11. Establishing Quantity and Revenue Scheduling on an Opportunity
On the previous lesson, we enabled product scheduling in our and we also created a new opportunity and added a product that has scheduling enabled on it to an opportunity. We also specified a quantity and we’ve closed and won this, but we have not set up the actual schedule on this product in the price book. And so how you do that is that you can go into the product and we’ve could do this from within the opportunity here from the products related list. And this is the lawn dart set. And we could go to the related list here and see schedules. So we can establish a schedule. And so the type is that we can select both quantity and revenue scheduling, or we could select revenue scheduling only or quantity scheduling only. We’re going to go ahead and do both.
And so the idea behind a quantity schedule is that it is like a subscription. You could receive for instance, one lawn dart set per month for a year. The revenue scheduling could be that you will invoice the customer and you’ll realize this revenue, they’ll pay this like once a quarter for example. So we’re going to look at the quantity schedule of twelve installments and then the revenue schedule of four quarterly installments. So we’ll start the start date with today’s date here and have a quantity of twelve. Now there’s twelve products and the installment period will do monthly and the schedule type. We can either repeat the amount for each installment, meaning that we would ship twelve londart sets each month, or we could divide the amount into multiple installments.
So I want to divide this quantity of twelve into monthly installments and make this twelve installments. So it’s one law and art set per month for twelve months. And then the revenue schedule, we’ll start that as well on the same date. And let’s do an installment period of quarterly and a schedule type of dividing the amount into multiple installments for four installments. And so this way we get the first revenue installment right now and then three other installments every quarter for a total of four installments of that total revenue. And so that will be divided up. So let’s click save. And so now we’ve got our related list for schedules and you see both the quantity and the revenue details here. And if we view all, we can see the dates and the quantities and the amounts. So you see when there’s revenue that has more than zero, you know that that’s a revenue schedule installment.
And then when there’s no revenue, that is a quantity schedule. So another thing that we probably should talk about is these buttons here related to reestablishing a schedule, editing a schedule, or deleting a schedule as well. So editing a schedule is pretty straightforward. It’s just editing your existing schedule that you’ve set up here. So you click on that and this is a very similar concept, but it has the grid view here, where you can also even add comments and tweak things if you wish. If you wanted to realize the revenue, not just divide it into equal installments, but to have it be more front loaded or backloaded, kind of like a free agent contract in baseball or something like that, then you could do that as well. Or if you wanted to get more granular and specific, you may want to say, okay, this month we’re going to change this and not send them one, and then the next month we’ll send them two, for example, and this is all customizable to fit your customers needs.
So clicking Save, we’ve now accomplished editing our schedule. Now reestablishing a schedule will delete the old schedule and create a new one. And so I’m going to go ahead and destroy the schedule by clicking Reestablish. And we will say that, oh, we want to start this next month, for example. So we’re going to select June 16 and then do an installment period of monthly for the quantity schedule to divide amount into multiple installments for a total of twelve installments.
We could do a different amount of installments even. And then for the revenue, let’s say that we won’t realize the revenue for like net 30 after June 16. Let’s say July 15, which is my anniversary, I might add. Hello, sweetheart. So the revenue schedule will be the total amount of the opportunity. The installment periods will be quarterly. Schedule five will divide and we’ll do four installments and click Save. And so we’ve just reestablished a schedule. And so now that we’ve done that, you know how scheduling works at both quantity and revenue. And so there’s other things related to scheduling and products that will be going into here in the next several lessons related to quotes and orders and contracts. And so let’s dive into some of those pieces starting in the next lesson.
12. Enabling and Creating Quotes
A specific standard object in Salesforce that does not get a lot of attention or focus in the admin exam, but will come more into view as you progress into the advanced admin certification and that would be the quote object. Now, oftentimes, you know, in the real world, salespeople won’t just be taking orders over the phone and entering in sales information such as this inside of Salesforce. And it’s kind of a simplistic view in a lot of ways with a lot of the training that’s out there and especially if you’ve just focused on the admin side of things. But oftentimes in these large complex business to business deals, oftentimes the sales process can take many months to many years to close and oftentimes customers will want to see a quote or revision to a quote or adjustments. And so this is a way to get on record what the proposed amount is for an opportunity.
