To better support this SaaS world we live in, we've so far calculated and forecasted both the Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) and the First-Year Value (FYV) of our opportunities. Two more things to wrap up this series. First, I want to track scheduled payments. And then we'll create a report to track the month-end MRR under contract, as this is a critical metric for SaaS providers. Scheduled Payments I want to help my finance team to tracking payments that are expected from prior-period bookings. So I've added a custom field, Payment Amount, to my Activity Object, and added that field to the Event page layout. Now when I mark an opportunity closed-won and the opportunity term exceeds 23 months, I create an Event to record the scheduled payment(s). (For my purposes, I don't create a Schedule Payment for the initial billing, though you could if you want to record all billing events in Salesforce.) From the opportunity record, I record a new all-day event with no...

In the previous post , we added MRR and FYV custom currency fields on the Opportunity object. The next step is to set up forecasting on these fields. The first requirement is to enable Opportunity Splits .  If you’re not actually splitting credit among reps, the opportunity owner will receive 100% credit by default, so turning on splits doesn’t require additional input on each opportunity, but IS required to set up forecasting with custom fields. In Setup, search for Splits, click on Opportunity Splits Settings then on Set Up Opportunity Splits. I’m going to rename the first entry from Revenue to TCV (total contract value) to better distinguish that from our custom fields. I’ll deactivate the Overlay split type. Next, I’ll add a new split type, naming it MRR and selecting the Opportunity – MRR field. Repeat for FYV, using the Opportunity – FYV field. Click Save. Check the warning and then, if those warning conditions don’t apply, click Enable. Now you...

Continuing the series on how to quote, forecast and measure recurring revenue... What I'm trying to determine with Opportunities are the: First-Year Value, and Monthly Recurring Revenue Ultimately, I want to be able to forecast based on these amounts. Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is probably my most important metric as a SaaS provider, so I want to move away from forecasting on the Amount field (which typically represents the total contract value of an opportunity). FYV is kind of an in-between measure; it includes start-up charges (training, setup) and the first 12 months of service, but excludes multiple years of service. I'm basing these on custom fields on the Opportunity (Term, the service duration in months) and Product (Category). I have one field to add to the Opportunity Product: Recurring Charges: If the Line Item's Product Category (see the first post in this series) is either Subscription or Over Time, the Recurring Charges are set to the L...

Continuing the series on how to quote, forecast and measure recurring revenue... What I'm trying to determine with Quotes are the: Number of payments Amount of each recurring payment, and Amount of the initial payment I'm basing these on custom fields on the Opportunity (Term, the service duration in months) and Product (Category).  In practice, I also have the Term on the Quote object so that we can have quotes for different terms attached to a single opportunity. Then I use Custom Quote Sync from Salesforce Labs to sync custom fields across the Quote and Opportunity. But that's a detail I'll avoid for now. I have two fields to add to the Quote Line Item (QLI): Recurring Charges: If the Line Item's Product Category (see the prior post) is either Subscription or Over Time, the Recurring Charges are set to the Line Item's Total Price; otherwise to 0. BUT... this is NOT a formula field. Instead, I populate it via a simple workflow rule and field up...

SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, ... the world seems to be moving to an 'as-a-service' model. Instead of a big upfront charge with smaller maintenance fees thereafter, we're more often now establishing subscriptions that lower the entry fee but generate greater recurring revenue. And it's those ongoing subscription charges that really drive business valuations. But out of the box, Salesforce doesn't help much with reporting or forecasting recurring revenue. Typically, the Amount which rolls up into the forecast is the Total Contract Value, which may include non-recurring items, as well as multiple years of service. Yes, you can create schedules (quantity schedules or revenue schedules) attached to each line item. And that does help, especially with reporting on revenue in each period. But I don't find that a complete solution (though it is reasonably flexible given that you can edit each entry of the schedule). Over several posts, I'm going to walk through a set of Sal...