Salesforce CPQ: Order Generation

Simply put, orders are an agreement between a company and a customer: on the one hand, it's the company's promise to deliver products or provision services, and on the other hand, it's the customer's intention to purchase things.

Typically, the process starts with the opportunity, which is a potential sale, then a quote is created (of course, there can be multiple quotes on an opportunity); the next steps will be order generation, where quote specific information is going to be copied on the order record, and the quote lines information will be transferred to their corresponding order products, then finally comes order activation. 

 Order records capture the following important information:

• Account Name - a lookup to the account associated with the order; 
• Status - the stage of the order (by default, you can choose between Draft and Activated); 
• Order Start Date and Order End Date; 
• Order Amount – a read-only, roll-up summary field, displaying the sum of all the order product total amounts; 
• Billing Address and Shipping Address.

 Order Product records capture information in the following key fields:

• Product - a lookup to the product record
• Quoted Quantity – a read-only field, showing the total quantity of the quote line used to create this order product
• Prices (List Price, Unit Price, Total Price)
• Start Date and End Date

 Note that Order Products fields (e.g. Start Date) take precedence over their counterparts on the Order record, ensuring a more complex and granular provisioning.

  In Salesforce, there are four ways to generate orders that can be used for different business situations:

 For a successful order generation, keep in mind the following:

• Regardless of the method, one fundamental prerequisite for order generation is for the Primary field to be set to True on the Quote record because a Primary Quote is always required.
• Also, if the Required Approved Quote CPQ package setting is set to true, orders will not generate unless Quote Status equals Approved.

• Order generation can also fail if there are quote lines with negative quantities unless the Enable Negative Quantity Order Setting is set to True.
• Similarly, check the Enable Zero Quantity Order Setting if you should create order products for quote lines that have non-zero values.

 Things to know about the Ordered checkbox:

• The Ordered checkbox functions both on the quote and on the opportunity in the same manner.
• This is the easiest method to create an order.
• You can select the Ordered checkbox on the Quote or the Opportunity only once.
• By default, it generates a single order with all available quote lines from the quote.
• It allows to automatically split a quote into multiple orders when used in conjunction with the Order By or Order By Quote Line Group fields.
• The Ordered checkboxes can be checked either manually, or by an automated process. For example, when the opportunity or a quote moves to a certain stage, a process checks this checkbox.

 Things to know about the Create Order button:

• As opposed to the Ordered checkbox functionality, it allows manual adjustments to the Order record before saving it, by editing the fields, and then by accessing the Select Product page.
• Manual creation of multiple orders is possible from a single quote by choosing only specific quote lines that should be converted into order products.