Revenue Line Items

Overview

Sugar's Revenue Line Items module consists of individual line items of potential business that are included on an opportunity record and tracked through the sales life cycle. The opportunity record acts as a header for one or more revenue line item records. This allows for greater granularity when working opportunities and forecasting since each line item within an opportunity can have its own sales stage and probability as well as being included or excluded from a user's forecasting worksheet individually. For more information about how opportunities and revenue line items interact, please refer to the Opportunities and Revenue Line Items section of this page.

Each revenue line item may be related to a product from your organization's Product Catalog. Doing so will cause the product's values to automatically populate matching fields on the revenue line item. For more information, please refer to the Products and Revenue Line Items section of this page.

Before continuing, be aware of the following access and visibility notifications:

• You will only be able to see revenue line item records as allowed by your team membership, user access type, and assigned roles. For more information on teams and roles, please refer to the Team Management and Role Management documentation in the Administration Guide. 
• The Revenue Line Items module is not available for Sugar Serve users. For more information on license types and the functionality available for each type, refer to the License Types Matrix documentation. 
• Your instance must be configured to use opportunities with revenue line items. For more information about changing your opportunities model via Admin > Opportunities, please see the Opportunities Configuration documentation in the Administration Guide.

This documentation will cover information and actions specific to the Revenue Line Items module. For instructions concerning views and actions which are common across most Sugar modules, such as creating, editing, and deleting line items, please refer to the Working With Sugar Modules section of this page. 

Revenue Line Item Fields

The Revenue Line Items module contains a number of stock fields that come out-of-the-box with Sugar. For information on using and editing various field types, refer to the User Interface documentation. The definitions below are suggested meanings for the fields, but the fields can be leveraged differently to best meet your organization's needs. Administrators or users with developer-level role access have the ability to alter, add, or remove fields via Admin > Studio. For more information on configuring fields, please refer to the Studio documentation in the Administration Guide.

¹ When a revenue line item is related to a product catalog record, this value automatically populates from the related product and cannot be modified on the revenue line item record. For more information on creating and managing records in the Product Catalog, please refer to the Product Catalog documentation in the Application Guide.
² For more information on service-related fields refer to the Services and Renewable Revenue Line Items section of the Opportunities documentation.
³ This field can be updated from the opportunity record. For more information, refer to the Updating Cascading Fields via Opportunities Module section.

Sales Stages

A sales stage identifies the current stage (e.g., Prospecting, Qualification, etc.) that the revenue line item is in during the sales cycle. When you select a sales stage in the revenue line item record, the system automatically populates the corresponding probability value (e.g., 10, 20, etc.) in the Probability (%) field. These probability values are a useful tool as it helps calculate and predict your sales forecast for a specified time period. For more information on the Forecasts module, please refer to the Forecasts documentation. Administrators have the ability to configure the sales stage and probability values for each sales stage via Admin > Dropdown Editor. For more information, please refer to the Adding Custom Sales Stages and Probabilities to Opportunities article.

Please note that the below values are only guidelines for defining your sales stage, and you can skip one or more stages based on your organization's needs.

Opportunities and Revenue Line Items

In Sugar, the opportunity serves as a header for a set of revenue line items, and the opportunity's amount and probability fields are roll-ups of this revenue line item data. Each revenue line item represents the prospective sale of an individual product. This means that each opportunity must relate to one or more revenue line items, and each revenue line item must relate to an opportunity. When creating an opportunity, you will be required to also create at least one revenue line item in a subpanel beneath the opportunity fields as described in the Creating Simultaneously With Opportunities section of this page. Special consideration also needs to be given to the importing of opportunities and revenue line items as discussed in the Importing Revenue Line Items section below. Revenue line items and their relationship with opportunities are unique in that they can be deleted from Sugar via the Revenue Line Items subpanel while viewing an opportunity. Instructions for doing so are covered in the Deleting via Opportunities Module section below.

Creating Simultaneously With Opportunities

When creating an opportunity, a subpanel appears beneath the opportunity fields where you must create one or more revenue line items.

The Revenue Line Items subpanel allows the following operations during opportunity creation:

• Scroll horizontally within the subpanel to view all available revenue line item fields.
• Click the Plus button on the far right of the subpanel row to add additional revenue line items to the opportunity. The current Revenue Line Item row will be validated when adding a new row to ensure that all required fields and data are entered properly.
• To remove any revenue line items from the opportunity, simply click the Minus button to the left of the Plus button. Please note that you cannot remove the first revenue line item as at least one related revenue line item is required for the opportunity to save.

After saving the opportunity, the revenue line item(s) will appear in the Revenue Line Items subpanel beneath the opportunity record's fields in the record view.

