SECTIONSNew Features and Enhancements in Services Estimator Winter 2025
The following new features have been introduced in the Winter 2025 release of Services Estimator.
If you are upgrading from a previous version, see Upgrading to Services Estimator Winter 2025. This provides a summary of the items that have been added for each feature and details of any required upgrade steps.
Services CPQ is Now Services Estimator
Services CPQ has been renamed to Services Estimator. As a result, we have also renamed Services CPQ – Salesforce CPQ Connector to Services Estimator – Salesforce CPQ Connector. This rename better reflects the capabilities of the product as an estimation tool.
Spring 2025 PSA and Foundations Dependency Update
From the Spring 2025 release, Services Estimator will require PSA and Foundations to be one version behind the latest seasonal release, rather than two. This means the Spring 2025 release will depend on the Winter 2025 version of PSA and Foundations being installed. Ensure you update PSA and Foundations to the Winter 2025 version ahead of the Spring 2025 of Services Estimator release to ensure compatibility.
For more information, see Setting up Services Estimator.
Calculating Hours Using Full-Time Equivalent (%)
You can now calculate hours using the FTE (%) field in the Estimate Builder. This provides you with a new way to calculate and spread hours on a role request. To calculate hours using full-time equivalent, you must populate the region, practice, and group on a role request that has a work calendar associated with it. If you have multiple work calendars associated with a role request, you can change the value of the Default Work Calendar Hierarchy configuration setting in PSA. This will enable you to determine which work calendar the role request should inherit.
We have introduced a new way to prioritize values to recalculate hours. This enables you to maintain your scheduling strategy when making changes to an estimate. The following options are available in the Scheduling Strategy field on the Details tab of the estimate:
- When "Prioritize Hours" is selected, changing the dates or work calendar of a role request will maintain the hours and recalculate the full-time equivalent.
- When "Prioritize FTE" is selected, changing the dates or work calendar of a role request will maintain the full-time equivalent and recalculate the hours.
You can't use FTE (%) and the Hours Multiplier together to calculate the hours of a role request.
For more information, see Estimate Builder Overview.
Introducing Billing Schedules to Estimate Products
We've introduced the ability to set a billing schedule on estimates. The following billing frequencies have been added:
- Line Set End Date
- Estimate Product End Date
- Monthly
Additionally, you can set a percentage value for upfront billing on estimates.
You can preview the milestone breakdowns for billing schedules in the Create Project window. This provides further detail about the amount that will be billed for each milestone.
You can only set a billing schedule or upfront billing percentage on estimate products with a billing type of "Fixed Price". These features provide more control over your billing schedules to support billing variances.
We have also updated the process of adding, editing, and deleting estimate products on an estimate. This enables you to more efficiently manage estimate products.
For more information, see Estimate Products Overview.
Billable Contingency Enhancements
You can now edit existing estimate contingencies directly from the Estimate Contingency related list on the Additional Costs tab.
We've also introduced the Billable Amount Input Type field in the Create Estimate Contingency window. This field enables you to specify whether the billable amount for the contingency is entered as a number or a percentage.
When you add an estimate to an opportunity, the billable contingency amount automatically populates the new Total Billable Contingency Amount field on the associated Opportunity product. This ensures the contingency is easily identifiable directly from the associated opportunity.
For more information, see Estimate Contingency Overview.
Adding a Risk to an Estimate
We have introduced risks to estimates, enabling you to identify potential adverse effects on an estimate. You can specify the impact and likelihood of each risk. You can now specify the impact and likelihood of each risk, as well as associate risks with estimate products to enable a more granular risk assessment. You can create a risk using the new Create Estimate Risk on an estimate record page.
For more information, see Estimate Risk Overview.
Additionally, we have added the Estimate Risk to Project Risk Mappings page, this enables administrators to map fields on an estimate risk to fields on a project risk when creating a project from an estimate. This ensures the required data is seamlessly transferred from the estimate risk to the appropriate fields on the project risk. The page can be accessed by navigating to the Estimate Risk to Project Risk Mappings tab, or using the link on the Services Estimator Administration page.
For more information, see Services Estimator Administration.
Read-Only Cells in the Estimate Builder When a Project is Created
Once you create a project from estimate records, you can no longer edit the associated records in the Estimate Builder. This enables you to maintain the original estimate, while still enabling updates to be made directly within the project in PSA.
For more information see, Creating a Project from an Estimate.
Release Content
We want to help you find all of the information and resources that you need to use our products effectively.
Certinia Trailhead
If you want to learn more about the new features in this release, see the PS Cloud - Winter 2025 Release Highlights Certinia Trailhead module. This module will guide you through the new features in PS Cloud.
Permissions
For information about the changes to permissions in this release, see Permission Sets and Other Technical Documentation.
Fixes
Fixes are listed on the Known Issues page of the Certinia Community. You can access this page from the Community Support Hub. For a brief description of the issues that have been fixed in this version of Services Estimator, see the relevant section of the Known Issues page.