Create a Renewal Opportunity in Salesforce

In Salesforce, managing customer relationships is not just about closing deals. It is also about maintaining long-term business relationships. One of the most important parts of this process is handling renewals.

A renewal opportunity helps organizations track future sales from existing customers. Instead of creating a new deal from scratch, Salesforce allows you to create a renewal opportunity based on previous sales or contracts.

For Example, the company wants to ensure that its Account Managers can easily track when a customer’s subscription is about to expire and create renewal opportunities to manage the renewal process efficiently.

As a solution, I created a flow that creates a renewal opportunity when the opportunity’s close date is less than 30 days.

In this article, I will explain how to create renewal opportunities in Salesforce using manual and automated processes.

Opportunity Renewal in Salesforce

A renewal opportunity is a sales opportunity created to track the renewal of an existing product, service, or subscription.

In simple words, when a customer’s contract or subscription is about to expire, a new opportunity is created to renew that deal.

Example:

• A customer buys a 1-year subscription.
• Before the end date, you create a renewal opportunity.
• This helps sales teams follow up and close the renewal deal.

Why Renewal Opportunities are Important in Salesforce

Renewal opportunities are very important for business growth.

Key Benefits:

1. Revenue Forecasting
   • Helps predict future income.
   • Renewal opportunities are used in sales pipelines.
2. Customer Retention
   • Easier to track existing customers than to find new ones.
3. Automation
   • Salesforce can automatically create renewal opportunities.
4. Better Sales Planning
   • Sales teams know which customers to follow up.
5. Data Tracking
   • Tracks previous deal details, including products, pricing, and contracts.

Types of Renewal Opportunities

There are 3 Types of renewal opportunities in Salesforce as follows:

1. Manual Renewal Opportunity
   • Created manually by the user.
2. Automated Renewal Opportunity
   • Created using:
     • Flow Builder
     • Process Builder
     • Apex
     • CPQ automation
3. Contract-Based Renewal
   • Generated from contract records automatically.

Create Renewal Opportunity Manually From Accounts

To manually create a renewal opportunity in Salesforce, navigate to the Setup page of Salesforce Lightning and follow the steps below.

1. Go to Opportunities
   • Open Salesforce
   • Click on the Opportunities tab

2. Click on “New Opportunity”
   • Click the New button

3. Select Record Type (Renewal)
   • Choose Renewal Opportunity

4. Enter Details
   • Fill the following fields:
     • Opportunity Name
     • Account Name
     • Close Date
     • Stage
     • Amount

5. Add Renewal Information
   • Previous contract details
   • Renewal probability
   • Product details

6. Save the Record
   • Click Save

Now your renewal opportunity is created.

Important Fields in Renewal Salesforce Opportunity

Create a Renewal Opportunity using Flow in Salesforce

To automate the creation of a renewal opportunity, navigate to the Salesforce builder and follow the steps below.

Create a checkbox field, Auto-renewed.

In this flow, we will require a checkbox field “Auto-renewed.” This field will be referred to as true or false. If the renewal opportunity is not created from the existing one, this checkbox will be unchecked (false).

After creating a checkbox field, follow the steps below.

1. In the Flows setup window, click on the New Flow button. Select the Record-triggered flow option in the next window and click the Create button.

2. To configure the start of the triggered flow, select the Object as Opportunity and trigger the flow when “a record is created or updated.”

In the Condition requirements, select the Stage Name equal to ‘develop a proposal,’ then select the second requirement with the custom field ‘Auto-renewal’ set to False.

3. Before adding the Create Record element, we need to create two formula variables for this flow. One is for the new opportunity name, and the other is for the new opportunity close date.

(a) Resource for Name of renewed opportunity

• Select Formula as the Resource Type and enter the API Name.
• Select the Data type as Text and enter the formula as {!$Record.Name} + “ – Renewed Opportunity”.
• Check the syntax, then click the Done button.

(b) Resource for the new close date of the renewed opportunity

• Select the Resource Type as Formula and enter the API Name as CloseDate.
• Select the data type as Date and enter the formula as {!$Record.CloseDate} + 90.
• Here, 90 is the number of extended days from the actual opportunity’s close date.
• Check the syntax, then click the Done button.

4. Add a Create record element to the flow and enter the Name and API Name.

In the set record field values, select Manually and select the Object as Opportunity. After this, map the following fields to create a renewed opportunity.

5. Add an Update triggering record element to the flow that will update the checkbox field “Auto-renewed” for the opportunity after its successful renewal.

In the section How to Find Records to Update and Set Their Values select the option Use the opportunity record that triggered the flow.

Then, in the Set Field Values section, select the Auto_renewal (checkbox) field and set it to True.

6. After the above configuration, save the flow.

Test the Record-triggered Flow

1. To test the flow, click the View Tests button in the flow builder. Then, in the next window, click on the Create button.

2. Enter the name and the API Name. Select the option Updated to run the test.

3. Select the opportunity record you want to renew, then enter the fields  Account Name, Amount, and Close Date.

After this, select the Stage you selected in the Create record element’s Stage name. e.g. Prospecting.

4. In the “setup triggering record,” change the stage to the value you selected for the flow’s trigger condition. In this example, it is “develop proposal“.

5. In the set assertions, select the stage as “develop proposal,” then click the Save button.

6. Click the test case dropdown, select ‘Run Test and View Details‘.

Now, we can see that the test case has passed successfully, and after this, activate the flow to deploy it.

This way, we can create or renew an opportunity in Salesforce using a record-triggered flow.

Renewal Opportunity vs New Opportunity in Salesforce

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

In this Salesforce tutorial, we learned about opportunity renewal, including manual and automated methods.

Based on the above scenario, we created a record-triggered flow that will renew the opportunity when the trigger conditions are met. After that, we also created and ran the test case successfully to check the flow’s functionality.

By now, you will be able to renew opportunities in Salesforce manually and automatically, and manage them more efficiently.

You may also like to read.

• Add or remove Opportunity Team members with Data Loader in Salesforce
• Clone Opportunity in Salesforce
• Set Up Opportunity Teams and Opportunity Splits in Salesforce
• Display Account Fields on an Opportunity Record Page in Salesforce

Bijay Kumar

I am Bijay Kumar, the founder of SalesforceFAQs.com. Having over 10 years of experience working in salesforce technologies for clients across the world (Canada, Australia, United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, etc.). I am a certified salesforce administrator and expert with experience in developing salesforce applications and projects. My goal is to make it easy for people to learn and use salesforce technologies by providing simple and easy-to-understand solutions. Check out the complete profile on About us.