Standard Account Forecasting in Manufacturing Cloud calculates forecasts by consolidating business information from Orders, Opportunities, and Sales Agreements. Salesforce states that when a product is associated with any of these sources for an account, Account Forecasting can calculate quantity and revenue forecasts for that product. This allows manufacturers to combine committed run-rate business, pipeline business, and actual/order-driven demand into one account-level forecast.

Sales Agreements represent recurring or negotiated long-term business and provide planned quantities and revenues. Opportunities represent potential new business and pipeline demand. Orders provide transactional information related to customer purchases. Forecast formulas determine how those sources contribute to calculated forecast values for each period.

This is an important distinction from Advanced Account Forecasting, which supports a significantly broader data model. Advanced Account Forecasting can use Orders, Opportunities, Sales Agreements, historical Orders, custom objects, custom measures, and external business information. Salesforce currently recommends Advanced Account Forecasting for new implementations while existing standard Account Forecasting implementations should plan migration where appropriate.

Study Guide references/topics: Configure and Build — Account Forecasting; Forecast Data Sources; Orders; Opportunities; Sales Agreements.