About Percentage Based Products

  • Percentage based products can be used to automatically calculate a sales price based on other products either on the current order, or active subscriptions across all their orders.
  • Scenarios for Percentage Based Products include use cases like:
    • Support calculated across subscriptions
    • Partner Margins where you need to discount the whole quote
    • Calculate a % of products in the quote but also apply a minimum floor value

  • Percentage based products can calculate based on products that are found with the following:
    • a Product Family value
    • a value in a Custom Field


Note: Percentage based products are set at the Pricebook level, but can be set at the Product level to be Excluded from Percentage based calculations.

Prepare for Percentage Based Products
  • You’ll first need to setup the Percentage Families you want to be able to calculate against. This is done under: Customize —> Price Books—> Price Book Entries —> Fields —> Percentage Families 
  • Add picklist values that match any of your custom Product Family picklist values or the value you would like to match in your custom field.
  • Click “Save”

Setting up Percentage Based Products

  • Browse the Product you would like to setup as a percentage based product and find the Pricebook Entry you would like to update then click “Edit”.
  • Click “Percentage Based” and mark it as True. 
  • Set the Percentage you would like in the “Percentage” field. Use a negative number like (-10) if you would like it to calculate at a discount.
  • If you would like to use the Product Family field as the criteria to calculate against, no additional action is needed.
  • If you want to take advantage of using a custom field on the Product, create the field on the Product level and add the API name into the appropriate "Percentage Field" of the Pricebook Entry for the Percentage Based Product.
  • Select the Families you would like it to calculate against. This is also the same value you can use to calculate against a custom field.
  • By default, the end user cannot edit the Sales Price. Mark “Percentage Override” as true, if you would like them to override the percentage calculation.
  • Select the price you would like to calculate the percentage from using the "Percent Of" field
    • Total - This is recommended for calculating a percentage of Subscriptions, but the target product is non-recurring. It will use the Grand Total of all lines.
    • Unit - Use this if you would like to calculate the target just from the sum of all unit prices
    • List - Use this if you would like to calculate the target just from the sum of all list unit prices
    • List Total - Use this if you would like to calculate the target from the sum of all Grand Total List Prices
  • Lastly, select if you would like the calculation to work for the Current Order, or across all active subscriptions.


Note: You can also set the "Floor" field with the per unit price to ensure the price is always greater than a certain amount. The only caution is that this can cause unintended consequences for "Current Order" calculations if you are doing a co-termed add-on with a low per unit price.


Real life Example #1:


Product A is a percentage based Product that should calculate 10% of all Subscription Products based on the "Product Family" field for current and active orders. Quoting uses can override the Sales Price after the percentage Calculation:


Product A Price book Entry Details:

  • Percentage 10%
  • Percentage Based = True
  • Percentage Based Type = "All Active"
  • Percentage Families = "Subscription"
  • Percentage Override = True


Example Product that would be used to calculate the percentage based product:


Product B Product Details:

  • Product Family = "Subscription"


Real life Example #2:


Product D is a percentage based Product that should calculate 20% of all Module Products based on the custom Product field called "Product Type", and only calculates for current orders. Quoting uses cannot override the Sales Price after the percentage Calculation:


Product D Price book Entry Details:

  • Percentage 20%
  • Percentage Based = True
  • Percentage Based Type = "Current Order"
  • Percentage Families = "Modules"
  • Percentage Override = False
  • Percentage Field = "Product_Type__c"


Example Product that would be used to calculate the percentage based product:


Product C Product Details:

  • Product Type = "Module"



Note: you can also set up Percentage Based products to renew as a fixed price, see more here.