Access to information is a must-have nowadays, especially in a business context. It is important to know at any given time the services or products you are purchasing, including the eventual limits or the cost of additional items you are exploring.
This article will highlight the advantages of having a self-service option available at your fingertips that manages your Salesforce contracts and licenses (and more!) from your own org. The “Your Account” app allows you to browse and buy additional Salesforce and add-on licenses, access all details about your contracts and invoices, as well as providing various other timesaving functionalities along the way.
Why Offer a Self-Service Option?
Before we dive into the specifics of what’s available, it’s worth noting which customers it is available for, as well as the key benefits the Your Account app offers.
The way your Salesforce contract is set up will determine where your org has access to the Your Account app. For example, Government Cloud customers can’t use Your Account, and you can’t manage extensive enterprise-level agreements or reseller contracts in Your Account. Most customers, however, can go ahead and take a look right now, as long as they have at least one core license such as Sales or Service Cloud.
Self-service via Your Account empowers you to access the information you need, right when you need it, offering the flexibility to make the decision and action on the spot. While the relationship with your Account Executive will continue as usual, you won’t need to go back and forth via email for simple things like quick purchases or viewing old order forms.
In addition, the plethora of available options to get your questions answered is sure to be a huge time saver, especially for information related to contracts, products, invoices, payments, etc. Gone are the days of having to search for the email where your Account Executive attached the order form.
The “Your Account” App
The Manage Billing permission is what controls access to Your Account app. Users can easily manage key aspects of their Salesforce agreements and begin exploring once this permission is assigned.
The functionality is intended for a mix of personas – this includes admins exploring the potential cost of additional products and consumption-based licenses, or even procurement colleagues who may not use Salesforce regularly, but still need access to renewal or invoice information.
The Your Account app can be accessed in a few different ways; as you’d expect, the App Launcher is the most intuitive option, followed by the Setup cog on the top-right corner of the page. You can also access it from the Setup homepage where it appears as a recommendation tile and from the Manage Subscription page in the Setup menu.
Due to the nature of the tool, it is only available in production instances; attempting to access it in a sandbox will simply prompt a missing permissions error, even though you might have the standard System Administrator Profile.
While the Your Account permission is an all-or-nothing situation at this time (anyone who has the permission can purchase extra licenses), providing more granular permission control is on the Salesforce roadmap.
Until then, keep in mind that you can control who has the permission – similar to any other in Salesforce. In addition, you do not have to purchase a full Salesforce license for colleagues who do not use Salesforce in their day-to-day roles (for the procurement team, for example). By using a combination of a free Identity Only license alongside the Your Account App Admin permission set, they will be able to access the app to make and review purchases.
Browse & Buy
Browse & Buy represents the gateway to the Product Catalog, where you can explore everything that’s available for purchase as a self-service option. At the top of the page, you will always see the products you already own first, followed by a vast array of options to select from and purchase as needed.
The chances are that you will find exactly what you need on this page – from a simple purchase like five additional Dynamic Dashboards to bigger purchases such as Einstein Conversation Insights.
You may already be familiar with the Your Account app following Dreamforce 23’, especially considering a free Data Cloud account is offered to Salesforce customers on the Enterprise edition and above.
For the process to be quick, easy, and accessible, the Your Account app was chosen as the way to ship this free Data Cloud SKU to customers in just a few minutes without the need for an interaction with an Account Executive. As with any other online selling experience (albeit free), you just have to choose your product, add it to your cart, and go to the checkout!
Of course, it’s worth having a conversation with an Account Executive; after all, not all products are captured (yet) in this catalog, and you may wish to negotiate if you plan to purchase multiple items.
However, negotiated pricing discounts will always be applied for products and licenses you already own (and you’re simply purchasing more), while the new SKUs will be available at list price. This makes it easy to purchase a limited number of licenses prior to making a more costly decision.
Once the products are selected and added to the cart, the final cost will be calculated. Depending on your payment type, the process might end either in a DocuSign or a credit card payment. If you are not a credit card customer and you are not authorized to make the purchase, you can define the authorized signatory during the checkout process and send the DocuSign directly to them – this makes the process not only quick, but also collaborative!
Account Details
True account management wouldn’t really be possible without discussing the contracts, would it? Knowing what you have already purchased (and when) is a great way to stay organized and keep track of the investment your company made in Salesforce.
As long as the contract is eligible for the Your Account app, you will be able to dive into the details as soon as you click on the View Contracts button.
Regardless of whether everything was purchased at the same time or through different orders, the information will be visible with the option to find out exactly when the order was activated, as well as its end date.
A relatively new addition to the Your Account app is the ability to obtain copies of each signed order form in the Completed Quotes tab (without having to contact your Account Executive).
You may also notice a banner at the top of the page indicating an action is pending. Account Executives can publish quotes via the Your Account app ready for the customer to review and sign.
In this section, you can also change the billing contact for individual contracts, and give them access to Your Account if they don’t have it already, using either an Identity Only license or just a permission set.. If the user already exists, the Your Account app admin permission set is assigned.
Make sure you take a look at your contract, as well as the renewal details, when the renewal window starts. To be more specific, even if you will not be taking action within the Your Account app, 90 days before your renewal is due, you will have all details required to prepare for a conversation. You will be able to see exactly how things will look, both from a SKU and a price perspective.
All of Your Invoices Readily Available
Finally, and perhaps the question you have been asking yourself throughout this article: what about the invoices? Luckily, the Your Account App also has a dedicated section for all things ‘payment’. All eligible invoices appear in a list once the View Invoices button is clicked, and not only can you view and download past invoices, but you can also pay up to $10K with a credit card.
This direct payment option is something that mostly SMBs leverage, as it’s extremely convenient to wrap up the entire transaction in one go. Additionally, you can view applied payments and credit memos to each invoice as well.
Summary
All in all, whether you’ve already noticed this option in your production organization or you’ll be taking a look after reading this article, the Your Account app can make managing your Salesforce relationship subscriptions fast and easy.
If you’re already using the Your Account app, don’t forget to share your feedback with Salesforce (from the bottom right of the main page). While there are quite a few products to browse through and too many options to count, the Salesforce team is working to bring even more functionality to your fingertips, so stay tuned!