Add-on Opportunities with CPQ


Most of our client work and my experience has focused on Contracts and using the Amend function on the Contract. But I learned a little something about this “add-on” opportunity function within CPQ that could be interesting.

Let’s say that I have an active contract on an account and they call to want to add more assets or subscriptions. Now I COULD create an amendment but what:

  • If you don’t need that much amendment functionality?
  • Or you are adding to a contract only and not adjusting an existing bundle.

For this, CPQ has a function in the Classic UI called an “Add-on” opportunity. If you look at the CPQ-specific Account fields, there is a field called “Co-termination Event”. One of the options is “Add-on”. The other is “Renewal” which is a different discussion. And what we’re finding is that a lot of these fields really only matter if you’re using the Classic interface. Lightning breaks a lot of these fields and you have to custom roll a solution.

Speaking of – Add-on opportunities is an example where lightning (as of Spring ’20) does NOT work in Lightning the way it works in Classic. In Classic, when I go to a quote and mark this opportunity as an “add-on” the system will show you active contracts on a screen and the user easily selects the contract they want to add new items.

Nope, in Lightning you have to help CPQ. Now the super simple way to do this is:

  • Have the user fill in the lookup field on Quote labeled “Master Contract”
  • Use a little automation behind the scenes that sets the quote’s end date to match the contract’s end date so that proration works

Again that’s the “in theory when I’m building a POC” version. In reality the Master Contract field will only accept the contract number. How many of our users are really gonna know the contract number by heart. So for a true Lightning implementation, it is probably better to create a flow off of Opportunity that shows the active contracts against that account. Then create the quote with all of your necessary fields populated so that user can go straight to “Edit Lines”.

So why all the work? Well, CPQ will auto-prorate your items against the contract and when the opportunity is ordered and contracted the subscriptions and assets are correctly aligned to the contract AND the renewal is up to date. It skips a lot of steps and if you have spent time with Amendments, you know how long it takes CPQ to create an amendment opportunity.

For those of us who can take advantage of this functionality, it may allow us to speed up the process and make life easier for our users.


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