What to do first
Press Add an offering (in your workspace's word) and answer the first two questions on the sheet. Everything else on the sheet follows from them.
What are you adding?
- Something you sell. A product, a service, a piece of stock. You choose how it is counted and what the record holds.
- A real-estate listing. A development, an estate or a building, sold in plots or units. The sheet adds the location, developer, title, size, payment plans, commission and marketing status, and counts what is available.
How do you track this?
Asked of anything that is not a listing. Choosing the right answer is the one setup decision that matters.
- One of a kind. Each record is a single thing that can be sold once: a plot, a specific vehicle, a serial-numbered machine. It is available or it is not.
- Stock on hand. You hold a number of them and a sale takes one away. You restock by raising the number.
- Capacity per period. How many you can deliver in a week, month, quarter or year. It refills when the next period starts. Forty client engagements a month is an offering in exactly this sense, and it is what lets a business that sells its time use this module at all.
Warn me when this many are left sets the point at which a counted line reads as running low.
Price and how it is paid for
Every line has a price. Beyond that:
- Renews. Whether it is sold again every month, quarter or year: a retainer, a software seat, a maintenance plan. A renewing line is sold as a subscription; see "Subscriptions" below.
- How it is paid for. For a line sold once, the payment terms a proposal for it starts with: a deposit and monthly payments, or named stages that are invoiced as delivery milestones are done. Each proposal can change them. See Proposals.
- Payment plans. For a listing, the plans a buyer can be sold it on. The plan chosen at the sale decides that client's schedule. Plans belong to the workspace, so one described here is offered on every listing; they are also kept in Organisation › Master data › Payment plans.
- Commission. For a listing, what a sale of one earns. Where a listing has its own commission, it is what a partner who introduced the sale earns, ahead of the partner's own rate. See Campaigns and partners.
When one is sold
Each line says what its sale sets off:
- Nothing — you just supply it. The sale is the end of it.
- The buyer joins this line's project. For something a project is already building, where everybody who buys one is delivered by the same project. Choose the project under Supplied by first.
- Each sale starts its own project. For work you do once per client. Selling one creates a project named for them, starting with the Stages of a delivery you list here.
Availability is a consequence
Nobody keeps a status field up to date here. A lead at the Proposal stage holds what it asks for. A lead that moves away from Proposal, or is lost, releases it. A sale takes it. That is what makes this screen trustworthy: it reports what the rest of the workspace has done rather than what somebody remembered to change. The page says so under the filters: availability follows the offer and the sale.
A one-of-a-kind line reads as Available, Reserved, Allocated or Sold. A counted line is described by how much is left and whether that is healthy.
A capacity line with nothing left has sold out its period. That is success, and it is shown as success.
The page
Across the top:
- Available to sell. How many units can be sold now, and what they are worth at list price.
- Held. Units held against proposals nobody has answered.
- Gone. Units sold, or held by an engagement.
- Needs attention. Lines running low, behind pace or oversold. Sold out lines are not counted here.
The filters:
- Everything.
- Can sell today. What is available right now.
- Needs attention. Nearly gone, behind pace or oversold.
- Sold out.
- Someone is interested. Lines a lead is pointing at. This cuts across the others: it is the question to ask before releasing a line, and before deciding what to build or stock more of.
- No longer sold. Retired lines, kept for the records that point at them. Shown only when there are some.
A workspace with listings also gets three drop-downs to narrow by place, type and developer.
A line
Opening one shows its reference, category, how it is tracked, what is held, sold and left, what it includes, who holds it, the leads interested in it, the project that supplies it, its price and terms, and its notes and documents. A listing also shows the property's details and its pictures and video.
To stop selling a line, edit it and tick No longer sold. It leaves the counts and the lists but stays on the records that point at it.
Subscriptions
Subscriptions, beside the book at the top of the page, lists every client holding a subscription. It is the same list as Clients › Subscriptions, which is where most people will look for it; see Clients and accounts for adding, renewing and cancelling one.
How it connects
- Leads and pipeline points at a line when an enquiry is about it, and holds units when a lead reaches Proposal.
- Proposals are built from lines, with what is left of each.
- Engagements in Clients and accounts take units when a sale closes.
- Projects deliver a line, or are created by a sale of one.
- Campaigns name the offerings they promote, and care officers are reminded to tell their clients about new ones (see Relationships).
- Price and availability feed Finance and Insights.
Common questions
I sold something and the count did not change. The count changes when the sale is recorded, which happens when the lead is won or a proposal accepted and the engagement opens. Offerings reads that; it is not told separately.
Can I change how a line is tracked after selling some? Changing the tracking changes what the numbers mean, so do it only on a line that has not sold. Retire the old line and add a new one if you need to.
Why is a sold out line green? For a capacity line, sold out means the period was filled. An empty shelf and a full diary are not the same news.