides insights into your pipeline and forecasts.
HubSpot CRM: Best Tool for Multi-team Data Analysis
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HubSpot CRM Pricing Plan & Overview*
Cost:
$0 for five users
Key Features:
Contact management
Deal pipeline
Reporting dashboard
Customizable quotes
Meeting scheduling
Live chat
*Pricing is based on annual billing on a per-month breakdown. Monthly billing is also available at a slightly higher rate. While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing here.
**Pricing uses the monthly CRM Suite costs for individuals and small teams. The provider also offers Enterprise-level products for larger teams for a higher cost. The CRM Suite includes sales, marketing, customer service, content management system (CMS), and operations software in one product. Individual modules can be purchased for lower prices.
HubSpot CRM sales team performance and forecast view (Source: HubSpot)
Our Expert Opinion
HubSpot CRM’s forecasting software is available with the Enterprise plan, which is what we highly recommend for established or large-scale businesses. It analyzes available data from various teams, like sales, marketing, and customer service, for well-rounded business forecasts. HubSpot CRM’s forecast tool utilizes deal stages to forecast sales based on their chances of closing. You can set up forecast categories to group deals to adjust your forecast.
Automatic demand forecasting for new products, seasonal products, holidays, promotions, and price elasticity
Inventory demand forecasting
Multi-echelon planning to plan warehouse system replenishment with distribution center and direct supply functions
Minimum display quantities to keep replenishment plans aligned with planograms
Keep safety stocks higher for in-demand products taking into account calendar and promo events
*While GMDH Streamline offers custom pricing information, we encourage our readers to check the provider’s pricing page regularly to keep updated for any changes in pricing structure and product features.
Generate and view sales forecasts using GMDH Streamline (Source: GMDH Streamline)
GMDH Streamline unit and revenue forecast displayed in table and plot (Source: GMDH Streamline)
Our Expert Opinion
GMDH Streamline is supply chain and sales planning software with a Business Forecasting module for sales and demand forecasting. It also lets you calculate and display inventory levels for a given time in the future based on your existing inventory, incoming supplies, and forecasted demand. This, in turn, allows you to determine the products to be ordered based on demand forecasts. Plus, it alerts you when your inventory levels are short or overstocked.
Salesforce CRM Analytics: Best for Data Visualization
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Salesforce CRM Analytics Pricing Plan & Overview*
Salesforce CRM Analytics offers a 30-day free trial to try out its four paid plans. The main differences between the plans involve the type of compliance to a quality management system, as well as access to special features, such as its dashboard designer, prediction builder, and revenue insights.
Cost:
$75 per user
Key Features:
Einstein Discovery (embed real-time scoring, one-click model deployment, and prediction monitoring)
Einstein Prediction Builder (create predictions on Salesforce objects, automated model scoring, model performance reports, and segmented models)
Compliance: ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
Standard support (Trailhead, help portal, Trailblazer Community, Success Center, and technical support)
*All Salesforce CRM Analytics subscriptions are billed annually. This provider offers a 30-day free trial. While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing here.
**Salesforce has three intelligent apps with various capabilities, use cases, and prices. The Revenue Intelligence plan is a purpose-built analytics app with artificial intelligence (AI) for sales teams. On the other hand, the Industry Cloud Intelligence plan is for industry-specific use cases, like for sales teams in manufacturing, automotive, financial services, communications, healthcare, consumer goods, education, and energy and utilities.
Einstein Insights on Salesforce’s sales executive dashboard (Source: Salesforce)
Our Expert Opinion
Salesforce CRM Analytics is an application native to the Salesforce suite of products that creates advanced AI-driven analytics to measure businesses’ various performance metrics, including sales performance, deal closing rate, and agent performance. It allows users to deploy sales forecasts and analytics with excellent data visualizations through customizable templates, third-party apps, and custom-built dashboards so users can present reports that are easy to understand.
Salesmate: Most Customizable CRM With Sales Forecasting
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Salesmate Pricing Plan & Overview*
Cost:
$23 per user
Key Features:
Contacts, companies, deals
Email sync, tracking, and templates
Multiple pipeline management
Standard dashboard and reports
Workflow automation
Built-in calling and text
Web forms
Layout builder
*Pricing is based on annual billing on a per-month breakdown. Monthly billing is also available at a slightly higher rate. Salesmate offers a 15-day free trial. While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing here.
Salesmate deal and sales forecasting (Source: Salesmate)
Salesmate sales forecasting data (Source: Salesmate)
Our Expert Opinion
Salesmate is packed with powerful features for optimizing sales processes. It has a Product Module that links products to deals in order to help you create more accurate quotes and sales forecasts. Its analytics features allow you to share reports with your team, create visual reports with charts and graphs, and schedule reports. You can also view forecast summaries to identify your team’s top performers and monitor their activities.
Lineup.ai: Best Automated Forecasting Tool for Restaurants
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Lineup.ai Pricing Plan & Overview*
Cost:
$71 per location
Key Features:
Unlimited users and employees
Automated, AI-generated forecasts
Custom labor allowance budget for every shift to meet demand
Integrations with third-party apps and existing business tools
Real-time sales forecast dashboard
Item-level forecasting to predict how many products you will sell on a given day
*Pricing is based on annual billing on a per-month breakdown. Monthly billing is also available at a slightly higher rate. Lineup.ai offers a free trial period. While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing here.
