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Revenue Waterfall and Forecast

Background information about the Waterfall and Forecast

Josh Chua avatar
Written by Josh Chua
Updated over a month ago

Introduction

The waterfall visualizes the cumulative value of Won opportunities and Forecasted opportunities over time. Each bar represents revenue anticipated to land within a specific period of performance (PoP) (month or quarter depending on zoom level).

  • Won Revenue: bookings from opportunities whose status is Won/Awarded.

  • Forecasted Revenue: probabilistic value of opportunities still Open or Submitted, weighted by win probability.

Tip: Hover over a bar to see a tooltip with total dollar amount, count of opportunities, and top contributors.

Tip: Click on a bar to see a drilldown and the revenue contribution of opportunities in the period.


Opportunity Eligibility

Opportunities are eligible for this analysis if:

  • They have the minimum necessary information to calculate (estimated) revenue

Note: NextStage excludes opportunities that have an award date in the past from the forecast.


Required Opportunity Fields

Opportunities are only included in this report when the following fields are present:

Field

Purpose

Contract Start Date

beginning of period of performance

Contract End Date

end of PoP; term can derive end date

Estimated Contract Value

allocates revenue across periods

If the contract does not have PoP start and end dates, NextStage will estimate them based on the award date and the contract term (months).

Example:

If an opportunity does not have a Contract Start Date, but has an award date, NextStage will estimate the start of the POP to be the award date, and the end date to be the award date + the contract term.


How the Revenue and Forecasted Revenue are Calculated

  1. Determine PoP range from Start → End (or Term).

  2. Evenly distribute Estimated Contract Value across each month in the range (pro‑rate first/last month).

  3. Apply Win Probability (Pwin) for opportunities not yet Won.

  4. Aggregate by calendar month (dashboard toggle: fiscal vs calendar year).


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