Updating Cascading Fields via Opportunities Module

Five fields on the opportunity record have the ability to push values to the related revenue line item records' corresponding fields. The Forecast, Expected Close Date, Sales Stage, Service Start Date, and Service Duration fields all appear with an "Update Open Revenue Line Items" checkbox when editing the opportunity. The feature is available when editing the record via the opportunities list view, subpanel, preview view, or record view as well as during lead conversion.

Note: The cascading fields are read-only when initially creating an opportunity. 

Deleting via Opportunities Module

If a revenue line item is invalid or should no longer appear in your organization's Sugar instance, it may be deleted as long as its Status field is not set to "Closed Won" or "Closed Lost". For data integrity purposes, closed revenue line items may not be deleted. Deletion may be performed from either the Revenue Line Items detail view or list view, as described in the User Interface documentation. Revenue line items are unique in that they can also be deleted via the Revenue Line Items subpanel on the related opportunity's record view. Please note that deleting revenue line item records will not delete the related records and will only remove the relationship, so you may wish to also delete any related records to avoid orphaned records.

Use the following steps to delete one or more revenue line item records via the Revenue Line Items subpanel on an opportunity record:

1. Navigate to an opportunity in record view.
2. Scroll to the Revenue Line Items subpanel in Data View below the opportunity's fields.
3. Select the desired records then choose "Delete" from the Actions menu.
   
4. A pop-up message will display asking for confirmation. Click "Confirm" to proceed.

Importing Revenue Line Items

The import function allows you to push multiple revenue line items records into Sugar using a .csv file instead of creating them one-by-one. When an opportunity is imported into Sugar, at least one revenue line item must also be imported and related to the opportunity in order to populate the amounts (e.g., best, likely, etc.), Expected Close Date, Sales Stage, Service Start Date, and Service Duration fields on the opportunity record. When you are importing opportunity and revenue line items, please be sure to import your opportunities first, followed by your revenue line items. Each revenue line item row must include its parent opportunity's ID as well as values for its amount fields (i.e., Best, Likely, Worst). For more information on importing, please refer to the Import documentation.

Products and Revenue Line Items

Sugar's Product Catalog module contains a list of all products or services that your organization sells. This module provides the Revenue Line Items and Quoted Line Items modules with the template used when creating products to be used for Opportunities and Quotes, including pricing and cost information as well as information about the manufacturer. For more information, please refer to the Product Catalog documentation in the Application Guide.

Each revenue line item has the option to relate to an existing product from the product catalog via the Product field. By default, the Product field is filtered to display only product catalog records with a status of "Active". For more information on product status, please refer to the Product Catalog documentation in the Application Guide.

Please note that you can add revenue line items based on a product catalog item using your preferred currency instead of the product catalog item's currency by enabling the Create Revenue Line Items in Preferred Currency option in your user profile. If you choose to select a product from the product catalog, several fields will populate automatically to match the chosen product. For information on generating quotes from revenue line items, please refer to the Quotes and Revenue Line Items section of this page.

Purchases, Purchased Line Items, and Revenue Line Items

While revenue line items and opportunities represent the historical data captured during the sales cycle, the purchases and purchased line items represent the products or services your company has successfully sold to your accounts. When revenue line items, and their parent opportunity, reach the "Closed Won" stage of the sales cycle, related purchase and purchased line item records can be automatically generated and updated. For more information on how these modules work together, refer to the Purchases and Purchased Line Items page.

Currencies and Revenue Line Items

Sugar allows your organization to perform business around the world by supporting multiple currencies. Administrators must first add desired currencies and exchange rates to Sugar via Admin > Currencies. They also have the ability to set the instance's default currency via Admin > Locale. This is typically the currency of the country where the majority of business is conducted. For more information, please refer to the System documentation in the Administration Guide.

Users can specify their own preferred currency in their user profiles; records that the user creates will default to this currency. If they choose to also enable the Show Preferred Currency option in their profiles, currency fields throughout Sugar will display in their chosen currency. When a user enables the Create Revenue Line Items in Preferred Currency option, the user's preferred currency will be used when creating revenue line items based on a product catalog item, rather than the default behavior of using the product catalog item's currency. For more information, please refer to the Getting Started documentation. Finally, each revenue line item record has a Currency field where you will specify the currency being used for this particular business transaction

Filtering on Currency Fields

Currency fields are filtered according to the record's set currency rather than being standardized to the user's preferred or system default currency. In the list view, filtering revenue line items by a currency field allows you to specify the filter's currency. Only records matching both the chosen currency and amount range will be returned. For example, if you filter based on a Likely value that equals 500 in US Dollars, then the search result will return all line items with a Likely value of $500 but will exclude values of €500 or other currency values which are equivalent to $500. 

Note: By contrast, when filtering values in the Reports module, any record matching the specified amount or range will be returned regardless of the record's currency. For example, if one revenue line item's Likely value is $500 in US Dollars and another's is €500 in Euros, filtering a report for a Likely value of exactly 500 will return both records in the report.

