What are Finance Schedules in Salesforce and Why are they Useful?
Finance Schedules in Salesforce allow users to spread the amount of each line item on an Opportunity between a start date and an end date.
The daily value for each opportunity product is calculated based on the dates on that opportunity product and the sum of all the daily values are grouped together by month and a Finance Schedule record created for each month and related to the Opportunity.
This allows you to summarise on a timeline the amount of revenue you expect from an opportunity based on products that may be delivered over different time periods.
Each line item can have its own start date and end date and pick up a default start and end date from the opportunity. For those products that don’t need schedules, a configuration setting can hide these start and end date fields and opportunity line item amounts will be added to the schedules based on the opportunity close date.
In the below example, Coffee House is looking to schedule installation works valued at £9,844 between 15th July 2018 and 10th October 2018, together and a one-off consulting fee of £5,000 to be paid at the start.
Note that Flexpricer can automatically pick up discounts that are configured – and here, Coffee House has a 2.5% account discount configured.
Now, when this Flexpricer entry is saved, we can see Finance Schedule records have been created that show the revenue to attribute to each month, calculated on a daily basis.
If we change the close date from June to July, we’ll see the Consulting Fees revenue move from the June month to the July month.
This will allow your finance team to correctly accrue for expected revenue in future months and generate reports of this data.
Use Finance Schedules to make it easier to visualise when you expect to receive revenue from your opportunities by setting start and end dates for the revenue from each product.
Setup Finance Schedules in Salesforce
- Go to the Flexpricer Settings page
- Under ‘Sector Solutions’ check the box in the Enable column next to Finance Schedules
- Select either All Line Items or Individual Line Items as a configuration option on how Finance Schedules will be displayed
- All Line Items will display Start Date and End Dates on all line items
- Individual Line Items will only display Start Date and End Date on line items where the Product has the ‘Show Finance Schedule’ checkbox checked
- then press Save
User Interface Configuration (Classic)
Go to Setup > Search (type Opportunities )
> Opportunities > Page Layout > (Select Page Layout) > Edit- On the Opportunity Page Layout add the following:
Finance Schedules related list (add at least Month
and Amount as columns and sort by month descending)
Default Start Date custom field
Default End Date custom field
Press Save
Go to Setup > Search (type Product )
> Products > Page Layout > (Select Page Layout) > Edit- On the Product Page Layout add the following:
Show Finance Schedules custom field
Press Save
User Interface Configuration (Lightning)
Go to Setup > Search (type Object Manager )
>Objects & Fields > Object Manager > Opportunity > Page Layout > (Select Page Layout) > Edit- On the Opportunity Page Layout add the following:
Finance Schedules related list (add at least
Month and Amount as columns and sort by month descending)
Default Start Date custom field
Default End Date custom field
Press Save
(Optional) You can also add the Finance Schedules related list to your Lightning Record Page using Salesforce’s Related List component
Go to Setup > Search (type Object Manager )
>Objects & Fields > Object Manager > Product > Page Layout > (Select Page Layout) > Edit- On the Product Page Layout add the following:
Show Finance Schedules custom field
Press Save
Using Finance Schedules in Salesforce
- When enabled, Start Date and End Date fields are displayed on the Opportunity Product when added to an opportunity.
- If a ‘Default Start Date’ and/or ‘Default End Date’ is set on the Opportunity, these dates will be pre-populated
- When Save operation is completed in Flexpricer OR the close date is changed on the opportunity, monthly Finance Schedule records are created/recreated based on the sum of the line items values. The monthly amounts are calculated on a daily basis.
Important Notes
- Finance Schedules are deleted and recalculated each time that opportunity products are saved or the close date on the opportunity changes – so we recommend NOT adding workflows and processes to these records.
- Depending on the version of Flexpricer you installed first, you may need to Enable Reports on the Finance Schedules object in setup.