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Calculated Fields in Salesforce and Clari

  • 14 June 2022
  • 5 replies
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Hello, 

We have a calculated bookings field in Salesforce which takes the sum of pricing components. We had to institute a different currency field as a write-in field for Clari. The reps are supposed to make sure this field is equal to the calculated field.

My question is, did anyone else have to do this? I am thinking of building a process in Salesforce which takes the calculated bookings field and writes to the write-in field, based on update. Does anyone know if this would cause issues with Clari, I wouldn’t think so as it is still a currency field, not a calculated field?

Thanks in advance!

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Best answer by Ty Lapinski 14 June 2022, 21:00

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Ty Lapinski
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Hi @MeghannB !

Thanks for coming to the community with your question!

The update you are suggesting should not cause any issues with Clari. Actually, we do recommend this type of workflow as a best practice for multiple reasons:

  1. In your use case, this would prevent the reps from having to update this field on a regular basis to match that of the original calculated field. There is room for errors in the pipeline here since one field might not equal the other until it’s updated. Also, there would be a greater efficiency gain if automated for your reps!
  2. Calculated/formula fields have some nuances with the way we ingest updates to those fields from Salesforce as the last modified date is not updated when those field types are updated on an opportunity. Best practice is to actually use Process Builder or create a Workflow in Salesforce to automatically populated a new currency field on the opportunity to match the current calculated/formula field whenever it’s updated. This will allow for us to pick update these updates when made to the opportunity since it will update the last modified date.
  3. Calculated/formula fields cannot be history tracked in Salesforce. Therefore, we are unable to show the changes to that field for any given opportunity in the opportunity grid in Clari. Having the proposed workflow setup to populate this new currency field will allow you to history track this field in Salesforce (since it’s not a calculated/formula field). You will then be able to see the color-highlighting in Clari for any changes made within a set period of time to that field. This is optional, but definitely an added benefit!

I hope the above is helpful! Absolutely, please do not hesitate to reply should you have any additional questions related to this process.

Ty Lapinski | Manager, Product Success
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Thanks so much, this helps tremendously! 

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Hi @Ty_Lapinski ,

I have one more question and it somewhat relates to this. We are considering moving our Forecast and Best Case categories to direct roll ups of our forecast category, versus a call and we want to do org wide. Will we have issues with capturing changes by doing this?

Thank you!

Ty Lapinski
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👋 Hi @MeghannB,

The short answer to your question is “Yes”. ✅

Data Consideration 

You would lose the capturing of the changes to the forecast each week that you get when a user updates their forecast in Clari. The impact would mean these forecast submissions will not be available to view in the Forecasting or Pulse modules. The data will not be accessible via our API since we will not have the history to extract.

Process Consideration & Best Practice 

Most organizations want to keep the submissions in Clari versus having it be a roll up based on forecast category since it allows for flexibility in what amount is call for the quarter.

An example is a user might want to include any deals in Closed + Commit + Best Case for their Best Case call, but a user also might want to include a run rate expectation & deals which might fall outside of the quarter and have potential to be pulled-in. This would allow the flexibility to account for these scenarios since the deals do not exist today or exist within the quarter.

  • Rep A is submitting their Best Case forecast.
  • Rep A has 2 deals closing within in the quarter: (1) $100K deal in Commit (1) $50K deal in Best Case.
  • Rep A also wants to account for an additional $50K of run rate that will be created & closed within the quarter + a $25K deal that has a closed date of next quarter but has the opportunity to be pulled-in and closed within the current quarter.
  • Rep A would want to submit a Best Case forecast of $100K + $50K + $50K + $25K = $225K

Product Enhancement

We are considering a future enhancement around “Auto Submit” as a feature that would solve for your use case if you still want to maintain the historical submissions but not have your users submit their forecast and base it on a roll up. If this future enhancement is of interest to your organization, please review this with your Customer Success Manager.

Hope the above is helpful and let us know if you have any additional questions!

Ty Lapinski | Manager, Product Success
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Hi Ty,

Thank you very much, I appreciate all of the detail.

 

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