Now, if we look at an opportunity and we look at the related lists here, we do not see quotes as one of the related lists on opportunity. So you’re probably wondering, well, how do I create a quote? Well, we’ve got to enable quotes in our organization first and that’s a very common refrain as you start to establish more features inside of Salesforce. Oftentimes you’ve got to first enable that feature and then configure it. That’s a common two step process that you’ll do as an advanced administrator. So let’s search for quote and let’s look at quote settings. And so I just love the complexity of this screen here. I don’t know what to do. I’m going to guess that I’m going to enable quotes in my Salesforce instance by clicking this big old button called enable.
But before I do that, it’s always good to read the content that Salesforce has provided. So what this does is it allows you to create a quote and generate a PDF of the quote. So good times. Let’s enable quotes in our I thought I clicked. There it is. Okay, so it’s just lightning being lightning or more like rolling thunder. Okay, so here’s where the magic happens as far as the second step of the process is adding the related list to the page layouts. We’re going to select all of these and also append a user’s personal related list customization. So if they’ve customized their own page layout and reordered the related list in their own instance, basically we’re going to add the quote related list for them as well. So let’s click Save and now let’s go into an opportunity and admire our new related list for quotes. Now also there’s quotes available here from the all items, but let’s look at opportunities and pull one up from our pinned list view of all opportunities.
And here is our opportunity that we closed one previously with our lawn dart set with the scheduling enabled as well. And the way we can see that is we can look at the Opportunity product and we can see under related the schedules. So let’s go back though and let’s look for our quote related list. And usually when you add a new related list through the interface like that without going into the Enhanced Page Layout Editor, and I don’t know why at this point. It’s called the enhanced page layout editor.
It’s enhanced as of like seven years ago, but it is enhanced compared to what it used to be. So we did not go into the Enhanced Page Layout editor. We just selected the different page layouts we wanted to add the related list to. And so typically what happens is you’ll find that at the bottom by default. So clicking on this, we can then create a new quote. And yes, you can quote me on that. So here is a quote. And so we are going to demonstrate the functionality of quotes and also start a movement for petitioning that law and arts be included in a future Olympics. I am joking, by the way. All right, so this quote, you can set an expiration date on a quote and say buy now, but wait, there’s more. And if you don’t buy within the next 24 hours, then too bad.
So these prices are only good until the expiration date. So we’ll put it to the end of the month and then you can set a status here. So the idea behind the status is you can be working on a quote and it’s not quite ready for prime time or to be shared. It may need review or you may need another set of eyes or approvals, someone to say, this looks good, for example, in our description if you want. And then as far as the totals, we don’t have any product information here, but we can enable discounting. I’ve not enabled that. But let’s just add tax. Let’s just try and add that as a percentage. I’m not sure if I do zero, nine or nine. I can’t do a percent sign. So shipping and handling will, of course oh, so tax is a dollar amount, so we’re going to just charge them a flat rate of $3 and then shipping handling through 599. And so here’s where you can specify who you’re preparing this quote for. And you could search for someone. I’m going to leave that blank.
And then this pulls in information for the account that the Opportunity belongs to and all of their information is pulled in automatically. Let’s click save. Now we’ve got one quote. And so the quote line items pull in the product information from the Opportunity. Now this is a little bit backwards because on this Opportunity, it’s already closed in one. So we’re kind of making a quote after the fact. I guess the scenario would be that part of the process is the salesperson should have created a quote and didn’t. So they’re kind of recreating the history here after the fact. You can add additional products to the quote. You can edit the products. Let’s look at editing. We could change the sales price, but the quantity this may kind of blow things not blow things up, but may throw off my scheduling if I change the quantity. So I could change this to 24. Because we have twelve installments, for example.
