Last week, we covered some revenue scheduling basics, but simply turning on the functionality is just the beginning. We will be exploring revenue scheduling from an automation perspective. We will be using both process builder and flow builder to show you how to automatically keep your revenue schedules in sync with your opportunity close date.
Revenue Schedules Before Automation
By default, when you add a product with a revenue schedule to an Opportunity, the Opportunity Closed Won Date will dictate when the schedule starts. However, any changes to the Closed Won Date will not update the revenue schedule. If you update the Closed Won Date, you would then have to go into the schedule manually to change the schedule dates. This process adds extra clicks to the process and leaves it open to the possibility of user error. Any issues with this manual process can cause your revenue numbers to be skewed for all subsequent months. However, we can avoid this with automation.
The solution is simple – create an automated process that runs whenever an Opportunity is Closed Won to set the schedule start date to be the same.
The Solution
Setting up this solution involves using the process builder as well as the flow builder. You can find both in the Setup menu.
Process Builder
In Process Builder, create a process that kicks off when an Opportunity is edited or created. Set it up to evaluate if the Opportunity Close Date is changed, and then reference the flow (below) to run if true. You will need to pass a couple of parameters into the flow so that it executes correctly.
Flow Builder
In Flow Builder, create a flow that will update schedules to the Opportunity Closed Date. Because this flow is referenced in the process above, it will run on the Opportunity once the date is changed. The flow should:
- Get the Opportunity ID
- Get the resulting Opportunity Product IDs
- Create a list of the Schedules associated with the Opportunity Products
- Assign the schedule dates based on the Opportunity Closed Won Date for every item in this list
- Update all schedules with the new values
With this process and flow, all revenue schedules on an opportunity update automatically once the Closed Date changes!
Ntegro Is Here To Help
If you’d like some help setting this up for your company, get in touch with Ntegro today. We can help you with this solution as well as several others. Creating processes and flows like these will benefit your organization, but only if you configure them correctly. Contact us online for a free consultation today! We’d be happy to help!
