Building Pricing Calculators

A pricing calculator is an interactive quoting tool. You build it once with input fields, pricing rules, and a product list, then use it to generate quotes on leads and deals, and to let partners quote themselves in portal rooms or while creating a lead or deal. As you build, a live preview shows exactly what the customer will see.

Where to find it: In the main navigation, click CPQ, then open the Calculators view. Click Add Calculator to create one. This requires the Products module to be enabled.

How a calculator is put together

Each calculator is edited across a set of tabs:

Details: The calculator's name, description, billing settings, submission mode, and whether partners can use it when creating leads and deals.
Access: Which partners can see and use the calculator.
Fields: The inputs a customer or sales rep fills in (like quantities or options).
Products: The products the calculator can add to a quote.
Rules: Discounts, taxes, and surcharges that adjust the price.
Preview: A live quote you can test as you build.

Calculator settings

On the Details tab, set:

Name and Description.
Billing Mode: Fixed Period means every quote uses one billing period. Customer Can Choose lets the customer switch between the periods you allow.
Billing Period: Monthly, Quarterly, or Yearly.

When Billing Mode is Customer Can Choose, you also pick the Available Periods and a Default Period, and you can set a discount for a period (for example, a percentage off for paying yearly). The discount appears on the quote as a discount adjustment line (for example, "Yearly discount (10%)") applied to the recurring part of the quote.

Mode

Mode decides whether the calculator can produce anything beyond a price, and what a partner's submission from a portal room creates:

Preview Only: A calculator and nothing more. Partners can see pricing but cannot submit, and the calculator never produces a quote, in the portal or in your app.
Lead + Products: Submitting from a room creates a lead with the selected products attached. No quote is created.
Lead + Quote: Submitting from a room creates a lead with a full quote attached. This is the only mode that can generate quotes, so it is the only mode offered under Select Calculator on a lead or deal's Quote tab, and the only mode that can be made available or required when partners create leads and deals.

Lead & deal creation

The Lead & deal creation section decides whether partners can build a quote from this calculator while they create a lead or deal in the portal, and whether they have to. It is only available when Mode is Lead + Quote; switching Mode to anything else clears these options.

Available on leads: Partners can create leads with this calculator.
Required on leads: Partners must attach a quote from a calculator to create a lead.
Available on deals: Partners can create deals with this calculator.
Required on deals: Partners must attach a quote from a calculator to create a deal.

Ticking Required switches Available on as well, and unticking Available clears Required. All four options are off on a new calculator. A requirement applies to every partner who has access to at least one required calculator, and it covers every way a partner can create that record: the portal form, CSV import, campaign lead forms and the Partner API. See Quotes on Leads and Deals for what partners see.

Controlling which partners can use a calculator

The Access tab decides which partners can see the calculator in the portal, whether in a Pricing Calculator block or while creating a lead or deal. It works the same way as access on a resource.

Partner Types: Tick Referral, Reseller or Distributor. Partners of an unticked type never see the calculator.
Categories, Tiers, Partner Stages, Contact Tags and Partners: Narrow the audience further. Leave a filter empty to place no restriction on it.

Every filter you set must match, and within a filter matching any one value is enough. A partner with no category, tier or stage does not match a filter on that field. Categories, tiers and stages belong to a partner type, so a filter only applies to partners of that type: if you tick reseller categories only, referral partners are not restricted by category. Naming specific Partners pins the calculator to those partners, who must still match any other filter you set.

The Filtered Partnerships list at the bottom of the tab shows who currently qualifies and updates as you change the filters. The summary box above it tells you which partner types are ticked and which filters apply, and warns you when no partner type is ticked at all.

Fields

Fields are the inputs that shape a quote. Add fields on the Fields tab. There are three types:

Checkbox: An on/off choice.
Number: A numeric value, such as a quantity or number of users.
Dropdown: A list of options to choose from.