Lineup.ai automated forecast samples for restaurants (Source: Lineup.ai)
Our Expert Opinion
Lineup.ai is the best sales forecasting tool for restaurants because of its dynamic and easy-to-use labor, demand, and sales forecasting features with built-in employee scheduling software, reducing staffing issues. Restaurant owners and managers can also integrate this tool into their point-of-sale (POS) systems to optimize sales predictions, reporting, and monitoring for a smoother day-to-day business operation.
Clari: Best Revenue Database & Forecasting Analytics
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Clari Pricing Plan & Overview*
Clari offers a mix-and-match or a combination of features and modules for a customized system. The Clari Foundation features, like dashboards, reporting, analytics, and AI forecasting, are included in all products without a platform fee. While the provider doesn’t have transparent pricing, the modular design can benefit startups to start with a basic configuration for reduced upfront cost, and then add modules as their requirements change.
Cost:
Custom pricing
Key Features:
Clari Foundation (included with all products without platform fee)
Automated activity capture and relationship intelligence
Dashboards, reporting, and analytics
Single sign-on and self-serve admin
CRM connector plus integration with revenue critical tooling
Unlimited number of customizable fields
Clari RevDB with bi-directional sync, time-series snapshotting
Deep Clari support with Premier Success
AI deal scoring, forecasting, and RevAI workflow boosters
RevCadences, certifications, and in-app guidance
Clari Modules
Inspect includes manage deals, accounts, reps, and team with pipeline analytics
Groove by Clari to engage prospects and buyers at scale with automations, scheduler, email templates, sequences, and Groove dialer plus short messaging service (SMS)
Align to accelerate buyer or seller deal cycles
Copilot for coaching reps with insights and alerts, including call recording and coaching
Forecast to predict and influence your number with predictive analytics
Capture with automatic data writeback to CRM for contacts, email activity, etc.
*While Clari offers custom pricing information, we encourage our readers to check the provider’s pricing page regularly to keep updated for any changes in pricing structure and product features.
Clari’s forecast view guided tour (Source: Clari)
Clari’s Quick Submit to quickly update forecasts (Source: Clari)
Our Expert Opinion
Clari is most sought after for its revenue intelligence, forecasting, and sales engagement and mix-and-match features and modules for a tailored system. Its user-friendly user interface (UI) makes it easy for sales reps to view predictive analytics and real-time reports, creating a repeatable, scalable forecasting process that drives sales pipeline and business revenue growth.
How We Evaluated the Best Sales Forecasting Software
We have assessed the different features like forecasting and analytics, pricing, and level of customer support of providers to determine the best sales forecasting tools. Businesses need dependable sales forecasting software to process large volumes of customer data for actionable insights. The forecasting tool must be easy to use, able to generate accurate reports, and can be integrated with other sales, marketing, and collaboration tools. The tabs below provide valuable insight into our expert evaluation process for choosing the best sales forecasting tools for small businesses:
Methodology weights
Pricing 20%
General Features 25%
Advanced Features 20%
Help & Support 20%
Expert Score 15%
We carefully consider the total costs and pricing options when assessing the best CRM for solo users. Additionally, we determine the availability of a free plan or forever-free forecasting tools and entry-level pricing options. We also confirm whether or not the provider offers monthly billing plans.
CRMs offer functional sales, customer service, marketing, and task management solutions. We evaluated the best CRMs for small businesses overall and the available options for individual users. We also assessed which options have fundamental features for sales teams, such as customizable pipelines, reporting and analytics, native and third-party app integrations, and mobile apps.
We check the availability and quality of specialized, niche, or advanced features when evaluating the best sales forecast software. Sales automation, data visualization, predictive analysis, and website visitor tracking are some of the many advanced features we consider. We further assess if these niche features are part of the plan or come with an extra fee.
CRM systems require technical support, especially for users who are not tech-savvy. We examined the types of support the sales forecasting providers offer—like phone, live chat, email, and community support. We also take into account the hours users can get assistance through these customer support channels.
We evaluated existing customer reviews from reputable review websites and analyzed users’ satisfaction levels. We also analyzed the pain points users usually experience and included our expert opinion and thoughts on the key features, popularity, and value for money.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Sales forecasting tools help managers and reps make more accurate predictions of sales or revenue based on past performance data. These tools provide an in-depth report of what a sales rep or team will sell in a week, month, quarter, or year. Most sales forecasting providers have powered their systems with automation, data analytics, and artificial intelligence with advanced machine learning capabilities for sales forecasting.
Zoho Analytics is one of the most popular sales forecasting software. Sales teams use this system to generate well-rounded sales reports and analytics, understanding customer behavior, the sales process, and related activities. Zia, Zoho’s conversational sales assistant, can answer questions about sales forecasts.
Sales forecasting tools like Zoho Analytics, Freshsales, Pipedrive, monday CRM, and HubSpot CRM are used in forecasting sales. They are equipped with advanced automation, data analytics, and artificial intelligence to understand customers better and create more effective marketing and sales strategies.
Bottom Line
The best sales forecasting software provides you with future expected revenue, compares actual sales to projected revenue, and narrows down the leads and deals that impact your forecast the most. They also offer free or affordable tools for creating forecasting reports. Zoho Analytics is our top choice because it has free and scalable solutions for forecasting, plus it has a robust set of data visualization tools and third-party integration options.
Lorraine Daisy Resuello is a specialist at Fit Small Business who focuses on Sales and Customer Service topics and she has experience in customer service in business process outsourcing (BPO). At present, she uses her decade-long writing experience to provide FSB readers with the best answers to their questions.
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