Purchases and Purchased Line Items

Overview

Sugar's Purchases and Purchased Line Items modules consist of purchase records and purchased line item records, respectively, that represent the products or services you sell to clients. The data in these modules provide a historically accurate and time-aware picture of the status and worth of your accounts.

For instructions concerning views and actions which are common across most Sugar modules, such as creating, editing, and deleting purchase records, please refer to the Working With Sugar Modules section of this page.

Please note that you will only be able to see purchase and purchased line item records as allowed by your license type, team membership, assigned roles, and user access type. For more information, please refer to the referenced documentation in the Administration Guide.

Purchases and Purchased Line Items

Ultimately, the purchase and purchased line item records will provide:

• Revenue accuracy, either manually or with your ERP sync, without corrupting historical opportunity data
• A flexible anchor point for license keys, contractual details, and other information needed post-sale
• Building blocks for a time-aware analysis of customer worth and product performance
• Historically accurate product or service details, per account, for customer support to reference

Purchased Line Items Subpanel

The Purchased Line Items subpanel is accessible within the Purchase record view and contains every record of sale in relation to the account and the product or service. Every purchase should have one or more related purchased line items, and each purchased line item must belong to a purchase.

Note: The related purchased line items in the subpanel determine the value for certain Purchase fields (e.g., Start Date, End Date, etc.). For more information please refer to the Rules of Inheritance section of this document.

Purchase Fields

The Purchases 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 following definitions are suggested meanings for the fields, but some fields can be leveraged differently to meet your organization's needs. Users with administrator or developer access have the ability to alter, add, or remove some fields via Admin > Studio. For more information on configuring fields, please refer to the Studio documentation in the Administration Guide.

Fields identified as Inherited in the following table may have inherited values depending on if the records were created automatically or manually. For more information, please refer to the Purchase Fields: Rules of Inheritance section of this page. 

Purchase Fields: Rules of Inheritance

When a purchase is created manually, the following fields inherit from its product, if selected, and its purchased line items:

• Start Date:
  • For services: Earliest "Start Date" of the purchased line items
  • For non-services: Earliest "Close Date" of the purchased line items
• End Date:
  • For services: Latest "End Date" of the purchased line items
  • For non-services: Latest "Close Date" of the purchased line items
• Product Category: Inherits from the purchase's product, if any, and becomes read-only
• Product Type: Inherits from the purchase's product, if any, and becomes read-only
• Renewable: Inherits from the purchase's product, if any
• Service: Inherits from the purchase's product, if any, and becomes read-only

Purchased Line Item Fields

The Purchased 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 following definitions are suggested meanings for the fields, but some fields can be leveraged differently to meet your organization's needs. Users with administrator or developer access have the ability to alter, add, or remove some fields via Admin > Studio. For more information on configuring fields, please refer to the Studio documentation in the Administration Guide.

Fields identified as Inherited in the following table may have inherited values depending on if the records were created automatically or manually. For more information, please refer to the Purchased Line Item Fields: Rules of Inheritance section of this page. For more information on calculated fields, please refer to the Calculated Purchase Line Item Fields section of this page.

Purchased Line Item Fields: Rules of Inheritance

When the purchased line item is created manually, it must be associated with a purchase record. Once selected, the following fields inherit from the purchase:

• Account: Inherits from the Account Name on the purchase record
• Purchased Line Item Name: Inherits from the product, if one is selected from the Product Catalog on the purchase record
• Product: Inherits if a product is chosen from the Product Catalog on the purchase record 
• Service Duration: Inherits from the product, if a product is chosen from the Product Catalog on the purchase record 
• Unit Price: Inherits from the product, if a product is chosen from the Product Catalog on the purchase record 
• Renewable: Inherits from the purchase record
• Service: Inherits from the purchase record

Calculated Purchased Line Item Fields

The Calculated Revenue, Annual Revenue, and Status fields on the purchased line item record are read-only, calculated fields. The table and sections below illustrate how these calculated fields use various other field values to generate their results.

Calculated Revenue

The Calculated Revenue field is equal to the quantity value multiplied by the unit price multiplied by the service duration less the discount. Service line items that are related to a product catalog record will calculate the service duration amount to be used in the formula by dividing the line item duration by the default product catalog record's duration. For example, a customer is purchasing a service for one year instead of the default three-year duration. Depending on which discount type is selected (e.g., % Percent or $ US Dollars), the following calculations occur: 

Non-service line items or service line items not related to a product catalog record:

• Calculated Revenue = (Quantity x Unit Price) x (1 - % Discount)
• Calculated Revenue = (Quantity x Unit Price) - $ Discount

Service line items related to a product catalog record:

• Calculated Revenue = (Quantity x Unit Price x (Line Item Duration / Default Duration)) x (1 - % Discount)
• Calculated Revenue = (Quantity x Unit Price x (Line Item Duration / Default Duration)) - $ Discount

Note: For more information on using different currencies within Sugar, please refer to the System documentation in the Administration Guide.

Annual Revenue

When the purchase is a service, the Annual Revenue is equal to the Calculated Revenue divided by the Service Duration, multiplied by the time period. Depending on the time period selected (e.g., Year(s), Month(s), or Day(s)) the following calculations occur:

• Annual Revenue = Calculated Revenue / Service Duration (# years)
• Annual Revenue = Calculated Revenue / Service Duration (# months) x 12
• Annual Revenue = Calculated Revenue / Service Duration (# days) x 365

When the purchase is not a service, the Annual Revenue field is equal to the Calculated Revenue amount.

