Assets in Revenue Cloud: amendments and renewals

In Revenue Cloud, what a customer bought becomes an asset under the account when the order is activated. Every later change, whether an amendment, a renewal or a cancellation, runs through a new quote and a new order on that asset. Salesforce records each change as an asset action and keeps quantity, amount and monthly recurring revenue per time span in asset state periods. Field Service uses the same Asset object for the installed machine with its serial number. For most machine builders I recommend two kinds of asset records, one for what was sold and one for the physical machine, with a defined link between them.

How do assets come into being in Revenue Cloud?

“An asset in Salesforce represents a specific purchased or installed product”, as Trailhead on customer assets1 puts it. Revenue Cloud creates these records from orders. According to Trailhead on asset amendments2, activating the order fulfils it, and the assets appear under the customer account in the Managed Assets section. If the order runs through Dynamic Revenue Orchestrator first, the Trailhead exercise checks the assets once the orchestration steps are complete. How that works is in handing orders to SAP with DRO.

These are lifecycle-managed assets. Next to the classic fields such as serial number, parent asset and root asset, the Asset object has a Lifecycle-managed asset flag, a current quantity and a current monthly recurring revenue, as the Salesforce field reference3 lists. Two related objects hold the history:

• Asset action: according to the object reference4, it represents a change made to a lifecycle-managed asset. Trailhead shows business categories such as Upsells, Renewals and Cancellations.
• Asset state period: per the object reference5, a time span in which an asset has the same quantity, amount and monthly recurring revenue. Amendments and renewals add a new period.

The fields of both objects cannot be edited. The history comes from quotes and orders, or from the asset lifecycle APIs6.

How does an amendment work?

Every amendment is a quote, and every quote becomes an order. Trailhead’s example: a customer has five licences and needs eight more. The rep selects the asset, clicks Amend and sets an amendment date, the day the change takes effect. Revenue Cloud creates an amendment quote with three quantities:

5

Start quantity: what the customer has today

+8

Quantity: the delta, a negative number such as -3 to reduce

13

End quantity: the result

From the quote the rep creates an order and activates it. The asset gets a new asset action with the business category Upsells and a new state period with the higher quantity from the amendment date onwards.

For a manufacturer this means: a customer who adds remote monitoring for three more machines gets a quote and an order, just like a new sale. That is more process than editing a number, and it is the reason the history stays correct. Because the amendment is a normal quote, your pricing and approval rules run on it too.

Renewals run automatically, cancellations set the quantity to zero

Trailhead on renewals and cancellations7 describes two renewal options:

• Automatic Renewal extends the subscription at the end of the current term with the asset’s predefined renewal term.
• Override Renewal Term sets your own start and end dates. It replaces the existing renewal term and creates a quote or order that refunds the unused part of the current subscription.

In Trailhead’s example, setting the renewal term creates a renewal quote. The rep creates an order from it and activates it, and the asset gets an asset action with the category Renewals and a new period with the new dates.

A cancellation starts with a cancellation date. In the cancellation quote, Revenue Cloud sets the quantity to the negative of the asset’s total quantity, so the end quantity becomes zero. After the order is activated, the asset gets an asset action with the category Cancellations. Unlike amendments and renewals, a cancellation creates no new state period; the dashboard shows the last day of the current one.

Decide early who triggers renewals. Automatic renewal suits service contracts that simply continue. Overriding the term suits renewals that are renegotiated anyway, for example with a new price. Whether sales, inside service or a quoting agent prepares the renewal quote is a process decision you should write down before go-live.

How do Revenue Cloud assets fit with Field Service?

Field Service works on the same Asset object. There the asset is the machine at the customer site, with serial number, a hierarchy of assemblies through the Parent Asset field, linked work orders and maintenance plans. Which data Field Service needs is described in Field Service master data, and how service contracts and maintenance plans hang on assets in modelling maintenance contracts.

The two views count differently. Revenue Cloud counts quantities: Trailhead’s five licences are one asset with quantity 5. Field Service needs one record per serial number, because a technician repairs one machine. Two models are possible:

	One record per machine	Separate records, linked
Idea	The asset from the order is also the machine asset	Sold asset from Revenue Cloud, machine asset from SAP or commissioning
Works when	Every machine is sold as its own line with quantity 1	Quantities above 1, subscriptions across several machines
Serial number	Added to the sold asset after delivery	On the machine asset, from SAP
Risk	A line with quantity 3 cannot become three machines	The link has to be maintained

For most machine builders I recommend the second model. The sold asset answers “what does the customer pay for”, the machine asset answers “what stands where”. Link them with a lookup and agree who owns which record. In an object ownership matrix, Asset is a typical shared object: one stream builds Revenue Cloud, another builds Field Service, and both write to Asset. One owner and one automation entry point stop two teams from building triggers against each other. How Field Service models machines, maintenance and parts is covered in the chapter on assets, maintenance and parts.

Worked example: remote monitoring per machine

Assume a machine builder sells a remote monitoring subscription for 12 installed machines at one customer. In Revenue Cloud this is one quote line with quantity 12, so one asset with quantity 12. Field Service holds 12 machine assets with serial numbers from SAP.

A year later the customer sells two machines and cancels monitoring for them. The amendment reduces the quantity by 2, to 10. Revenue Cloud now knows the customer pays for 10. It does not know which two machines are out, because the sold asset never knew serial numbers. Service still sees 12 machines with active monitoring.

There are two ways out. Either you sell monitoring per machine, one line per serial number, which makes quotes longer and every change precise. Or you keep the quantity and maintain a separate list of covered machines, owned by inside service. I prefer one line per machine as long as a customer has no more than a few dozen machines, because the asset then answers the question that technicians and billing both ask. How such subscriptions are invoiced is covered in maintenance contracts: recurring billing.

List the products that live on after the order

List the products you sell that live on after the order: subscriptions, service contracts, software licences, monitoring. For each one decide whether it is counted or tied to a serial number, who may amend and renew it, and which record Field Service uses. Write the decision into the ownership matrix before the first sprint on either cloud. The chapter quote, contract, order shows where assets sit between quote and SAP.

Sources7

1. 1Trailhead on customer assets (opens in a new tab)trailhead.salesforce.com
2. 2Trailhead on asset amendments (opens in a new tab)trailhead.salesforce.com
3. 3Salesforce field reference (opens in a new tab)developer.salesforce.com
4. 4object reference (opens in a new tab)developer.salesforce.com
5. 5object reference (opens in a new tab)developer.salesforce.com
6. 6asset lifecycle APIs (opens in a new tab)developer.salesforce.com
7. 7Trailhead on renewals and cancellations (opens in a new tab)trailhead.salesforce.com