Forecast category
A forecast category is the rep’s judgement of how likely an opportunity is to close in the period, commonly Pipeline, Best case, Commit and Closed.
In practice
Stages describe where a deal is in the buying process; forecast categories describe how confident the owner is that it closes this period. Keeping the two separate lets leaders see the gap between process and judgement.
Define each category in writing (for example, Commit means the rep would stake their number on it) and roll them up as Closed, Closed plus Commit, and Closed plus Commit plus Best case. Compare each category’s forecast with the actual result every period to calibrate.