Jose, the Sales Director, is concerned about the current situation and wonders if Cloud Kicks should diversify its business.
He meets the whole team to share ideas.
They unanimously decide to create two new products that fit perfectly with the company, to perpetuate the activity.
The two new products are:
A sports and sportswear fashion magazine to be called Sports under the Cloud.
A box in which customers will be able to find various sports items (clothing, accessories, trainers, etc.). This will be called the Kicks Box.
But Candace and Linda are wondering because, even if they already know how to generate a subscription from scratch or from another object or from a quotation or an opportunity, the magazine will be a monthly subscription but the box will be sold as a monthly, quarterly, four-monthly or six-monthly subscription...
Vijay, the developer of Cloud Kicks, reassures them because he has been following the Frisbii newsletters: since the Winter'21 release, they can group several subscriptions to generate a global invoice (1 invoice for several subscriptions).
This grouping can be very useful for different situations.
Great! Candace and Linda will be able to get started and there will no longer be any obstacles to their new activities.
Reminder of the basic functioning of the subscription
Subscriptions can be created from scratch or from another object or from a quotation or an opportunity. Subscription line items, which are products that are invoiced on a recurring basis, can be added, on a subscription billing schedule generated according to an invoicing rhythm.
You can find more details in this article: Field dictionary.
Explanation of the functioning of the grouping feature
At the request of the customer or by decision of the billing entity, subscriptions can be grouped from a certain date to a certain date, or indefinitely.
This information is stored on a Grouping type change order created on each grouped subscription.
Each grouped subscription is associated with the grouping subscription via an change order record on which a new search field to the Subscription object has been created.
Bundled subscriptions are autonomous: one can unbundle or terminate one, and keep the grouping on the others.
A value in a field using a picklist on the Subscription object allows to determine the grouping subscriptions from the others and allows, via the dynamic form, to display the right information according to the type of subscription.
This is useful for blocking the issuing of invoice(s) on grouped subscriptions.
A Group button allows you to sort of "cut" the line items on the grouped subscriptions and "paste" them on the grouping subscription.
The different use cases of this grouping feature
This feature allows the following use cases to be managed:
A customer subscribes to several subscriptions which have separate cycles (the terms of the contract are potentially different) but which must be the subject of a single invoice.
Ex: JacksonMiniJazzDanseMontpellier has subscribed to Sports under the Cloud as well as Kicks Box, but only wants to receive a single invoice for both.
The entity billed is not the same as the entities that have subscribed.
E.g.: the subsidiaries of a group subscribe to contracts but it is the parent company that pays for them.
The parent company, JacksonMiniJazzDanseFrance, does not want to receive 70 invoices each month but only one invoice grouping together all the invoice lines for all the subsidiaries (JacksonMiniJazzDanseMontpellier, JacksonMiniJazzDanseLyon, etc.).
Within the same subscription, products are invoiced based on different periodicities.
This case can be handled by two grouped subscriptions (one for the monthly and one for the quarterly) and one grouping.
Warning : However, the subscription grouping feature has not been specifically designed for this case. Thus, for all the events in the subscription life cycle (change order, interruption, renewal), the work will be multiplied by the number of grouped records.
Frisbii is currently studying the management of invoicing periodicities directly at the level of the subscription line items in order to provide a much more practical solution to this use case.
Warning : grouping is incompatible with billing regularisation.
Setup of a grouping subscription
Reminder: we advise you to test these procedures in a sandbox test organisation.
Steps
Create subscriptions (e.g. AB-00000182 monthly and AB-00000183 quarterly) with their subscription items.
Use the buttons to Activate them and Create schedules on both subscriptions.
Click ont the Subscriptions tab to go back to the list view (All) of subscriptions.
Select the subscriptions and click on Merge:
The screen flow Grouping of subscriptions in a list view opens. Please click on Next.
Select the option Create a new group subscription and click on Next.
Fill in the fields according to your needs and click on Next.
Choose a start and end date for the grouping:
Click on Finish.
Go back to the Subscriptions tab. You can see your new grouping subscription (AB-00000184).
Open the new grouping subscription and click on the button Create schedule and then on Confirm.
By clicking on the associated list Invoices you will see a schedule with amounts at 0:
Go back to the grouping subscription (ex. AB-00000184). Activate the subscription with the Activate button and then click on Confirm.
The button Grouping of lines is now available. Use it continue.
Click on the Confirm button.
Click the Grouping of Lines button again to reopen the window and then click Generate Grouped Subscription Schedules (Générer les échéanciers des abonnements).
Then you get a first invoice for the grouped subscription. The other invoices are generated but do not yet contain any invoice lines. They are therefore at 0 EUR.
BEWARE: |
What the feature does not yet include
Bottom line discounts of the grouped subscriptions to the invoice lines on the grouping subscription.
Creation of PDF of the grouping subscription with details of the grouped subscriptions.
Deep clone on grouped subscription with possibility to copy also the grouping change order.
User interface for :
Ungroup in mass
Generate mass grouping schedules
Find and group subscriptions directly from a grouping subscription.
Manage interruption.
Send invoices by email taking into account the contact of the grouped subscriptions
Add a link between the invoices of the grouping subscription and the grouped subscriptions.