Soft Dates

Clicking the Soft Dates tab displays the Soft Dates home page.

In the View section, select an appropriate list view from the drop-down list to go directly to that list page, or click Create New View to define your own custom list view. List views let you display a list of records that match specific criteria.
In the Recent section, select an item from the drop-down list on the right to display a brief list of the top records matching that criteria. The choices are listed in the table that follows.
From the list, you can click any object name to go directly to its detail.
Click New to create a new soft date.
To change the value of an editable field shown in the list double-click it, enter the value you want and click Save.

Recent Choice		Description
Recently Viewed		The last 10 or 25 records you viewed, with the most recently viewed item listed first. This list is derived from your recent items and includes records owned by you and other users.
Recently Created		The last 10 or 25 records you created, with the most recently created item listed first. This list only includes records owned by you.
Recently Modified		The last 10 or 25 records you updated, with the most recently updated item listed first. This list only includes records owned by you.

What is a Soft Date?

In FinancialForce Billing Central, a soft date enables you to calculate recurring dates based on a unit of time such as a week, month, quarter, or year. Soft dates can consist of:

A reference that determines the unit of time, and whether the dates fall at the beginning or end of that unit of time
An adjustment to the reference that determines the number of days or months to add or subtract

You can enter a reference, adjustment, or both using the format Reference+Adjustment. You can specify the unit of time in upper or lower case, for example, we+3d, MB-1D.

Soft dates determine the frequency and duration of plans and the billing period of billing schedules. For example, the billing term on contract lines with a recurring billing type such as Recurring Fixed or Recurring Variable is a soft date. When you activate the contract, billing schedules are created for the contract lines based on the start date, the billing term, and the number of billing terms. For more information and examples, see Calculating Billing Periods and Billing Dates.

The dates that a soft date generates are adjusted based on the calendar. This means that the resulting dates can vary depending on the interval chosen and the day from which the soft date is generated. For example, if the date is January 31, 2019 and the soft date is +1M, the next date is February 28, 2019 followed by March 31 then April 30. If the date is on a leap year such as 2020, the dates would be January 31, February 29, March 31, and April 30.

Warning:

Permission to edit soft dates ought to be restricted to a small number of users because changes to them can impact your organization's billing process.

Reference

The reference consists of two letters in upper or lower case. The first letter indicates whether the date recurs on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis. The second letter indicates whether the date recurs at the beginning or end of the week, month, quarter, or year. For example:

Reference	Description
WB	Sets the date to the first day of the week based on the start date.
WE	Sets the date to the last day of the week based on the start date.
MB	Sets the date to the first day of the month based on the start date.
ME	Sets the date to the last day of the month based on the start date.
QB	Sets the date to the first day of the quarter based on the start date.
QE	Sets the date to the last day of the quarter based on the start date.
YB	Sets the date to the first day of the year based on the start date.
YE	Sets the date to the last day of the year based on the start date.

Notes:

By default, the start of a week is determined by the locale of your Salesforce OrgSalesforce organization. If a week start day is set in the Soft Date Week Start Day custom field of the FinancialForce Billing Central Settings custom setting this is used instead. See Soft Date Week Start Day.

Quarter dates are January 1- March 31, April 1 - June 30, July 1 - September 30, October 1 - December 31.

Adjustment

The adjustment consists of + or - followed by a whole number between 0 and 999, then the letter D or M indicating whether the number to be added or subtracted is days or months. For example, +1D, -10d, +999d, -1m, +3M or all valid adjustments.

If you only enter an adjustment when creating a soft date definition, it must be positive.

Soft Date Examples

Here are some examples of soft date definitions.

Example Definition	Description
+60d	Returns a date that is 60 days after the start date.
+1m	Returns a date that is one month after the start date.
+3m	Returns a date that is three months after the start date.
WB+1d	Returns the second day of the week.
ME-12d	Returns a date that is 12 days before the end of the month. The next date returned depends on the input date. For example: An input date of July 12 returns July 19. An input date of July 28 returns August 19.
QB+7d	Returns a date that is 7 days after the start of the quarter.
QE-2d	Returns a date that is two days before the end of the quarter.
YB	Returns the first day of the year, January 1.