Status

The Status field calculates its value (Past, Active, or Future) using the current date compared to the Start and End date values.

When a purchase is not a service, two options exist and are calculated with ifElse sugar logic:

• Past: If today's date is on or after the Start Date/End Date then the status is "Past".
• Future: If today's date is before the Start Date/End Date then the status is "Future".

A third option exists for service line items:

• Active: If today's date is equal to the Start Date, End Date, or falls between the two dates, then the status is "Active".

Creating Purchases and Purchased Line Items

Manually Creating Purchases and Purchased Line Items

Purchases and purchased line items can be manually created within the Purchases module, Purchased Line Items module, or Purchased Line Items subpanel. Because a purchased line item must be related to a purchase, you will need to create the purchase record first. The records can be leveraged from within the Accounts record view to provide information on the product(s) they have purchased. For more information on manually creating records in Sugar, refer to the User Interface documentation.

The following steps outline an example of how to create a purchase and related purchased line item records manually:

1. Select "Create Purchase" from the Purchases Module Tab Menu or click the Create button from the list view and fill in values for the purchase. Some fields may inherit values based on your input. Click "Save" to create the purchase.
   
2. Click the Plus button within the Purchased Line Items subpanel of the newly created purchase record to open the create drawer:
   
3. Fill in your desired values. Some fields may inherit values based on your purchase record. Click "Save":
   

After saving, the Start Date and End Date fields will be populated based on the values in the related purchased line item record(s):

Importing Purchases and Purchased Line Items

The import function allows you to insert multiple purchase records into Sugar using a .csv file instead of creating them one-by-one. When you are importing purchases and purchased line items, please be sure to import your purchases first, followed by your purchased line items. Each purchased line item row must include its parent purchase's ID as well as values for its amount fields (i.e., Unit Price, Revenue). For more information on importing, please refer to the Import documentation.

Accounts, Purchases, and Purchased Line Items

When working with account records in Sugar, you can see related purchases in the Purchases subpanel, the Purchased Line Items subpanel, the Active Subscriptions dashlet, and the Purchase History dashlet.

Purchases Subpanel

The Purchases subpanel is accessible within the Account record view and contains every product or service the account has purchased from your organization.

Purchased Line Items Subpanel

The Purchased Line Items subpanel is accessible within the Account record view and contains every individual record of the products or services the account has purchased from your organization.

Active Subscriptions Dashlet

The dashlet shows a list of all of the current account's purchases that are marked "Service", have a start date in the past, and an end date in the future. The dashlet shows each purchase's name, quantity of units, and calculated revenue line item amount next to "Total". A simple bar chart visualizes the time elapsed and time remaining for the subscription, which you can explicitly view by hovering your mouse over the bar. For more information, please review the Dashboards and Dashlets section of the User Interface documentation.

Purchase History Dashlet

The dashlet shows a list of all the current account's purchases regardless of the start or end date of the purchase record. The dashlet shows each purchase's name, date range, quantity, and total. For more information, please review the Dashboards and Dashlets documentation.

Emails and Purchases

Purchases may be related to emails by being selected in the email's Related To field. These relationships allow the purchase to display all relevant email correspondence in the Emails subpanel and History dashlet on a purchase's record view. A purchase's Emails subpanel and History dashlet may also display emails belonging to the contacts related to the purchase. 

Emails Subpanel

The Emails subpanel in the Purchases module displays emails that are associated with the purchase record in a variety of ways:

• Related to the purchase: If the purchase is selected in the email's Related To field, the email and purchase are explicitly related, and the email will appear in the purchase's Emails subpanel and History dashlet. Instructions for using this flex relate field are available in the Emails documentation.
• Related to the purchase's related contacts: If the email is related, either explicitly or implicitly, to a contact record that is related to the purchase, the email will appear in the purchase's Emails subpanel and History dashlet.
  • Note: Administrators can enable or disable a purchase from displaying related contact's emails via Admin > Related Contacts Emails. For more information, please refer to the Email documentation in the Administration Guide.

For more information on working with subpanels, please refer to the User Interface documentation.

Working With Sugar Modules

The Purchases and Purchased Line Items modules 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.

Purchases and Purchased Line Item Menus

The Purchases and Purchased Line Items modules contain various options and functionality that are available via menus in the module tab, list view, and record view. The following sections present each menu type, using the Purchases module as an example, and its options with links to more information about each option in the User Interface documentation.

Module Tab Menu

Click the "Purchases" or "Purchased Line Items" module tabs in the navigation bar to access the modules' list view. You may also click the three-dots menu in the module tab to display the Actions, Recently Viewed, and Favorites menus. The Actions menu allows you to perform important operations within the module. The Recently Viewed menu displays the list of records you most recently viewed. The Favorites menu displays the list of records 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 Purchases list view displays all purchase records and allows for searching and filtering to locate specific purchases. You can view the basic details of each record within the field columns of the list view or click on a purchase's name to open the record view. To access a module's list view, simply click the module's tab in the navigation bar.

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 purchase 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 a purchase directly from the list view.

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

Record View Actions Menu

The Purchases record view displays a single purchase in full detail including its fields and subpanels of related records. To access a purchase's record view, simply click a hyperlinked purchase 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

In the table below, the left column contains links to the User Interface page covering topics that are applicable to all Sidecar modules. The right column has links to sections of the current page that cover topics specific to purchases.