Updating Currency Rates

When saving a revenue line item in a currency that differs from the system-defined default currency, Sugar will store the conversion rate for that currency at the record level. This conversion rate is used to calculate the converted amounts when the field is set to use the system default currency (as opposed to the user's preferred currency which is explained below). To keep amounts historically accurate, the conversion rate will only update on a revenue line item provided the sales stage is not set to "Closed Won" or "Closed Lost". If the line item is in any other sales stage, the conversion rate will update under the following scenarios:

• The revenue line item undergoes a save event (e.g., mass update, manual save, etc.) and the record's currency has a different conversion rate defined in Admin > Currencies than is currently saved in the opportunity.
• An administrator updates the currency exchange rate under Admin > Currencies. This will trigger a scheduled job which updates all revenue line items saved with that currency to the new rate.

When the viewing user's profile has the Show Preferred Currency option selected, the converted amounts display in the user's preferred currency. In this case, the conversion rate used to calculate the converted amounts is drawn directly from the conversion rate at the system level rather than any conversion rate stored on the record. This means that the value will always use the current conversion rate regardless of the line item's sales stage. For this reason, the converted amount fields should not be considered historically accurate for closed revenue line items when it is using the user's preferred currency. For information about setting a user's Preferred Currency and Show Preferred Currency options, please refer to the Getting Started documentation.

Emails and Revenue Line Items

Revenue line items may be related to emails by being selected in the email's Related To field. These relationships allow the revenue line item to display all relevant email correspondence in the Emails subpanel, as described below, and in the History dashlet on a revenue line item's record view.

Emails Subpanel

The Emails subpanel in the Revenue Line Items module displays emails that are related to the revenue line item record via the email's Related To field. These emails will also appear in the History dashlet on a revenue line item's record view. 

The Emails subpanel allows the following functions to be performed:

• Email Details: To view the details of an email, click the subject to open it in detail view.
• Record Count: Subpanel headers display the total count of related records (e.g., "5 of 6+") next to the module name. The count captures the number of records currently displayed with an additional, hyperlinked number (e.g., "6+") where there are more records than currently displayed. Click the hyperlinked number to see the total count of related records.
• Collapse or Expand: Click anywhere in the subpanel's header to collapse or expand it. Subpanels will remain collapsed or expanded on future visits to the module.
  • Note: Administrators can choose to disable collapse stickiness or to collapse all subpanels by default via Admin > System Settings. For more information, please refer to the System documentation in the Administration Guide.
• Column Widths: Place your cursor on the column divider. When the double arrow cursor appears, click and drag the column to the desired size. Please note that the column width will not be preserved when you navigate away from the page.
• Column Sort: Click a column header to sort the subpanel's items by that value. Clicking the same header again will reverse the sorting order (e.g., from ascending to descending).
• Compose a New Email: Click the Plus button on the upper right of a subpanel to create a new email with, by default, a relationship to the revenue line item you are currently viewing. The email will automatically select the revenue line item in the Related To field.
  • Note: Because creating a new related record opens a drawer on top of the current record view, you should use the Cancel button to return to record view. Using the browser's back button will return you to the previous page.
• More Records: By default, Sugar displays up to five records in each subpanel, though administrators can alter the number via Admin > System Settings as described in the System documentation of the Administration Guide. If additional related records exist, click "More {Module Name}..." (e.g., "More emails...") at the bottom of the subpanel to load the next set of records.

Quotes and Revenue Line Items

Quotes and opportunities both track sales throughout their lifecycle, but the two modules serve different purposes. Quotes allow you to communicate the details of a sale with customers while opportunities, with their revenue line item, allow you to forecast potential sales and the possible ranges of their dollar amounts. To aid in using both modules, Sugar allows you to generate a quote from a set of revenue line items as well as to use a quote to generate an opportunity and its set of revenue line items.

Generating Quotes From Revenue Line Items

Users may use one or more revenue line items to generate a new quote. Doing so copies all relevant information from the revenue line item(s) to the new quote's fields. The generated quote will be automatically linked to the revenue line item's parent opportunity and displayed in its Quotes subpanel.

After being used in a quote generation, the revenue line item will show a "Quoted" badge at the top of its record view.

Revenue line items that have not been included on a quote display a "Not Quoted" badge instead.

Generating a Quote via Subpanel

Users may also generate a quote from one or more revenue line items on an opportunity record.

Use the following steps to generate a quote via the Revenue Line Items subpanel on an opportunity record:

1. Navigate to an opportunity in record view.
2. Scroll to the Revenue Line Items subpanel in Data View below the opportunity's fields.
3. Select the checkboxes of the revenue line items you would like to include in the quote.
4. Choose "Generate Quote" from the Actions menu.
   