Each field has a Label (what the customer sees), a Variable name (used by products and rules; letters, numbers and underscores only, and it cannot start with a number), and a Default value. Number fields can also have an optional Min, Max, and Step. Dropdown fields have a list of Options.

Products

On the Products tab, add products from your catalogue and control when each one appears:

Use Include this product when to add a product only when a field condition is met (for example, include a setup fee only when a certain option is selected).
Mark a product as Optional to let the customer toggle it on or off. Optional products appear in the quote under Optional Add-ons. Use Included by default to have an optional product start switched on.

All products in a single calculator must use the same currency. If you try to add a product in a different currency, you will be asked to remove it or choose a matching product.

A product whose Availability is set to Calculators only can be added here and appears on the quotes this calculator generates, but nobody can add it to a lead or deal by hand. See Products.

Rules

Rules adjust the price after the products are added. On the Rules tab, click Add Rule. Every rule has a Name, a Type, and a Calculation.

There are three rule types, each shown in its own colour in the quote:

Discount (green): Reduces the total.
Tax (blue): Adds to the total.
Surcharge (orange): Adds an extra charge to the total.

Each rule then has one of three calculation methods.

Fixed Amount

A flat amount. Enter the value in the Amount field (amounts can have up to eight decimal places). Set Billing to:

One-off: A single, one-time charge or discount.
Recurring: Applies to the recurring part of the quote and appears in the recurring total, so it repeats each billing period.

Percentage

A percentage of the price. Enter the value in the Percentage field (percentages can have up to eight decimal places), then choose a Percentage base:

Original product subtotal: Always calculated from the price before any rules are applied.
Running total: Calculated from the total after earlier rules have already applied. This is how you tax an already-discounted price.
Selected products and rules: Calculated only from the products and rules you tick under Selected products and rules. Use this for a bundle discount that should apply to some products but not others. The amount is taken before any percentage rules apply, so rule order does not change it. You must tick at least one product or rule before choosing this base, and you can tick up to 100. Percentage rules cannot be selected as a basis.

Percentage rules automatically split their one-off and recurring share based on the products in the quote, so they have no Billing setting.

Formula

A tiered or conditional amount. A formula rule lets you charge a different amount when a number field crosses a threshold you set:

Set the Threshold (for example, when quantity is 100 or more). Leave it blank to charge one amount for any quantity.
Set the amount to charge when the condition is met, and an Otherwise amount for when it is not. Otherwise can be set to None — charge nothing.

Each amount is either a Flat amount or a Per unit rate multiplied by a number field. Like Fixed Amount rules, formula rules also have a Billing setting of One-off or Recurring.

If one threshold is not enough, click Use an ALL condition group to combine several conditions. Choose ALL conditions (every condition must be true) or ANY condition (at least one must be true), click Add condition to add more, and Add nested group to mix ALL and ANY logic. Click Use a simple condition to go back to a single threshold.

Quantity ranges

A formula rule can charge a different fixed amount depending on which quantity band a number field falls into, for example one surcharge for 5 to 50 units and another for 51 to 100. In a formula rule, click Use quantity ranges, then:

Choose the Quantity field the bands are based on.
For each band, enter From (inclusive), To (inclusive) and the Amount to charge. Click Add range for another band.
Leave the final To value blank for no upper limit. Only the last band can be open-ended, and bands cannot overlap.

While quantity ranges are on, the band amounts are what the rule charges. A quantity that falls outside every band adds nothing. If the rule also has a threshold, the ranges only apply when that condition is met. Click Use one formula amount to switch back to the standard formula amounts.

Applying a rule only in certain cases

Fixed Amount and Percentage rules have an optional Only apply this rule when… condition. Leave the condition blank to always apply the rule. (Formula rules use their Threshold instead.)

Every rule also has a Rule eligibility section. Set a single condition there, or click Use an ALL condition group to require several conditions (ALL conditions) or any one of them (ANY condition), with nested groups where you need them. A rule that is not eligible is left out of the quote entirely. This lets a multi-product discount follow from the fields the customer fills in, with no separate dropdown to pick it.

