A reforecast is a new forecast for the rest of the fiscal year. It starts from year-to-date actuals and uses fresh assumptions for the months that remain. Reforecasting means doing that once the old assumptions stop holding. A full-year reforecast lands the whole year again. The approved plan stays fixed as the baseline you measure against. Updated October 2026: added a trigger table, a reforecast vs budget vs rolling forecast comparison and an illustrative mid-year example.
How does a reforecast compare with the budget and a rolling forecast?
A reforecast is the revised landing point for the current fiscal year. The budget is the commitment, and the rolling forecast is the always-on outlook. Each answers a different question, so most companies keep the budget and run at least one of the other two.
| Budget (annual plan) | Full-year reforecast | Rolling forecast | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Question it answers | What did we commit to? | Where does this fiscal year now land? | What happens over the next few quarters? |
| When it is built | Once, before the year starts | When an assumption breaks, often mid-year | On a set rhythm, usually monthly |
| Horizon | The fiscal year | The rest of the fiscal year | A fixed window that rolls forward, often four to six quarters |
| Does it move? | No, it stays fixed | Yes, each time it is rebuilt | Yes, every cycle |
| What it drives | Quota, headcount and spend | Board expectations, hiring pace and spend for the rest of the year | Operating decisions and the next annual plan |
| Measured against | Actuals | The plan, to show the gap | Actuals, period by period |
When should you reforecast?
Reforecast when an assumption under the plan has broken. The calendar is a poor trigger. Pete Furseth, ORM's COO, names stale assumptions as the most common reason a forecast misses. The business or the market changed, and the model kept running on the old inputs. Each kind of change breaks a specific input, and each shows up in the pipeline before it shows up in revenue.
| What changed | Assumption it breaks | Early signal in the pipeline |
|---|---|---|
| A new competitor creates pricing pressure | Average deal size | Deals close for less than their pipeline value |
| Interest rates rise and private-equity firms slow their investing | Win rate | Buyers cut costs and fewer companies buy |
| Uncertainty makes buyers slower to commit | Sales cycle length | Days in stage creep up and reps push close dates |
| Sales territories are redrawn | Execution | Plenty of pipeline, weaker conversion while reps settle in |
| Last quarter was saved with pull-forward deals | Next quarter's starting pipeline | Discounted closes now, a thinner pipeline later |
| Rep turnover rises | Productive capacity | Average tenure falls and more of the team is still ramping |
Across ORM customers in 2026, the longer sales cycle has been the most common of these. When pipeline stalls, deals close for less and win rates slip at the same time. At that point the plan's assumptions are gone and the remaining quarters need rebuilding.
One soft month is not a trigger. Pete notes that the first month of a quarter is always the smallest, so a slow first month is the normal pattern. It is not a broken assumption. A lasting shift in win rate, deal size or cycle length is.
What changes in a reforecast, and what stays fixed?
The assumptions and the numbers for the remaining periods change. The plan, the actuals to date and the way you grade accuracy stay fixed.
What changes- The forecast for each month and quarter left in the year. - Conversion rates by stage. Reset them on recent deals, not the last twelve months, which hide a recent shift. - Average deal size. Reset it on closed-won values rather than pipeline values. Our post on why deals close for less than forecast covers the gap. - Cycle length, since longer cycles push revenue past year-end no matter what demand does. - The pipeline you need to create. It usually goes up once the first three inputs move. - The range: a low case, an on-target case and an upper bound.
What stays fixed- The approved plan. It stays the baseline for variance all year, and the gap to plan is measured against it. - Actuals to date. - The scorecard. Keep grading forecast accuracy against the first calls. When a team reforecasts often and still misses, look at the model before the market. - Quotas, in most cases. A reforecast changes what leaders expect. It does not change what reps are paid on. A mid-year quota reset is a separate pay decision.
The most common failure is to reforecast the output. Someone lowers the revenue number but leaves win rate and cycle length where they were. The model still implies the same number of closed deals. A useful reforecast starts one level down, at the drivers. Our guide to how to forecast revenue covers the drivers in detail.
Worked example: how a mid-year reforecast works
The numbers below are illustrative. A SaaS company planned $24.0M of new-business bookings for the year: 400 deals at an average of $60K, spread across quarters by seasonality. At midyear it has closed the planned 180 deals, but at $55K each, so the first half delivered $9.9M against a $10.8M plan. Its sales cycle has also stretched from 90 days to 110.