5. The quote record that opens in edit view will have all relevant fields and line items automatically populated from the revenue line item records. Make any necessary modifications, then click "Save" to preserve your changes.

Generating a Quote via Record View

Users may also generate a quote from a single revenue line item record from the Revenue Line Item record view.

Use the following steps to generate a quote via the Revenue Line Item's record view:

1. Navigate to an unquoted revenue line item's record view.
2. Select "Generate Quote" from the Actions menu or click the "Not Quoted" badge to initiate the same quote-creation process.
   
3. The quote record that opens in edit view will have all relevant fields and line items automatically populated from the revenue line item record. Make any necessary modifications, then click "Save" to preserve your changes.

Generating Revenue Line Items From Quotes

To generate an opportunity including its set of revenue line items from a quote, choose "Create Opportunity from Quote" from the quote record's Actions menu.

Note: Quotes that are already "Converted" (as indicated by the badge adjacent to the quote's name in the example pictured here) cannot be re-converted into an opportunity. The "Create Opportunity from Quote" menu option will be grayed out when the quote's badge is Converted.

After selecting the Create Opportunity... option, you will be navigated to the newly created and saved opportunity, which will be pre-populated with the original quote's values in the Name, Account Name, Expected Close Date, Best, Likely, and Worst fields. In addition, the opportunity's Type will default to "New Business" and the Status to "In Progress".

The quoted line items related to the original quote will be copied to new revenue line items related to the new opportunity. By default, the Sales Stage values for these revenue line items are set to "Proposal/Price Quote", the Probability to "65%", and the Type to "New Business".

Because the probability defaults to 65%, the revenue line item will, by default, have a Forecast field value of "Exclude," meaning it will not be included in forecasts. You can edit the revenue line items and the opportunity record to modify any of these values as needed. The originating quote will be related to the new opportunity and can be found in the Quotes subpanel on the opportunity's record view. For more information on creating an opportunity from a quote, please refer to the Creating Opportunities from Quotes section of the Quotes documentation.

Tile View and Revenue Line Items

Instances that leverage the Revenue Line Items module will enjoy added benefits when using Tile View for opportunities. Dragging an opportunity from one column to another will update all of the opportunity's open revenue line items in one quick action. For more information, refer to the Tile View section in the Opportunities documentation.

Working With Sugar Modules

The Revenue Line Items module use Sugar's Sidecar user interface. The following sections detail menus, views, and actions common to Sidecar modules and contain links to additional information within the page or links to the User Interface documentation.

Revenue Line Item Menus

The Revenue Line Items module contains various options and functionality which are available via menus in the module tab, list view, and record view. The following sections present each menu and its options with a link to more information about each option in the User Interface documentation or, for Revenue Line Items-specific functionality, within this page. 

Module Tab Menus

The Revenue Line Items module tab is typically located under the More tab of the navigation bar at the top of any Sugar screen. Sugar normally displays the top six modules shown in the Display Modules list of your user preferences with the remaining displayed modules grouped under the More tab. For more information on displayed modules for the navigation bar, please refer to the Layout Options section of the Getting Started documentation.

Click the tab to access the Revenue Line Items list view. You may also click the triangle in the Revenue Line Items tab to display the Actions, Recently Viewed, and Favorites menu. The Actions menu allows you to perform important actions within the module. The Recently Viewed menu displays the list of revenue line items you most recently viewed. The Favorites menu displays the list of revenue line items you most recently marked as favorites.

The module tab's Actions menu allows you to perform the following operations:

For more information on module tab menus including reasons a module may not be included in the menu, see the User Interface documentation.

List View Menus

The Revenue Line Items list view displays all revenue line item records and allows for searching and filtering to locate specific revenue line items. You can view the basic details of each record within the field columns of the list view or click a revenue line item's name to open the record view. To access a module's list view, simply click the module's tab in the navigation bar at the top of any Sugar page.

List View Mass Actions Menu

The Mass Actions menu to the right of the checkbox option in the list header allows you to perform mass actions on all currently selected records. You can use the checkbox on each record's row to select individual revenue line item records or click the checkbox in the list header to select all records displayed on the current set of list view results.

The Mass Actions menu allows you to perform the following operations:

List View Record Actions Menu

The Record Actions menu to the far right of each record's row allows you to perform actions on the individual revenue line item directly from the list view.

The list view's Record Actions menu allows you to perform the following operations:

Record View Actions Menu

The Revenue Line Items record view displays a single revenue line item in full detail including its fields, subpanels of related records, and activity stream. To access a revenue line item's record view, simply click a hyperlinked revenue line item name from anywhere within Sugar. The record view's Actions menu appears on the top right of the page and allows you to perform various operations on the current record.

The Actions menu allows you to perform the following operations:

Common Views and Actions

The following links will open specific sections of the User Interface documentation where you can read about views and actions that are common across most Sidecar modules.