Controlling how rules appear on the quote

The Customer display section on each rule controls how it is shown on previews, saved quotes and quote PDFs, without changing the maths:

Customer group: Give several rules the same group name to show them as one combined line under that name.
Visibility: Show individual rule lists the rule on its own. Hide individual rule keeps it out of the list; hidden rules that are not in a group are combined into a single Other adjustments line so the totals still add up, and hidden rules that are in a group stay inside that group's total.
Add to product line: Available once a rule has a Customer group. Instead of a separate adjustment line, the group's amount is folded into the chosen product's line price.
Display order: A number that sets where the rule or group appears in the adjustments list (lower numbers first).

Rule order matters

Rules run in order, from top to bottom. Drag the handle on the left of a rule to reorder it. Order changes the result whenever a rule uses the Running total percentage base, because that rule is calculated from the total left by the rules above it. Rules using the Original product subtotal or Selected products and rules base are not affected by order.

Preview

The Preview tab shows a live quote that updates as you type. Use it to check your fields, products, and rules before sharing the calculator.

Enter values in the fields and toggle optional add-ons to watch the subtotal, adjustments, and total update in real time.
If the calculator lets the customer choose their billing period, a period switcher appears so you can compare prices.
Each adjustment shows a coloured dot — green for a discount, blue for tax, orange for a surcharge — and an information icon. Hover the icon to see why the adjustment applies and the exact maths behind it.
Adjustments that are purely recurring appear in their own section next to the recurring total, so one-time and repeating charges stay clear.
If the quote cannot be calculated — for example because a field value or quantity is too large — the preview shows an error message in place of the quote rather than the previous result.

Partners meet a calculator in two places, and in both the calculator's own Access tab decides who sees it:

A Pricing Calculator block in a custom portal room. The block shows every live calculator the viewing partner has access to: one calculator is shown directly, several give the partner a Choose a calculator dropdown, and a partner with access to none sees no block at all. The block itself only has a title and description. What submitting does is set by each calculator's Mode.
Creating a lead or deal in the portal, once a Lead + Quote calculator is Available on leads or Available on deals. The partner builds the quote in the create form and it is attached the moment the lead or deal is saved. See Quotes on Leads and Deals.

See the Custom Portal Rooms article for how to add blocks to a room.

Good to know

A calculator's currency comes from its products, and every product in a calculator must use the same currency.
Rule order matters when a percentage rule uses the Running total base — reorder rules to change how they stack.
Amounts and percentages in rules accept up to eight decimal places.
Rules you hide from the customer are still applied; hidden rules outside a group show as a single Other adjustments line.
Recurring rules and recurring products appear in the recurring total, separate from one-time charges.
A recurring product is priced in its own billing period and converted to the quote's: a product priced 1,200 per year shows as 100 per month on a monthly quote and 1,200 per year on a yearly quote.
Only Lead + Quote calculators produce quotes. A Preview Only or Lead + Products calculator is not offered on a lead or deal's Quote tab and cannot be made available on lead or deal creation.
Partners only see a calculator that is Live and that they have access to. Set both before expecting it to appear in a room or a create form.
When calculator access was introduced, each existing calculator was given the partner types of the live rooms that contained it, and copied the access filters of that room when it sat in exactly one. A calculator that was in no live room has all three partner types switched off, so no partner sees it until you set its access. Available on leads and Available on deals start switched off for every calculator.
A room block that used to point at one particular calculator now shows whichever calculators the viewing partner can access, so check each calculator's Access tab after the change.
Number field values and optional add-on quantities can go up to 1,000,000,000, so high-volume pricing such as page impressions or API calls can be quoted.

Products: Create and manage the product catalogue your calculators draw from.
Quotes on Leads and Deals: Turn a calculator into a quote on a lead or deal and download a quote PDF.
Custom Portal Rooms: Add a Pricing Calculator block so partners can quote themselves.
Portal Access Management: The same filters, applied to portal rooms.

Building Pricing Calculators