So we could do our quantity scheduling could be two a month for twelve months in this instance, for example. And now we’ve ratcheted up the subtotal on the quote. And so let’s look at then the opportunity that this is tied to. Now, we are looking at the quote right now, remember, so we can go to details on the quote and pull up links to the opportunity and the account as well. So, what I want to look at is we’ve got a total of 47 28 on the quote. Let’s see if we’ve adjusted the amount on the opportunity as well. Hovering over it shows that it is locked in place at the 23 88. And so what we could do to bring this into sync is let’s backstage this back to ID decision makers and mark as the current stage, so it’s no longer closed in one. And we could then reset our scenario saying okay, we thought we had won the business. They came back and said tell you what, we want to renegotiate the price and we’ll increase the quantity. And so send us a quote and we will move forward from there.
And so what we’ve done, if we look at our quote, we’ve got a quantity of 24 and a sales price of 197. So what we need to do and we can also this is called a compact layout here. Basically, these are some of the fields that are specified in the compact layout. And we can also get to the opportunity from here. So, just to mention that. So if we go back to the opportunity, what we want to do is get the quote and the opportunity in sync. And so we’ll pick up in the next lesson in getting those two entities talking to one one another and in sync and rocking your world. As an advanced admin, that may be a slight exaggeration.
13. Syncing Quotes with Opportunities
So last we looked at this Opportunity, we’ve got a disconnect between the products in the Opportunity and the quote. And so what we need to do is we need to sync these two together. Now, you may have noticed this syncing checkbox here. Now, it doesn’t give you a sinking feeling, but it will give you the ability to keep these two things in sync with one another. So, speaking of boy bands from the 90s, let’s in sync. And I’m sorry, that’s just one of the lamest puns ever.
So let me see if I can find this. All right, sinking. I’ve got that sinking feeling that I’m going to have another pun here. Why can I not? Oh, okay. I’m a moron. So we need to start the sink. And of course, it’s hidden, so that’s why I couldn’t find it. And so once I start the sink, it will signify that it’s syncing with this checkbox. So I’m on the quote, and then I need to start the sync. So then there’s a lovely pop up with a warning. If you continue, you’ll replace all Opportunity products with the quote line items. And so this is saying that whatever we have on the quote will win out and we’ll overwrite what is on the Opportunity.
Now, remember, we created the quote and we have 24 quantity instead of twelve and an amount of 197 instead of 199. After a quote is synced or should be sunk, I guess it would be synced opportunity Products. And quote line items are updated automatically. So they’re kind of like Siamese twins. So we’ll click continue. That’s unfortunate. So let me try that again. That red warning disappeared kind of quickly. It starts synced. Let’s try it again. And so what’s happened here is this quote can’t be synced because one or more of the schedules for the Opportunity products have changed since the quote was created.
So I don’t think I changed the schedules. But let me go into the Opportunity from my compact layout and I will go into the product schedule by going to the related list on the Opportunity product. And let’s delete the schedules. So I’ve removed scheduling on the opportunity. So now we’re going to go back to our Opportunity. We’re going to I’m on the Opportunity product, actually go to the related list on the Opportunity product. And that’s not where I’m going. I’m getting lost in the weeds here. So let me just go to a different tab and refresh this. I’ve removed the scheduling for revenue and quantity on the Opportunity product on my Opportunity. So now let’s try and sync our quote again, shall we? So I’m going in. Let me just click on the details and then this will give me the button to start the sync.
So now we have synced the quote with the Opportunity. Life is grand, let me tell you. So now we have our syncing checkbox checked. And so now let me change the quote and we’ll see. But before I do that, let’s go to the Opportunity and make sure that we’ve got the 24 and 197, which we do. So now we can do this either way. We can change the products or we could change the quote and one will update the other. So let’s go in through the quote and let’s edit this. And I’ve removed the scheduling, so I’m not as reticent to change the quantity. So I’m just going to change this to 25 just for grins and click Save. And since we have synced the quote with the Opportunity, we should be able to see this by going back to the Opportunity. Let me refresh and it did take a hard refresh to hit the server again and maybe it takes a little bit for the sinking to carry over, but the 25th quantity update from the quote did carry over to the Opportunity product on the Opportunity. So we now have a quantity of 25 and so we have now enabled quotes in your organization. We have set up syncing between quotes and opportunities. And so now we’re not done with quotes yet. Let’s create a PDF and look at templates for quote.
