New Features and Enhancements in Services Estimator September 2026

The following new features have been introduced in the September 2026 release of Services Estimator.

If you are upgrading from a previous version, see Upgrading to Services Estimator September 2026. This provides a summary of the items that have been added for each feature and details of any required upgrade steps.

If you are upgrading from a version earlier than Summer 2026, check the documentation for previous releases for upgrade details.

Apply Percentage-Based Rate Modifiers to Your Estimates

You can now apply percentage-based rate modifiers to your estimates to adjust bill rates for inflation, cost-of-living adjustments, regional pricing, or client-specific arrangements. This enables you to manage multi-year engagement pricing without manually overriding individual rates or creating one-off rate cards.

For more information, see Estimate Rate Modifiers Overview.

Manage Scoping Variables on Scoping Requirement Sets

You can now create and manage scoping variables on a Scoping Requirement Set. Scoping variables give you a structured way to capture and aggregate key factors from a scoping session, such as complexity or risk, that help inform your estimate. Each variable has a name and an aggregation type — "Sum" or "Average" — which controls how the variable's responses are combined.

You can now group multiple Guided Scoping actions into a named Action Set at the scoping requirement set level, independent of any response. This enables you to categorize an estimate product based on a scoping session's overall outcome — for example, as low, medium, or high complexity. You can then apply a tailored group of changes to it, rather than configuring actions one response at a time. An action set can contain any of the existing action types, except Modify Scoping Variable Value and Set Input as Value. Its actions run at the end of a scoping session after any actions configured on individual responses. You can further configure when action sets run by using scoping action set conditions based on the value of the selected scoping variable.

For more information, see Scoping Action Sets Overview.

Narrow the Resource Role Filter to Your Estimate's Hierarchy

The Resource Role filter in the Filters panel now lists only the resource roles present on the current estimate instead of every value in the Resource Role picklist. As you select an Estimate Product, Line Set, or Task, the Resource Role options narrow to match, including role requests on nested subtasks. This saves you time sifting through roles that don't exist on the estimate. If the estimate has no role requests, the Resource Role filter now shows an empty, disabled state. Apply and Clear behavior for the filter panel is unchanged.

For more information, see Filtering Records in the Estimate Builder.

Manage Estimate Records with Enhancements to Record Deletion

You now have the ability to delete child records on your estimate that were created by another user. This enables you to fully customize estimates that you own in the Estimate Builder.

For more information, see Estimate Builder Overview.

Extend Your No-Code Estimate Pricing Methods with Top-Down Pricing

Estimate pricing methods that use pricing variables now support two pricing approaches. Roll Up calculates a bill amount on each role request and aggregates those amounts upward, as pricing variables have always done. Spread Down works in the opposite direction: a formula produces a single total on an estimate product or on the records that are independent of estimate products, and Services Estimator shares that total down to the role requests beneath it. After you upgrade, run the Services Estimator Sept 2026 Upgrade feature in the Feature Console. Your existing pricing methods are set to Roll Up and behave as before.

Spread a Formula-Driven Total Down to Role Requests

Set the Pricing Approach on a pricing method to Spread Down, and the formula calculates one total for the estimate product, or for the records independent of estimate products. Services Estimator then splits that total across the role requests underneath, in proportion to their hours. Two new Selectable On checkboxes control where each method can be used. For more information, see Top-Down Pricing Overview.

Keep Discounts Clear of a Top-Down Priced Total

A discount on a record beneath a parent that a Spread Down method prices is now rejected when you save, with a message that names the pricing method, so that a discount cannot erode a total that has already been shared down. Existing discounts on those records are cleared when you select a Spread Down method, and the Discount (%) cell is read-only in the Estimate Builder for rows that a method prices from above. The priced parent keeps its own discount. For more information, see Discounting Estimates.

Clone a Pricing Method with Its Variables and Fields

You can now clone an estimate pricing method together with all of its pricing variables and pricing fields in one action, so that you can create a variant of a working method in seconds instead of rebuilding it by hand. Use the new Clone Pricing Method action on an estimate pricing method record, or the Clone Estimate Pricing Methods custom action in Salesforce Flow Builder and Agentforce Builder. The standard Clone button has been removed from the page layout. Use Clone Pricing Method instead. You cannot clone a packaged pricing method. For more information, see Cloning an Estimate Pricing Method.

Withhold and Release Billing Holdbacks on Custom Billing Schedules

You can now withhold a percentage of each item on a custom billing schedule and release the accumulated total on a later item. This enables you to hold back part of a payment until the end of delivery in agreement with your customers. Previously, Services Estimator had no way to manage holdbacks on a billing schedule, so you either could not apply contractual withholding at all or tracked it manually outside the system. That workaround did not pass through to PSA reliably.

Estimators set the Holdback (%) and Release Holdback fields on each item of a custom billing schedule, where a new Net Payable column shows the amount that is billed after holdback. An item with the Release Holdback field selected bills its own net amount plus the holdback withheld by earlier items, so a schedule can have several release points rather than a single final one. When you create a project from the estimate, its milestones are created with these net amounts and the released holdback is recorded on each milestone.

A schedule that still has holdback left to release is flagged with a warning while you work, and you must release the outstanding amount before you can create a project from the estimate. Billing holdbacks apply to fixed price estimates only.

For more information, see Billing Holdbacks Overview.

Configure Estimate to Project Mappings, Hierarchy, and Preview

You have new options when creating custom mappings for the Estimate to Project, Estimate Task to Project Task, Line Set to Milestone, and Role Request to Resource Request processes. You can now map a static value to a target object field, map no value to it, or map from a source field as before. A custom "Enabled" mapping can also override an existing "Managed - Enabled" mapping so you're no longer limited to the packaged mapping.

Selecting the new Create Milestone Tasks checkbox on an estimate creates a milestone task for each of the project's deliverable milestones and organizes the project's top-level tasks underneath them. The project's schedule then displays correctly in its Gantt chart.

Creating a project from an estimate now follows a three-step process with a progress tracker. The Project Preview step is always included as step 2 instead of being an optional window. The preview has a new Delivery Risks section that lists risks flagged as delivery risks so you can check which project risks will be created before you create the project.

For more information, see Services Estimator Administration, Milestone Task Hierarchy Overview, and Creating a Project from an Estimate.

Permissions

For information about the changes to permissions in this release, see Permission Sets and Other Technical Documentation.

Release Content

We want to help you find all of the information and resources that you need to use our products effectively.

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.