Opportunities and Quotes
Overview
This document will serve as an overview of the functionality available via Opportunities and Quotes to create a sales order.
The Opportunity object is a standard Salesforce object. Ascent uses that object and adds additional fields to it to make it work using Ascent objects; Opportunity Lines and Items.
The Quote object and Quote Line object are both Ascent objects. These can exist as a result of converting an opportunity to a quote or created manually without requiring an opportunity.
An opportunity can be converted to a quote. A quote can be converted to a sales order. An opportunity can be converted to a sales order without being converted to a quote.
An opportunity can be converted to multiple quotes, allowing the sales rep to present multiple quotes coming from the original opportunity.
If those opportunities or quotes use Salesforce Products, then with the implementation of Ascent4Products, those Salesforce opportunities and quotes can also be converted to Ascent sales orders. That will not be discussed in this document.
Custom Settings of Importance: there are a number of custom settings which can affect how opportunities and quotes work. Some of them will be outlined here. A few are discussed later on in the body of this document. To see all possible custom settings, please review the Custom Settings document.
- Allow more than one SO for an Opp – this would allow a user to create any number of sales orders from a single opportunity. This could be useful if a client frequently calls for the same material that they called in for previously, or possibly a contract for those items with multiple releases.
- Carry Qty from BOM to Opportunity – if the BOM lines is marked as Add Separate and has a quantity, then if this setting is enabled, carry this quantity to the separate lines added to the opportunity. If this is not enabled, quantity will always be zero.
- Disable trade agreements for Opp – enabling this would result in not using trade agreements on the opportunity.
- Do Not Show Cost on SO Opp Quote Lines – you would enable this if you do not wish to sho cost information to the person entering/editing sales orders, quotes, or opportunities
- Include Opp in ATP? – Available to Promise calculations will not include opportunities.
- Use 2 Dec Round Prices on SO/Quote/Opp – enable this field if you want sales orders, quotes, and opportunities to use discounted price rounded to 2 decimal places when calculating totals.
- Include Opportunities in Planner Data – if enabled, Sales/Purchase Planner will view opportunity data.
- Synch Quote to Opp when converting to SO – when you convert a quote to a sales order, Ascent will also synch the newly created/converted sales order to the opportunity.
Process
To create an opportunity, go to the tab labeled “Opportunities” and click “New”. The following fields are available for entry/display, based on what your company has chosen to expose for use.
Opportunity Details
- Opportunity Owner (not prompted for, displayed after creation) – this is the owner of this opportunity.
- Opportunity Name – this identifier of the opportunity is manually entered by the user.
- Account Name – this can be selected by clicking the magnifying glass icon and being displayed 3 of the most recent Accounts or adding a New Account or by keying in some characters of the Account Name, and you will be given a message “Select an option from the picklist of remove the search item”.
- Type – select the opportunity type from a picklist. Typically, the system administrator will customize this picklist to suit specific business requirements.
- Customer Account – the account or this sales order.
- Lead Source – where this lead came from; it is optional; typically, the system administrator will customize this picklist to suit specific business requirements.
- Opportunity Currency – the default currency of this opportunity; can be changed based on what currencies (if a multi-currency ORG) have been set up in this ORG.
- Trade Agreement – you can manually enter one or a trade agreement (TA) will be filled in for you if the account has an “order” specific TA.
- Quantity – this field can be manually entered; it does not sum up the quantities from the line items.
- Delivery Address, Delivery City, Delivery Country, Delivery Postal Code, Delivery State – this information comes from the Account on this opportunity. It can be overridden.
- Order Number – this is a manually entered field; Ascent does not use this field.
- Tracking Number – this is a manually entered field; it can be used when clicking on the Delivery Status button to get delivery information.
- Created by – this is the user who created this opportunity.
- Description – this is a good place to document a conversation you may have had with the account regarding this opportunity; it is optional.
- Change Delivery Address – if this is selected, then you will be prompted with another screen which will allow you to select the default location (if the default had been previously overridden) or any of the Address Trackers that have been set up for this Account.
- Delivery Status – if this is selected, you will be brought to a freight carrier screen (like FedEx); that carrier screen will use the Tracking Number to provide delivery information;
- Discount (%) – this is the discount to be applied to this opportunity; it can come from the TA or can be manually entered/overridden.
- Final Total – this is the sum of all Totals from the opportunity lines.
- Expected Revenue – you can enter what revenue you hope to achieve from this opportunity; optional, and manually enterable.
- Close Date – when entering a new opportunity, this field is mandatory; you must enter the date which you anticipate closing the deal.