Step 1: rebuild the second half on the new drivers. The plan needed 220 deals in the second half. At $55K, those 220 deals are worth $12.1M. The longer cycle pushes 20 of them past year-end, which leaves 200 deals and $11.0M. Step 2: spread it by seasonality instead of evenly. Ten Q3 deals slip into Q4, and 20 Q4 deals slip into next year.| Quarter | Plan | Reforecast | What moved it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 | $4.8M (80 deals) | $4.4M actual | 80 deals at $55K |
| Q2 | $6.0M (100 deals) | $5.5M actual | 100 deals at $55K |
| Q3 | $5.4M (90 deals) | $4.4M | 80 deals at $55K, with 10 slipping into Q4 |
| Q4 | $7.8M (130 deals) | $6.6M | 120 deals at $55K: 130 planned, plus 10 from Q3, minus 20 past year-end |
| Full year | $24.0M (400 deals) | $20.9M (380 deals) | Gap to plan of $3.1M, or 12.9% |
- Hold the number. Pushing the $0.9M first-half shortfall into the second half means it must deliver $14.1M. At $55K that is about 256 deals against 220 planned, roughly 16% more deals in a half where cycles are getting longer. - Cut the output only. Lowering the year by the first-half miss to $23.1M, while keeping $60K deals and 90-day cycles, overstates the year by $2.2M against the driver-based $20.9M. - Spread evenly. Splitting the $11.0M as $5.5M per quarter makes Q3 look $1.1M short and Q4 look $1.1M ahead, when neither is true.
Step 3: report a range. If deal size slips again to $50K, the low case is $19.9M ($9.9M plus 200 deals at $50K). If decisions speed back up and the 20 slipped deals close in the year, the upper bound is $22.0M ($9.9M plus 220 deals at $55K). The board sees $19.9M, $20.9M and $22.0M against a $24.0M plan. Step 4: act on the gap. Pete's first move for a CRO behind plan is to name the gap precisely. Is it deal size, win rate, pipeline, time to close or a mix? Here it is deal size and cycle length, so "sell harder" is the wrong answer. Pricing discipline and forcing decisions on stalled deals are better ones. In Pete's words, a no today is better than a no three months from now.How do you spread a reforecast across the remaining quarters?
Use the business's seasonality rather than an even split. Across ORM customers, Q4 is usually the largest quarter, followed by Q2, then Q3, then Q1. Inside each quarter the third month is always the largest and the first is the smallest, and the final week carries a striking share of the quarter.
| Level | Typical pattern across ORM customers |
|---|---|
| Quarter | Q4 largest, then Q2, Q3 and Q1 |
| Month inside a quarter | Third month largest, first month smallest |
| Week inside a quarter | In one example curve, 34% of the quarter has closed by the end of week six against 46% on a straight line |
How do you present a reforecast to the board?
Show it next to the plan, as a range, with the reason for every change. Put plan, prior forecast and current reforecast in one exhibit, with the movement between them attributed to drivers. That lets a board see whether the year moved because demand changed, because pricing changed, or because timing moved revenue into the next fiscal year. The same discipline applies to every downstream sales forecast built on top of it.
A board will trust a forecast that is consistent, traceable and realistic about its range.
- Consistent. A number on one slide appears on the next, or there is a clear explanation for why it moved. It rolls up the same way from region to super region to the total business. - Traceable. Anyone should be able to drill from the reforecast down to the deals and assumptions underneath it. - A range. Show a low case, an on-target case and an upper bound, so the board sees the expected outcome and the risk around it.
Present it early. If the reforecast says the year will miss, say so now, while there is time to respond. As Pete puts it, bad news doesn't get better with time. Do this every time and the board stops interrogating each number and starts trusting the process. For more on the board side, see how to present a forecast to the board.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a reforecast?
A reforecast is a new forecast for the rest of the year, built on actual results so far and fresh assumptions for the months left. Its purpose is to give leaders an honest landing point early enough to act on it. Most forecasts miss because the business or the market changed while the model kept running on old assumptions. A reforecast swaps those out and leaves the approved plan in place as the baseline.
Is reforecast a word?
Yes. It is standard finance usage, both as a noun (the Q2 reforecast) and as a verb (we reforecast the year). Reforecast and re-forecast are both understood. This glossary uses one word. Weather science uses the term in a different way. There, a reforecast is a current model run again over past dates, such as the NOAA reforecasts for 2000 to 2019.
Is a reforecast the same as a forecast?
Not quite. A forecast is any estimate of future results. A reforecast replaces an earlier forecast for the same period because the assumptions behind it changed. The earlier numbers are not deleted. Finance keeps the plan, the prior forecast and the reforecast side by side, so the board can see how far the year moved and which driver moved it.
When should a company reforecast the full year?
When an assumption behind the plan has clearly changed. The calendar is a poor trigger. One soft month is noise. A lasting shift in win rate, deal size or cycle length is a broken assumption, and every quarter built on it is now wrong. Waiting for the next planning cycle wastes the quarters where you can still respond.
Does a reforecast replace the budget or annual plan?
No. The plan is the approved commitment and stays fixed, so variance stays measurable all year. The reforecast is the current view of where the year lands. Report both, because they answer two questions: are we on plan, and what do we now expect?
How is a reforecast different from a rolling forecast?
A rolling forecast always looks the same distance ahead, often four to six quarters. It updates on a set rhythm. A reforecast starts when conditions change, and it ends with the fiscal year the board and budget are tied to. Many companies run both. The rolling view drives operating decisions, and the reforecast shows where this year lands.
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