Implement the Percent Of Total Pricing Method

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Configure products to use percent of total as a way of pricing based on other product prices.
• Determine which products contribute to percent of total calculations.
• Impose a minimum or maximum price for products configured to use the percent of total pricing method.

Keep Your Calculator in Your Pocket

Imagine you’ve just finished breakfast at your favorite neighborhood restaurant, and it’s time to settle the bill. If you’re somewhere it’s customary to leave a tip, you probably do some math to calculate how much to leave your server. You total the price of your toast, eggs, and coffee, then take 20% of that total (which, admit it, can require opening your calculator app) to add to your bill’s total. Voila, you have just used the percent of total pricing method when calculating the tip.

Salesforce CPQ can do this automatically, calculating the price of a product based on a percent of the total of other quote lines. For example, AW Computing has a product named Shipping Insurance, and the price is a factor of how expensive the equipment is on the quote. With percent of total, you can define the exact percent to calculate. Furthermore, you can configure CPQ to count some products while excluding others. It’s a simple, yet powerful tool that frees your sales reps from their calculator app.

Percent of Total Basics

A small amount of setup is necessary when using percent of total for a given nonsubscription product. You must update these three Product fields:

• Pricing Method: Set this to Percent Of Total. Doing so makes the price book price play a much smaller role, which we discuss later.
• Percent Of Total (%): The percentage amount to use in the calculation, much like the 20% from the breakfast example.
• Percent Of Total Base: Determines which quote line prices are summed for the total. Each price is affected by different types of discounts, so you can choose which discounts are factored into the percent of total calculation.

Quote Line Price Field	Applied Discounts
List	None
Regular	Automated discounts
Customer	Manual discounts
Net	Partner and distributor discounts

Set Up a Product for Percent of Total

Let’s set up the Shipping Insurance product for AW Computing. AW Computing would like to price the product at 10% of the other quote lines, after all discounts have been applied.

1. Click Products in the navigation bar, then choose the All Products list view.
2. Click Shipping Insurance.
3. Click Edit.
4. For the Pricing Method field, choose Percent Of Total.
5. For the Percent Of Total (%) field, enter 10.
6. For the Percent Of Total Base field, choose Net.
7. Click Save.

Great, that’s all you have to do! Now you can test by adding Shipping Insurance, along with some other products, to a quote.

1. Click Quotes in the navigation bar, then choose the All list view.
2. Click Q-00015.
3. Click Edit Lines.
4. Click Save to choose the Standard Price Book.
5. Click Add Products.
6. Check the boxes next to Firewall, Router, and Shipping Insurance. Note the list price for Shipping Insurance is $5.00. This price is ignored for now.
7. Click Select.
   
   The Quote Line Editor shows your three products, and the list price of the Shipping Insurance is $250—exactly 10% of $2400 + $100.
8. Change the Quantity of Router to 2, and enter 25 for Additional Disc.
9. Click Calculate.
   
   Now we see that the Net Total for the Router quote line is $150.00, so instead of using $2,500.00 for the Percent Of Total calculation, CPQ uses use $2,550.00, increasing the new Shipping Insurance price to $255.00.
10. Click Save.

Percent of Total Within Bundles

In the Configurable Bundles in Salesforce CPQ Trailhead module, you learn that bundles are just groups of products sold as a set. Sometimes bundles include percent of total products as options. The Percent Of Total Scope field, found on product option records, determines which products inside or outside the bundle are included in the price calculation.

For example, imagine we have a quote with both a Firewall and a Computer bundle that includes shipping insurance as an option. Each different setting of the Percent Of Total Scope field results in a different calculated price.

Percent of total scope defaults to --None--, so you only have to change it if you want to limit included quote lines to those in the bundle.

To Include, or Not to Include

By default, percent of total uses only nonsubscription quote lines as part of the total used in the price calculation. However, you can tell CPQ to include certain subscription products in the percent of total calculation by checking the box named Include in Percent Of Total, found on the subscription product record.

Be aware that when using Include in Percent Of Total, CPQ uses an unprorated price for the subscription in the total calculation. For example, if you have a $10 per month subscription and your quote is for 2 years, percent of total only adds $10 to the total, not $240.

By default, percent of total includes most nonsubscription quote lines in its calculation, but sometimes you don’t want to include everything. For example, you can have a one-time installation fee on the quote, but it shouldn’t be included in the Shipping Insurance price. One way to tell CPQ to ignore a product when calculating the percent of total is to check the box named Exclude from Percent Of Total on the product record. Be careful, checking this box excludes the product from all percent of total calculations.

Finally, percent of total products never include other percent of total products in their calculations. For example, you can’t calculate a 20% tip for a calculated Shipping Insurance price.

Percent of Total Category

Sometimes it’s necessary to price a percent of total product based on just a few select products. In this case it doesn’t make sense to check “Exclude from Percent Of Total” for all but a few products. Instead, you can use a percent of total category, which connects a percent of total product to other products that should contribute to the total.

For example, AW Computing would like to update the Shipping Insurance product to only cover their most expensive items, which includes the Copy Machine, Firewall, 13" Laptop, and 15" Laptop. Setting up a percent of total category is a two-step process. The first is to add a picklist value to the Percent Of Total Category field. The picklist value can be anything we want, so for this example we add Insurance as a value.

1. Click  and click Setup. The Setup page opens in a new tab.
2. Click Object Manager.
3. Click Product.
4. Click Fields & Relationships.
5. Click Percent Of Total Category.
6. In the Values list, click New.
7. Type Insurance into the box.
8. Click Save.
   Close the Setup browser tab to return to the Salesforce CPQ app.

The second step is to update both the Shipping Insurance product and the expensive products to use Insurance as their percent of total category value.

1. Click Products in the navigation bar, then choose the All Products list view.
2. Click Edit from the dropdown menu for Shipping Insurance.
3. For the Percent Of Total Category, choose Insurance.
4. Click Save.
5. Repeat steps 2–4 for Copy Machine, Firewall, 13" Laptop, and 15" Laptop.

Excellent, you now have a small group of products that will contribute to the shipping insurance percent of total calculation. Everything else will be ignored.

Limiting the Total

AW Computing would like to limit the amount it charges for shipping insurance to make the product more appealing to customers who buy lots of expensive equipment. It’s easy to put an upper limit on a percent of total product. Let’s cap the price of shipping insurance to $500.00.

1. Click Products in the navigation bar.
2. Click Shipping Insurance.
3. Click the Related tab.
4. In the Price Books related list, click Edit from the dropdown for Standard Price Book.
5. Change List Price to 500.
6. Click Save.
7. Click Edit.
8. Change Percent Of Total Constraint to List price is maximum.
9. Click Save.

Great! The price of shipping insurance is constrained to $500 at most, even if a million dollars’ worth of laptops are added to the quote.

The percent of total constraint tells CPQ to use the price book price as either a maximum, like in our example, or as a minimum. When using a minimum, you are ensured at least the price book price for the product, possibly more.

Percent of total is a great way to set a price based on the value of other products, and another way to automatically calculate list price. The final way to change a list price as administrators is option pricing, which prices products differently when they’re part of a bundle.

Resources

• Percent of Total Pricing
• Percent of Total Fields