- Stage – this too, is mandatory; it is a drop down picklist with these below values; with each value, the Probability (%) is assigned.
- Prospecting – 10%
- Qualification – 10%
- Needs Analysis – 20%
- Value Proposition – 50%
- ID Decision Makers – 60%
- Perception Analysis – 70%
- Proposal/Price Quote – 75%
- Negotiation/Review – 90%
- Closed Won – 100%
- Closed Lost – 0%
- Probability – value is based on the previous field, Stage.
- Sales Order – this would be filled in for you once the opportunity or one of its quotes are converted to a sales order. It can also be selected as a lookup field.
- Next Step – a reminder to the user as to what the next step in the sales process should be.
- Primary Campaign Source – is Salesforce campaigns are used, this search field could be used to select what campaign generated this opportunity.
- Enable Trade Agreements – this defaults to selected (checkbox checked), which would allow TAs to be assigned to this opportunity.
- Tax Code – this would be the tax code assigned to this opportunity; it can come from the Account.
- Main Competitor(s) – this is an optional enterable field, where you can enter who the main competitors are for this opportunity.
- Delivery/Installation Status – an optional picklist, with picklist values of –None–, Completed, and Yet To begin.
- Last Modified By – this is the user name who last modified this opportunity.
Opportunity Line Creation:
When using Ascent items, there are two possible pages that can be used to enter line items. On is Opportunity Lines (viewOO), which is the default version, and will be documented here. The other is called Opportunity Lines with Field Set (viewOOwithFieldSet). Your system administrator can put the latter on your Opportunity screen and customize it based on your requirements.
viewOO. This is a function that allows you to add/change/delete opportunity lines on the opportunity. The buttons at the bottom of the viewOO screen are:
- Save – once an opportunity line is added, edited, or deleted, you will hit the “Save” button to permanently save the activity that just took place.
- Add Lines by Item – this will display fields for entry, to create a new opportunity line. If you click this, you will be prompted to with a new opportunity line. You must select an item, so you can click on the standard Salesforce magnifying glass icon and get this display, which allows you to manually enter part/all of the item name (if the Name radial button is highlighted) OR if the All Fields radial button is highlighted, part/all of any other field on the item master.
Or, you can click on the Ascent search icon (looks like a fancy letter “A”), and enter some value in the search field, which would search by any part of the description:
Here’s what the opportunity line looks like with viewOO. Since there are many fields available, only a select few are displayed in the following screenshot:
There is one (1) field that is mandatory and can be entered after selecting the item: Quantity – this would be equal to the quantity your customer wishes to purchase.
Other fields can be entered:
- Unit of Measure – if the item has been set up to have multiple units of measure, then that can be selected here. Based on what gets selected, the Price can be derived.
- Discount – this would be the discount to be applied to the price on the opportunity line. It can come from the TA or manually entered.
- Price – this can come from a TA, or if no TA is available, from the Sales Price on the item master, or manually entered.
- Tax Code – this is the tax code coming from the opportunity header, but can be manually entered.
- Sales Tax % – this is the sales tax percentage which is on the opportunity header, but can be manually entered.
- Tax – this would be the Sales Price times the Sales Tax %, but can be manually entered.
The Price field can be derived from several sources:
- Trade Agreements – this functionality allows you to set up agreed-upon sales prices and have it automatically populate the price, based on the customer on the opportunity and the item selected. Please refer to the Trade Agreement documentation for a full explanation of this functionality.
- Item Master – the Sales Price or Sales Price(4) field on the item master could also be used, if there exists no trade agreement.
- Wholesale Price – if the custom setting Use Wholesale Price is selected, then this field can be populated with the Wholesale Price from the Item Master.
- Manually entered.
There are two fields to the left of the item name:
- Edit – allows you to change information on the opportunity line.
- Del – delete this line.
Add Lines by Group – if you click this then you will be prompted to select from a list of item groups. You will be shown items that fall into the item group, as well as any item groups whose parent group is in this list In our example, the item-group-within-an-item-group is Computer. By clicking this you will get this display:
You can now select any or none of the items in the list. If you do, they will be added to the opportunity.
After hitting Save, the item gets added to the opportunity:
Filter Items Selection – button allows you to filter which items you wish to select based on entering information that is housed on the item master. Please look below under viewOOwithFieldSet for an explanation.
viewOOwithFieldSet: This is a function that allows you to add/change/delete purchase order lines on the SO. The buttons at the bottom of the viewOOwithFieldSet screen are:
- Save – once an SO line is added, edited, or deleted, you will hit the “Save” button to permanently save the activity that just took place.
