Services

IN THIS ARTICLE

A service is a unit-based product estimate that is repeated for the entire duration of a phase, and whose total price updates as the schedule changes

Services are used to estimate recurring costs - such as managed services, license subscriptions and hosting plans that are based on a number of units/volume of a pre-defined product.

For example:

  • A monthly 'gold' support package priced at $5K a month
  • An per-user subscription for 500 users / month
  • An analytics service priced at 10K events / day
  • A backup service priced at up to 100GB / month
  • An excessive supply of caffeine to maximise productivity of developers (100 coffees / hour)

Services are located in Deal > Estimates > Services.

Example of recurring services (from the updated sample deal)
Example of recurring services (from the updated sample deal)

Estimating services

Services are similar to features - however you can only estimate fixed price and unit-based product resources (not roles or streams). You only have to estimate the units for a specific time period (months, days, etc) and Estii automatically calculates to total units and price based on the phase duration.

  • You can assign up to 10 estimates per task.
  • Products automatically displays the units and time period based on the product settings
  • If a product doesn’t have a time period, it will default to month (e.g. 1 user / month). You can easily change the units and time period to suite your estimate (e.g. 10 users / day)
  • You can also estimate against unit Variable units that change over time

Some examples of the different types of product supported in services
Some examples of the different types of product supported in services

You can either fix the time period within the product, or set one in the estimate
You can either fix the time period within the product, or set one in the estimate

Variables

Variables allow for estimates that change over time based on a predetermined range or growth rate such as user licenses or hosting services that grow with increased activity.

The variable editor
The variable editor

Breakdowns

You can click on any value in the units or total column to view a detailed breakdown of the calculations - this works across all the estimation categories, and is available for individual estimates, tasks totals, features totals and even page totals!

Products contain a breakdown by units and ranges (e.g. tiered pricing)
Products contain a breakdown by units and ranges (e.g. tiered pricing)

The services total contains a breakdown for all estimated services
The services total contains a breakdown for all estimated services

Limitations

  • A phase can have up to 50 services.
  • A service can contain up to 20 tasks
  • A service task can have up to 20 estimates

Import / export services

You can bulk import and export services via the ... menu. You can use this to duplicate services between different phases and deals, or to integrate with external platforms.

CSV Format

Both import and export use the same format that supports multiple services and tasks in order.

ColumnDescriptionAllowed values/lengthNotes
ServiceService nameMaximum 60 charactersRequired
PriorityService priorityNone, Low, Normal, High, CriticalRequired
RiskService riskNone, Low, Normal, HighRequired
TaskTask nameMaximum 60 charactersTasks only
DescriptionTask descriptionMaximum 240 characters, supports multiple lines if wrapped in β€œ β€œ quotation marksTasks only
ProductThe name of an known resource (product)Maximum 20 per TaskTasks only
EstimateThe number of units to includeNumber (float)Tasks only
UnitThe unit type of the productThe unit type of the productTasks only
PeriodThe time period (if set)minute, hour, day, week, month, quarter or year. Defaults to monthTasks only. Optional

CSV Example

Service,Priority,Risk,Task,Description,Resource,Estimate,Unit,Period
Intrastructure,None,None,Cloud costs,"* Assumes production, dev and test environment",Compute,3,instance,
,,,,,Bandwidth,10,GB,
,,,,,Storage,1,GB,
Managed IT services,None,None,Based on volume of managed events,,Backup,1,none,
,,,,,Support package,2,event,
Licensing,None,None,Assumes average of  5K users a month,,Tiered license,500,user,