Overview
You'll see the term "Service Offering" throughout Parallax, but what exactly does it mean? In this article, we'll define what a Service Offering is and how it's used.
| What is a Service Offering? | Here we'll look what a Service Offering is and what it's for. |
| This section provides info on the ways to create a Service Offering and links to articles with more info. | |
| How to Add a Service Offering to a Project |
Here we'll talk about the process of adding a Service Offering. |
| Adding a Financial Model to a Service Offering |
In this section, we'll direct you on how to learn about adding Financial Models to your Service Offerings. |
| Shaping your Project |
We'll talk a little bit about Shaping within your Service Offerings. |
| Connecting to a Timesheet |
Find out more here about how Service Offerings connect to Timesheets. |
What is a Service Offering?
It is best to think of Service Offerings as a templated resource plan for your Project. They are the units within your Parallax Project to which you add Roles, allocate Plans and view Actuals, and they connects to Timesheets.
There is a lot of customizability to how you can use Service Offerings - for example, depending on the scope of your Project, you may have just one Service Offering or you may need several. Based on how you'd like to bill clients, you may have Service Offerings with only one Financial Model or multiple different models. You may have the same People assigned to different Roles in different Offerings or you may spread People across your Offerings. You may want to use pre-set templates for your projects or you might want to build them from scratch each time. It's up to you to determine what works the best to fit your needs!
How to Create a Service Offering
Service Offerings can be created in one of three ways:
- Save a Template under Settings > Service Offerings.
- Add a Custom Service Offering to a Project.
- Save a Template using Allocations you've already added to another Service Offering.
For more info on how to add and Save a Service Offering under Settings > Service Offerings, check out this article.
We'll break down what adding a Custom Service Offering looks like within the next section below. For info on how to save a Template from Allocations on an existing Service Offering, see the section of this article under Saving Offering Templates.
How to Add a Service Offering to a Project
Adding a Service Offering to a Project is easy! Within both the Shaper and Overview for a Project, you'll see the green Add Offering button - simply click that button to select from the list of existing Offerings or to create a new Custom Offering. Once you've added at least one Service Offering, you'll see it in the Shaper...
….and on the Overview page:
Creating a Custom Offering will look something like this:
Adding a Financial Model to a Service Offering
Once you've got at least one Offering added to the Project, the Financial Model for a Project is tied to each Service Offering, which means each segment of the Project can have a separate Financial Model or all Service Offerings. Check out this article for more info.
Shaping your Project
Once you've got at least one Offering added to the Project, you can also begin adding Roles, assigning them to People and adding Allocations. As you add additional Offerings, you can segment your Project based on those separate Offerings.
Connecting to a Timesheet
While the Project overall corresponds to a single CRM Deal (if you're using a CRM), each Offering will connect to a single Timesheet. This means that you'll have a separate Timesheet project for each Offering within a Parallax Project. There are two ways to connect a Timesheet:
- Provision New
- Connect Existing
For instructions on how to do this, check out this article on connecting Timesheets.