- Add Lines by Item – this will display fields for entry, to create a new purchase order line. If you click this, you will be prompted to with a new opportunity line. You must select an item, so you can click on the standard Salesforce magnifying glass icon and get this display, which allows you to manually enter part/all of the item name (if the Name radial button is highlighted) OR if the All Fields radial button is highlighted, part/all of any other field on the item master.
- Add Lines by Group – if you click this then you will be prompted to select from a list of item groups. You will be shown items that fall into the item group, as well as any item groups whose parent group is in this list.
Important note: since this is a field set, your system administrator can change the order in which many of the fields display, can remove some fields from being displayed, and can add fields to this set. There are certain mandatory fields that cannot be removed, for example, Item Number, Item Description, and Quantity.
- Filter Items Selection – button allows you to filter which items you wish to select based on entering information that is housed on the item master. If you click this button, you will get this display:
You can enter data in any number of fields to search out the desired items. Once done, select Apply Filters, and the item(s) meeting the search criteria will be displayed:
You can hit the checkbox on the left hand side of the screen to select those items you desire:
After hitting Add Lines, this will appear:
You can change the Quantity Needed, select a different U.M., and/or change the price. Once satisfied, hit Save. The selected line will be added to the opportunity.
Conversion of an Opportunity to a Quote:
To convert an opportunity to a quote, click the down arrow next to the Delete button on the upper right hand portion of the screen and select Create Quote:
Once you do that, this screen will appear. Because the amount of data displayed won’t fit on a single display screen, scroll down to see the rest of the screen:
The resulting quote lines will look just like the opportunity lines:
Now, let’s give the customer a better deal on some of those lines by reducing the price. Simply override the price field, then hit Save:
If you wish to print the quote, you can click the down arrow next to the Delete button and select View Quote (or Quote2PDF, Email Quote).
Here is the quote. Please note that your system administrator can upload your logo, and use that in lieu of the AscentERP logo, and that most customers will design their own quote form, as opposed to using the standard out-of-the-box Ascent quote:
Changing the Quote Name:
Additionally, it should be noted that you can change the quote name to be something that relates to the client, like “Computer Supplies #101”. This can be done by going to the quote, clicking Edit, and overriding the existing Quote Name, then hitting Save:
Making an additional quote:
If the client wishes better prices, you can leave the existing quote alone, and create a NEW quote, simply by going back to the opportunity, and selecting Create Quote:
Here is the newly created second quote from that opportunity. The opportunity name is carried over to this second quote (in addition to being on the first quote, and all subsequent quotes for this opportunity):
Now, change the prices on the new quote (as well as the quote name):
Converting the Quote to a Sales Order:
The customer agreed to the second quote, and wished to purchase the material. Converting to a sales order requires you to go to the quote, click the down arrow next to the Delete button, and select Make Sales Order:
Here is the newly created Sales Order. The opportunity name and the quote from which this sales order was created reside on the sales order header, for reference.
If you go back to the opportunity, you will see the Sales Order number, the Stage having been changed to Closed Won, and the Probability (%) now at 100%::
The quote that was used to convert to the Sales Order will show you the originating opportunity and the Sales Order as well as the new Status of Converted:
Converting an Opportunity directly to a Sales Order:
Some customers may be happy with the prices given to them by the customer service / sales rep, and not require a quote. In those instances, an opportunity can be converted directly to a Sales Order, eschewing the Quote. To do that, create your opportunity, and then select the down arrow next to the Delete button, and choose Make Sales Order.
Here is your newly created Sales Order directly from an Opportunity. Note the Opportunity Name resides in the Sales Order. Since the Sales Order was directly created from an Opportunity, the From Quote is blank.
Entering a Quote Directly:
Some companies don’t bother creating opportunities. They just enter a quote, send it to the customer, and if the customer requires an additional quote, they’ll clone the original quote and update the cloned quote.
To create a quote, go to the tab titled Quotes and select New Quote. Once you enter the minimum information (only Quote Name is required, but Account is recommended, also), and any other pertinent information, hit Save:
Once you save the quote (displayed below), you can add any number of quote lines.
Adding a quote line can be accomplished by scrolling down to the Quote Lines View and hitting Add Lines by Item#. The technique to do so is the same as entering an opportunity line. So are Add Lines by Group and Filter Items Selection, but explained previously in this document.
You now have a complete quote, which you can convert to a Sales Order, if desired. Or, if the client wishes another quote, you can select the down arrow next to the delete button, and then select Clone Quote:
You will then be brought to this screen, where you can make change to the cloned quote (like changing the Quote Name) before saving it:
Here’s the newly cloned quote:
As was stated before, you can now take this quote and convert it to a Sales Order.