Using the Deferred Revenue Waterfall Dashboard

The Deferred Revenue Waterfall dashboard provides a forward-looking view of your subscription billing. The dashboard enables you to view the following amounts per financial period:

  • The amount scheduled to be billed.
  • The amount scheduled to be recognized.
  • The amount of deferred revenue.

The forecast is displayed for upcoming periods, starting from the current period. You can change the end period to adjust the view.

The dashboard also enables you to view the following amounts as of today's date:

  • The total value.
  • The amount billed.
  • The amount of revenue recognized.
  • The opening balance.
  • The amount remaining to be billed.
  • The amount of revenue remaining to be recognized.

You can use the filters to view the data for a specific contract, account, company, product, country, and so on. This enables you to have a consolidated view of all your subscriptions and to also focus on a specific customer's subscription.

Data

Data displayed in this dashboard is derived from the following datasets:

Billing Contracts

A billing contract line item is included in the dashboard only if it meets the following criteria:

  • It has a revenue recognition template.
  • It is linked to a billing schedule or a revenue schedule line with an end date that falls into the current period or a future period.

This means that only active contracts are included. Draft and superseded contracts are not linked to billing and revenue schedules and are automatically excluded from the dashboard. Expired contracts might be included in the dashboard if they were ended early and still have future revenue schedules.

Deferred Balance Calculation

The deferred revenue balance for a contract line item in each period is calculated directly by the dashboard. TThe value is not stored in any dataset. The value is calculated using the following formula:
Deferred Revenue Balance for the period = Deferred Revenue Balance of the previous period + Scheduled Billing - Scheduled Revenue

The deferred revenue balance is cumulative. This means that, even if there is no scheduled billing and revenue for a period, the deferred revenue balance is still displayed, with scheduled billing and revenue set to zero.

Recognized to Date for Multiple-Element Arrangements

If you use multiple-element arrangements in Revenue Management, when you recognize revenue against a performance obligation, the recognized to date value is not automatically populated on the source record. This means that the billing contract line item doesn't contain a recognized to date value. Because of this, the values in Totals tab might not be accurate as the Total Recognized is set to zero. In this case, your administrator must manually create a process in Revenue Management to update the recognized to date value on the contract line when revenue is recognizes for the related performance obligations.

Currency Drop-Down Selector

If your org is configured to support multiple currencies, you can use the Currency drop-down selector to change the currency that the values are displayed in. You can select any of the active Salesforce currencies in your org.

By default, the values in the dashboard are displayed in the currency of the billing contracts included in the dashboard. If the dashboard contains billing contracts with different currencies, the values are displayed in the corporate currency by default.

When you expand the selector, the initial value is the currently selected currency. The remaining currencies are displayed in alphabetical order.

Note:

If the billing contract's currency is different from the corporate currency when the deferred revenue balance is 0.01, it is automatically rounded to zero. This ensures that the values in the dashboard are not misleading for contract lines that are fully recognized. The rounding is done before the value is converted from the corporate currency to another currency. Depending on the exchange rate, the value before rounding might be greater than 0.01 in the target currency.

Managing Filters

Your filter selections determine the data displayed on the dashboard charts. By default, the filters panel is hidden in this dashboard. You can toggle between hiding and displaying the filters panel by clicking . To set or change your filters, use the following drop-down options:

  • End Period: select the end period to limit or expand the scope of the data displayed.
    • Note: This filter dynamically modifies the number of available Period columns in the table.
  • Contract Number: select the contract you want to see data for.
  • Company: select the company you want to see data for.
  • Product Family: select the product family you want to see data for.
  • Product Name: select the product name you want to see data for.
  • Account Billing Country: select the account billing country you want to see data for.
  • Account Industry: select the account industry you want to see data for.
  • Account: select the account you want to see data for.

Using Dashboard Charts

The Deferred Revenue Waterfall dashboard contains the following charts:

Deferred Revenue Waterfall Charts

Tab

Chart

Description
Per Period Bar chart

View your scheduled revenue and billing per financial period according to your selected filter criteria. You can also view the deferred revenue balance for each period and its overall fluctuation.

