Bridge

A table that walks from one figure to another through named lines: last month's forecast to this month's deal by deal; bookings to billings to revenue through deferral and release; opening ARR to closing through expansion, contraction, churn and new. The lines sum, and each is attributable.

DefinitionA table that walks from one figure to another through named lines: last month's forecast to this month's deal by deal; bookings to billings to revenue through deferral and release; opening ARR to closing through expansion, contraction, churn and new. The lines sum, and each is attributable.

Where the argument used to be

Two numbers with no bridge are settled by seniority. Two numbers with a bridge are settled by the lines.

Every line names something

A "haircut" line with no deals behind it is not a bridge line.

How it is used

A table with a starting figure, named lines that add or subtract, and an ending figure. The lines must sum exactly to the difference. Used for plan to actual, last forecast to this forecast, and last year to this year.

Example

Plan $4.47 million. Volume at existing customers minus $0.22 million, price minus $0.13 million, lost customers minus $0.06 million, new customers plus $0.14 million. Actual $4.20 million.

Where it goes wrong

A bridge with a line called other that is larger than any named line. It means the decomposition was not finished.

Articles that use this term

AI and self-service analytics

A weekly sales digest worth reading: what a good one looks like, line by line

An annotated example of a weekly sales digest built from computed tables: the header that states the period and the checks, ten movements each with the measure, the level, the change, the threshold and the citation, the three lists that follow, untouched, slipped and dormant, the line that says what did not move, and the footer with the definition version. What each element is for, and the version of the same digest that nobody reads.

16 Sept 20263 min read Board and management reporting · Finance and FP&A teams

Automating the sales report: from a manual monthly pack to computed tables

A practical path for a sales operations or finance team that assembles the monthly sales report by hand: what to automate first, the definitions that have to be written down before anything can be computed, the four exports the whole pack comes from, the identity checks that replace the reconciliation week, what stays manual, and the order in which the pack's sections move from spreadsheet to computed table.

16 Sept 20263 min read Board and management reporting · Finance and FP&A teams

Bookings, billings and revenue: one reconciliation before anyone reports a number

Why sales, finance and the board each quote a different figure for the same quarter, the three definitions behind them, the bridge from bookings to billings to recognised revenue with the timing and the adjustments that separate them, the identity that ties the three together, and the governance rule that every report names which of the three it is showing.

16 Sept 20262 min read Data quality and reconciliation

Fiscal calendars and period cuts: why March is not always March

Why two reports for the same month disagree when one uses the calendar month and the other the fiscal period, the four period conventions that appear in a single company, calendar month, 4-4-5 fiscal periods, week-ending Sunday, and invoice-date versus ship-date, the rule that every export states its cut and every report inherits it, the identity that a year's periods sum to the year, and the trap of comparing this March to last March across a 53-week year.

16 Sept 20263 min read Forecast and pipeline

Forecast bias by rep: the direction of the miss matters more than its size

How a sales leader measures forecast accuracy per rep from the weekly forecast snapshots and the closed results: error, bias and the split between them, why a rep who is always 20 percent high is more useful than one who is randomly 10 percent out, the per-rep adjustment it produces, and the identity that ties the adjusted forecast to the raw one.

16 Sept 20263 min read Forecast and pipeline

Four sales forecasting methods compared, and the bridge that shows where they disagree

The four common ways to forecast a quarter, rep roll-up, stage-weighted pipeline, run rate and historical conversion, what each needs, what each is good and bad at, a worked quarter where they give four different numbers, and why the right output is not one of them but the bridge between them, with the deals that explain the gaps.

16 Sept 20263 min read