Sales process – Part 2 – Quoting

(It is highly recommended to read the first part of this article before proceed.)

In Microsoft Dyanmics CRM, Quote products are the line items under the Quote. Each Quote Product represents quantity, price and etc. of a product which is of interest, in given quotation.

When creating a Quote there are few required fields such as Name, Potential Customer, Price List and Currency. Since I am going to explain the pricing of Quoting, I would urge the importance of assigning the Price List for a Quoting while all other fields are quite self-explainable.

Quote Product Units

Now we will pay attention to Quote Product and see how it works together with other components we learned in first Part of this article.

When creating Quote Products, it is required to populate Product, Unit and Quantity.

Now I am adding the Product Called “My Product 001” and Unit lookup pop-up shows all the Units under Unit Group of Primary Unit (Each). This is because, when we create this product in product entity we have specified that Unit Group. If we use a product which got Weight Unit Group, we might see all the Units associated to Weight such as 5kg Pack, 3Kg Pack and so on.

Quote Product Price Calculation

Now I save the Quote product with my values. Quantity is 7 and Unit is Each. Now we get auto calculated total for the Quote Product as below.

Price per Unit is the amount we mentioned in the Price List for “My Product 001” for “Each” unit. below is the calculation for Amount.

Amount = (Price per Unit – Volume Discount) x Quantity

In this case, Amount is also equal to Extended Amount too.

Now what is Volume Discount? If you read the first part of this article, it was explained about a lookup to set Discount List when creating Price List items. In this case, I have assigned a Discount List for the Pricelist Item of this product for Each Unit. Particular Discount List contains a Discount as below;

This simply tells to give $ 3 discount if quantity >= 6 and quantity <= 10.

Note: Since Discount List has to be assigned to Pricelist Items, it has to be assigned to all the Unit records for same product. In other terms, this same discount will not be applicable for the same product comes as Dozen or Cartoon unless it’s assigned for relevant PriceList Item records.

Apart from them, there are two more editable fields which I filling now. I put Manual Discount 50 and Tax 100 then save the record again. Below is the result.

In fact below is the equation of Extended Amount.

Extended Amount = Amount – Manual Discount + Tax

Dependencies you may note in Quote products

1) There are more products in the product entity, but I see fewer products in product lookup from the Quote Product form.

Explanation: You see only the products associated with the relevant Price List. In other terms, there should be at least one PriceList Item with the product to be seen here.

2) After populating a product to Quote Product, when try to set the Unit, I don’t see all the Units come under relevant Unit Group.

Explanation: Though this product is associated with relevant PriceList, it hasn’t got PriceList Item for all three Units, but only for the shown Units. In this example, PriceList got only one PriceList Item for this product and it is for Dozen Unit. (Need records for Each and Cartoon)

Quote Price Calculation

Once you complete play around with Quote Product, you are required to click the Recalculate button to get correct Quote totals. I got below sample totals for a Quote with a couple of Quote Products.

In fact, below are a couple of important formulas;

Detail Amount = Sum of Quote Products (Extended Amount – Tax)

Total Tax = Sum of Quote Products (Tax)

Quote total pane also got a couple of editable fields. I put my own values and recalculated to get new totals.

I have below formulas now;

Pre-Freight Amount = ( Detail Amount  x (100 - Quote Discount % ) / 100 ) – Quote Discount $

Total Amount = Pre-Freight Amount + Freight Amount + Total Tax

You will notice there are two kinds of Discount fields in the pane. One is percentage and other one is dollar amount. I have filled both fields to present a universal formula, but in practical world it’s advised to use one of those to keep it simple. These values are one time discounts that applied to the Quote total.

1st part of this article: Sales process – Part 1 – Product Catalog
3rd part of this article: Sales process – Part 3 – Modifying calculation of quote product
4th part of this article: Sales process – Part 4 – Modifying calculation of quote

Sales process – Part 1 – Product Catalog

Microsoft Dynamics CRM got flexible features to cater most of the pricing needs for products and services. Here I am explaining how they will fit in to your scenario. Here my starting point is Product Catalogue. Product Catalog is nothing more than few purposely designed entities. If you click settings > Product Catalog, you will see below screen with the entry points to four sections.

 



Unit groups and Units

First thing first! It is important to understand the relationship of Unit Groups and Units within the context of usability. This is fundamental physics! Any product should have a method of measuring.

Primarily most of the products can be count as integers (i.e. each). For example we can count Cars, Generators, computers, tables or etc. In day to day life, we have defined different packages of items for ease of usage such as cartoons, dozens and etc. Best example comes to my mind is beer. When we got o bar we can ask for one or two... but when we order them for a party we might order beer packs of 24 or 26 or etc. In CRM, these countable items can be defined as one Unit Group while, as same as the example mentioned, other “item packs” can be different Units under same Unit Group.

Now I am considering this Unit group as my Primary Unit group. CRM allows me to define many Units under this. Once you created one Unit Group, you can click the Unit link shown as an associate view, where you can add you’re Units. Suppose I define a dozen. Below is the simple form I need to fill. This explains dozen is created by multiplying Each by 12.



Also I can define a Cartoon which is 5 dozens.  This is the view I see all the relationships of Units under my Unit Group called “Default Unit (Each)”

Now I realize there can be different other products which can’t be measured with my primary unit group. Ex: Metal, Wheat, Cement and etc. Now I know they are measured by weight not the number of items. So I need another Unit Group for weight. Obviously, I can again define my Units under this Unit Group. Here I have added my second Unit Group;

 

Within Weight, I have defined different weights as Units. From this illustration you should realise that my primary unit for Weight Unit Group is 1kg and I have defined different packs of different weights based of 1kg.

Hope this explains that you can define whatever the measurement and units goes with your product or service. It can be length or time or etc.

Product and pricelist

Now only we can add records to products and pricelist.

When creating a new product you are required to populate both Unit Group and Default Unit. Always Default Unit look up shows you the values according to the Unit Group you selected.

Pricelist is the next important entity that keeps prices of products for their different units. Pricelist keeps all those information as PriceList Items. Please check a sample pricelist item as bellows;

This pricelist item says the price of the product for a Dozen. This implies, typically we need two more records for the same product for each and Cartoon.

Now we will consider this case. When I open my second product I see below error message in the beginning of the form. It says I haven’t set the default price list for the product.

In fact, now I am trying to open the lookup and set it, but I can’t see any pricelist in the pop-up lookup window!  This is because; price list doesn’t contain a pricelist item for this given product.
Now you are required to add a pricelist litem for this product before making any use of this product.

Discount Lists

In price list item, there is another special lookup called Discount List which obviously is to select a relevant Discount list for the record.

Discount List contains different Discounts under it. Discounts are simply discount amount /Percentage you get for buy different numbers. For example this Discount says that buyer gets $3 of discount if buy 4-10 of this. So user is free to define many Discounts under Discount List. Obviously user can have many Discount Lists to be attached to different pricelists.

When quoting, these discounts are being applied automatically.

2nd part of this article: Sales process – Part 2 – Quoting
3rd part of this article: Sales process – Part 3 – Modifying calculation of quote product
4th part of this article: Sales process – Part 4 – Modifying calculation of quote

CRM 2011 E-mail Router - Download and Configuration

Just a quick post. Below is the place to download Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 E-mail Router.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-au/download/details.aspx?id=27818

And this video shows how to configure it, so that your users can use it for emails.

Hope this is helpful.