Tip:

You can facet the data displayed in the dashboard by clicking on the periods displayed in this chart. For more information on faceting, see Faceting in Financial Management Analytics Dashboard Charts.
Totals Total Value KPI Sum of the total values of all the billing contract line items included by the filter criteria.
Totals Billed to Date KPI Sum of the total billed amounts of all the billing contract line items included by the filter criteria.
Totals Opening Balance KPI

Calculated by the dashboard as Billed to Date - Recognized to Date.

Note:

The value is not stored in any dataset.
Totals Recognized to Date KPI Sum of the total recognized amounts of all the billing contract line items included by the filter criteria.
Totals Billed to Date vs. Remaining to Bill horizontal stacked bar chart

View the amount that has been billed to date and the amount remaining to bill. The Remaining to Bill value is calculated by the dashboard as Total Value - Billed to Date.

You can hover over each part of the bars to view the percentage that a specific value contributes to the total value. For example, you can hover over the Remaining to Bill part to see how much you have yet to bill.

Note:

The value is not stored in any dataset.
Totals Recognized to Date vs. Remaining to Recognize horizontal stacked bar chart

View the amount of revenue that has been recognized to date and the amount remaining to recognize. The Remaining to Recognize value is calculated by the dashboard as Total Value - Recognized to Date.

You can hover over each part of the bars to view the percentage that a specific value contributes to the total value. For example, you can hover over the Remaining to Recognize part to see how much you have yet to recognize.

Note:

The value is not stored in any dataset.
Standard View

Details table

View your current revenue status as well as the forecast for the scheduled revenue pending recognition in the upcoming periods.

This table contains the following columns:

  • Account Name
  • Contract Number
  • Product Name
  • Total Value
  • Total Billed
  • Total Recognized
  • Start Date
  • End Date
  • Type

    • Scheduled Billing

    • Scheduled Revenue

    • Deferred Balance - negative values are displayed in red to help you identify that you recognized more than you billed.

  • Revenue (by period)
Custom View

Details table

View your current revenue status as well as the forecast for the scheduled revenue pending recognition in the upcoming periods.

The Custom View page enables you to modify the Deferred Revenue Waterfall table by adding or removing columns.

By default, this table contains the following columns:

  • Company Name
  • Account Name
  • Contract Number
  • Product Name
  • Total Value
  • Total Billed
  • Total Recognized
  • Type

    • Scheduled Billing

    • Scheduled Revenue

    • Deferred Balance - negative values are displayed in red to help you identify that you recognized more than you billed.

  • Revenue (by period)
Note:

Your administrator might have changed the default columns.
Tip:

You can use the standard Analytics functionality to download any of the dashboard charts as an image, as a Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheet, or as a CSV file. For more information about downloading images and exporting filtered data, see the Salesforce Help.

Customizing the Custom View Table with Drop-Down Selectors

In addition to the filters available on this page, you can edit the data displayed in the table using the provided drop-down selectors. These selectors are:

  • Company Fields. Select fields from the Company object to include.
  • Account Fields. Select fields from the Account object to include.
  • Contract Fields. Select fields from the Contract object to include.
  • Contract Line Fields. Select fields from the Contract Line Item object to include.

You can also exclude fields by deselecting them. The number of columns displayed in the table dynamically updates according to your selected criteria.

Warning:

Depending on your screen resolution and the number of fields that you include in the table, you might not be able to see the Revenue by period columns. If this happens, you must exclude some of the fields or manually reduce the width of the columns to view the Revenue by period columns. When at least one period displays, you can use the horizontal scroll bar to view the remaining periods.

Note:

When you use the Currency drop-down selector to change the currency, the exchange rate is applied to all the numeric values in the table. If you include a custom number field from the Billing Contract or Billing Contract Line Item objects, its value is also converted to the currency you select.

You can save your custom changes to this dashboard by saving the dashboard view. Your administrator can change the default columns for all users, by using the Pick Initial Values feature. For more information, see Customizing the Deferred Revenue Waterfall Custom View.

Drilling Through to Records

You can drill through to view details of records displayed in rows under the following table columns:

  • Account Name
  • Contract Number

To view details of a selected record:

  1. Click the cell you want to drill. Drillable cells are highlighted in bold blue text. If you select a billing contract, a Billing Central license is required to view further details.
  2. Click Arrow , then click Open Record.
  3. The source record opens in the Billing Central.