Salesforce For Dummies
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If your company wants to use Salesforce to track annuity streams, stay aware of key shipping dates, or estimate when revenue will be recognized on products, you can set up schedules on all or some products.

Enabling schedules for your company

Your administrator first needs to enable schedules before you can add them on specific products.

If your company wants to track shipping dates with Salesforce, you need to enable quantity scheduling. If your company wants to measure revenue recognition or anticipate upcoming payments, be sure to enable revenue scheduling. If your company wants to do both, you’d enable both types of scheduling.

To set up schedules, follow these steps:
  1. Choose Setup → Build → Customize → Products → Product Schedules Settings. The Schedule Setup page appears.

    Enable schedules
    Enable schedules for your company.
  2. Select the appropriate check boxes. You can choose to enable schedules based on quantities, revenue, or both. You can also choose to enable schedules for all products.
  3. When you’re done, click Save. The Products page reappears.

Adding and updating a default schedule

After schedules have been enabled, you can create default schedules on existing products or while you’re adding new products.

By creating default schedules, you can simplify repetitive tasks for sales reps. With this setting, a default schedule is created when a sales rep adds a product to an opportunity. A sales rep can still reestablish a product schedule on an opportunity. The product date determines the start date for the installments.

If you sell a basic service with different payment plans, consider creating a unique product for each payment plan and then using default revenue schedules. By doing this, you can simplify the data entry for the rep and reduce the chance of error.

To create a default schedule, follow these steps:
  1. Select the Create New Product option on the sidebar or click the Edit button on a product record. A Product page appears in Edit mode. (Make sure you didn’t click Edit on an Opportunity Product record. Remember that an Opportunity Product record is different from a Product record.)
  2. Complete the fields, as appropriate.

    Here are some tips on completing the default schedule:

    Schedule Type: Select Divide if you want to divide the opportunity amount into installments. Select Repeat if you want to repeat the quantity or revenue on each installment.

    Installment Period: Define the frequency.

    Number of Installments: Define the duration.

  3. When you’re done, click Save. The Product detail page appears.

If your product has both quantity and revenue default scheduling, quantity scheduling is calculated first and drives the total amount. Then revenue scheduling divides the amount.

To update a default product schedule, follow these steps:
  1. From the Products home page, search for the product whose schedule you’d like to update, using your preferred method. A Product Search page appears.
  2. Click the product name of the specific product to edit. The Product page appears.
  3. Click the Edit button to update schedule information.
  4. When you’re done, click Save. The Product page for your product appears with the updated information.

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