Products

IN THIS ARTICLE

Product overview

Products are common to a space. Access Products from the main menu.

• A product can represent goods or services with unit-based pricing
• Products contain pricing rules that determine how unit price changes based on quantity
• Products can have a recurring pricing period (e.g. a monthly user license subscription)
• Products can be allocated to services and expenses within a phase.
• Products can be added or removed from the scope of a phase (like features)

Products

To add a product, click New product to open a new product window.

Pricing model

The pricing model determines how prices are calculated:

• Flat price with no associated quantity
• Per unit price where all units have the same price
• Tiered price per unit, with a maximum number of units in each range
• Volume price where all units have the same price based on total quantity
• Stair-step pricing with a fixed price based the total number of units within a range

Pricing units

Every product has a unit type. This could be a built in unit type (such as GBs or Hours) , or a custom unit (such as Users, Events, Instances, Sessions or even Bananas).

Units provide context to users about what the quantity/pricing represents (e.g. A license for '100 users' is easier to understand than a license for '100 units')

Standard units

There are a number of standard units built into the platform, including:

• Units (default)
• Data - TBs, GBs, MBs, KBs, Bytes
• Time - Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days, Weeks, Months, Quarters, etc
• Custom - Users, Events, Sessions, Instances

If there are other unit you really would like to see, let us know :)

Price ranges

For each pricing rule (other than flat) you can define multiple quantity-based ranges with different unit costs, prices and margins.

• You can set the per-unit (or per-step) cost in each range, or leave it blank and it will default to the value in the first range
• Similar to roles, you can either use automatic or manual pricing per quantity.
• You only have to set the maximum value for a range, and Estii will figure out the min value for the next range.
• The last range can have a fixed or unlimited max value

Price preview

Like us, you probably find it hard to sometimes tell the difference between volume, tiered and stepped pricing. To make it easier, we've included an inline preview, where you can enter a sample unit size, and we will break down the price calculations for you.

Pricing period

Pricing period allows you to set a recurring "billing" cycle for a product such as a monthly subscription, annual license, or weekly service fee.

One of the most powerful features of products, is combining units with a recurring time period to accurately price recurring costs such as a monthly subscriptions, annual license, or weekly service fee. For example:

• $10 per user-month for a recurring subscription license,
• $1 per instance-hour of a cloud services.
• $1 per GB-months for data storage

Within the estimation UI, compound units always appear hyphenated (e.g. GB-months or instance-hours), You only need to estimate the quantity for a single period (e.g. a month) and Estii will automatically calculate the total units and price based on the total duration.

Product settings

You can also specify a default margin and currency (business plan) per product.

Examples

Flat price

Per unit price

Tiered price

Volume price

Stair-stepped price

Product list

Reorder products

Products can be reordered via drag and drop. The order of products determines their display order elsewhere in the space (such as in autocomplete drop downs)

Deleting products

You can delete a product from the space. As with roles and streams, deals that reference those resources wont change immediately. When you update the deal, you will be prompted to select one of the following options for deleted resources:

1. Delete all references to the product (default)
2. Map all references to another product. The list of available products will be filtered to only include products with the same unit type and period

Import / export products

You can import and export products to a CSV file.

• To import, click Import products and select a CSV file to upload.
• To export, select Export products from the ... menu to download all products as a CSV file.

To download an example, click Import > Download template

Product CSV format

You can import multiple products at once, using the format below. The export format is similar to the import format, with the addition of the calculated margin column

Example:

Name,Model,Unit,Period,Currency,Default Margin,Max Units,Cost,Cost Set,Price,Price Set,Margin
Flat license,flat,unit,,usd,50%,0,2500,1,5000,0,50%
Per unit license,unit,user,month,usd,50%,0,5,1,10,0,50%
Tiered license,tier,user,month,usd,50%,10,5,1,15,1,67%
Tiered license,tier,user,month,usd,50%,50,5,0,12.5,1,60%
Tiered license,tier,user,month,usd,50%,0,5,0,10,1,50%
Volume license,volume,user,month,usd,50%,10,5,1,15,1,67%
Volume license,volume,user,month,usd,50%,50,5,0,12.5,1,60%
Volume license,volume,user,month,usd,50%,0,5,0,10,1,50%
Stepped license,stair,user,,usd,50%,3,0,0,100,1,100%
Stepped license,stair,user,,usd,50%,10,0,0,250,1,100%
Stepped license,stair,user,,usd,50%,25,0,0,500,1,100%
Stepped license,stair,user,,usd,50%,0,0,0,1000,1,100%

Using products

Allocating products to a deal

Products can be allocated to Services and Expenses

Updating deals

You can modify products at any time, however deals wont update automatically.

Deals store a versioned copy of all space resources (roles, streams, products) that can be updated from the deal page.