Salesforce

What Is Salesforce?

Salesforce is the world’s #1 CRM platform, used by over 150,000 companies to manage customer relationships, sales processes, and marketing activities. For finance teams, Salesforce is increasingly critical as it contains pipeline data, bookings, and customer information essential for forecasting and analysis.

Core Salesforce products:

• Sales Cloud: Sales automation and CRM
• Service Cloud: Customer service and support
• Marketing Cloud: Marketing automation
• Commerce Cloud: E-commerce platform
• Tableau: Analytics and visualization
• MuleSoft: Integration platform

Why Finance Needs Salesforce Data

Salesforce contains data critical for financial planning:

Revenue forecasting

• Pipeline by stage
• Expected close dates
• Deal sizes and probability
• Quota attainment

Bookings analysis

• Won opportunities
• Contract values
• Product mix
• Customer segments

Customer metrics

• Customer lifetime value
• Churn indicators
• Upsell/cross-sell opportunities
• Customer acquisition cost attribution

Commission calculations

• Sales rep attribution
• Deal values for commission
• Quota performance

Salesforce Data Model

Key Salesforce objects for finance:

Accounts

• Companies you do business with
• Hierarchy and relationships
• Industry, size, region

Opportunities

• Potential deals
• Stage, amount, close date
• Probability and forecast category

Contacts

• People at accounts
• Roles and relationships

Products/Price Books

• What you sell
• Pricing structures

Contracts/Orders

• Closed business
• Terms and values

Custom Objects

• Organization-specific data
• Bookings, renewals, etc.

Salesforce-Finance Integration Challenges

Data ownership: Sales owns Salesforce; finance needs the data

Data quality: Opportunities may have incomplete or inaccurate data

Timing differences: CRM bookings vs. revenue recognition

Custom configurations: Every Salesforce org is different

API complexity: Salesforce APIs require technical expertise

Rate limits: Salesforce limits API calls

How Go Fig Integrates Salesforce

Go Fig connects to Salesforce for financial analytics:

What Go Fig extracts:

• Opportunities (pipeline and closed)
• Accounts and contacts
• Products and price books
• Custom objects (bookings, contracts)
• Historical data for trending

How it helps:

• Combine Salesforce with ERP for full picture
• Build pipeline reports in Excel
• Create revenue forecasts blending CRM and finance
• Automate bookings-to-revenue reconciliation
• Enable AI analysis of sales performance

Salesforce Reporting Options

Option	Pros	Cons
Salesforce Reports	Built-in, no cost	Limited complexity
Dashboards	Visual, real-time	Salesforce-only data
Report Builder	Flexible	Still within Salesforce
Einstein Analytics	Powerful AI	Expensive, complex
Tableau	Best-in-class viz	Requires integration
Go Fig	Excel-native, multi-source	External tool

Salesforce Data for Finance Use Cases

Pipeline Reporting

• Weighted pipeline by stage
• Expected close by period
• Pipeline coverage ratios
• Deal aging analysis

Bookings Analysis

• Bookings vs. quota
• Win rates by segment
• Average deal size trends
• Sales cycle analysis

Revenue Forecasting

• Bottom-up from pipeline
• Historical conversion rates
• Seasonal adjustments
• Scenario modeling

Commission Calculations

• Attainment tracking
• Commission accruals
• Payout calculations
• Dispute resolution

Best Practices for Salesforce-Finance Integration

1. Define data ownership: Who maintains Salesforce data quality?
2. Standardize stages: Consistent opportunity stages for forecasting
3. Require key fields: Enforce data entry for financial fields
4. Document mappings: How CRM data maps to financial reports
5. Reconcile regularly: Match Salesforce to finance systems
6. Automate extraction: Don’t rely on manual exports