Subscription-based Products in Salesforce CPQ

A subscription product is a product that has some recurring payment element to it, whether it be a monthly payment or an annual subscription.

Tracking which customers have subscription-based products is one of the major highlights of Salesforce CPQ, and is worth considering for any organization with recurring renewal opportunities. Continue reading to learn how you can set up subscriptions in Salesforce CPQ, and the benefits of doing so.

• Price is always prorated according to the Quote Term Length​
• Example: Home Appliances on Rent varies depending on the Duration.​
• Products can be renewable ​
• In CPQ: Upon Contracting, these products become a subscription associated with the Contract

Setup Subscription-Based Products

CPQ provides additional custom fields on products that allow you to do subscription pricing. and ensuring that they behave as you would expect them to.

1. Subscription Pricing: without this field being set to something, your product will not be treated as a Subscription.
2. Subscription Term: this is the length of time associated with the product, so if its an annual product you would set it to 12 months.
3. Subscription Type: this field defines what kind of Subscription product it is.

PRODUCT FIELD	DATA TYPE	DESCRIPTION
Subscription Pricing	Picklist	Type of pricing to use for this subscription, either None, Fixed Price or Percent of Total. None means this product is NOT a subscription product.
Subscription Term	Integer	Term length of this subscription. Only applicable if the product is a subscription. A BLANK value means this product is NOT a subscription product.
Subscription Type	Picklist	Select the type of Subscription, either Renewable or One-time. Renewable Subscriptions transfers to Renewal Quotes. One-time Subscriptions will not.

To enable a product to be ordered as a subscription product, Subscription Pricing, Subscription Term and Subscription Type fields have to be set up appropriately.

Subscription Type

1. Renewable = Subscription
2. One-Time = acts like a Subscription, but doesn’t renew
3. Evergreen or Renewable/Evergreen 

In order to access these two Subscription Types, you do need to have Evergreen products enabled and then you need to add the options to the Subscription Type picklist.

Subscription products have two pricing types, controlled by the Subscription Pricing field.

• Fixed Price: This product gets its list price from a price book entry.
• Percent of Total: This product’s list price is a percentage of the quote, quote line group, or a bundle’s total price.

The product’s Subscription Type field lets you control how Salesforce CPQ handles renewals for your subscription product.

• Renewable: Salesforce CPQ includes this subscription in renewal quotes.
• One-Time: Salesforce CPQ won’t include this subscription in renewal quotes.
• Evergreen: This subscription remains active until canceled and can’t be renewed.
• Evergreen/Renewable: Users can define whether this subscription is renewable or evergreen on individual quote lines in the quote line editor. The subscription records created from the quote line inherit the quote line’s subscription type.

Subscription Terms

A product’s subscription term is the default amount of time that a subscription lasts. The CPQ package setting Subscription Term Unit controls whether the term is in months or days, and defaults to months.

Percent of Total Pricing

Products contain several other fields that let you customize the percent of total price calculation process, but you need only the following fields for a basic setup.

Percent of Total Base

Define whether your Percent of Total product calculates its price based on the list price, net price, customer price, or regular price of its covered products.

If you don’t choose a value, calculations default to the list price.

Percent of Total (%)

A Percent of Total product’s price is this percentage of the combined price of its covered products. Salesforce CPQ uses this product’s percent of total base to determine the price field (such as list price, net price, or customer price) used in this calculation.

Evergreen Subscriptions

Salesforce CPQ users can create contracts with subscriptions that don’t have any end dates and, therefore, don’t need to be renewed. This supports an open-ended term of service that allows for customers or providers to cancel or terminate the subscription at any point. Evergreen subscriptions provide the ability to quote, sell, and manage subscriptions products without an end date.

To know more about subscription products and how to setup each and field schema refer below article.

https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.cpq_subscription_products.htm&type=5