Revenue Cloud Licenses and Features: A Simple Guide to Growth, Advanced, and Billing
Your Revenue Cloud / Agentforce Revenue Management license doesn’t just control pricing on an order form — it literally decides which parts of the product exist in your org.
Salesforce has an official help article called “Functional Area and Feature Availability in Revenue Cloud Licenses” that explains this in detail, but it’s a big, dense table.
This post is a walkthrough of that article:
- What each Revenue Cloud license (Growth, Advanced, Billing) actually unlocks
- How Billing features differ between Advanced and Billing
- Simple design scenarios (When is Growth enough? When do you really need Billing?)
- A quick checklist you can use in presales or solution design
The 10-second mental model
Salesforce currently positions Revenue Cloud / Agentforce Revenue Management with three key license “lanes” :
- Revenue Cloud Growth
→ Core product + pricing engine + configurator + basic transaction management.
→ Think: “modern CPQ foundation, no built‑in billing.” - Revenue Cloud Advanced
→ Everything in Growth plus contracts, orchestration, and some billing features.
→ Think: “full CPQ and order management with light billing.” - Revenue Cloud Billing
→ Full billing, AR, and accounting features on top of the core platform.
→ Think: “invoices, payments, collections, accounting periods, FX, etc.”
The official help article lays this out in two layers:
- Functional Areas – big capabilities like product catalog, contracts, billing, orchestration
- Billing Features – detailed capabilities like invoice PDFs, milestone billing, collections, FX, etc.
Let’s decode both.
Functional areas by license (Growth vs Advanced vs Billing)
The first table in the Salesforce doc is “Functional Area Availability”. It shows which functional areas are available with each license.
1. Functional areas you get with every Revenue Cloud license
These are available with Growth, Advanced, and Billing:
- Product Catalog Management
Manage products, charges, attributes, and structures in a central catalog. - Rate Management and Usage Modeling
Model rates, usage tiers, and usage pricing — important for SaaS, telecom, or any metered model. - Context Service
Context-aware lookups and metadata used heavily in modern RCA / Agentforce solutions. - Business Rules Engine (BRE)
No-code rule engine for pricing, eligibility, and other decisions. - OmniStudio
UI and integration tools for building flows, guided UIs, and data transforms.
These five give you a common platform across all Revenue Cloud flavors.
2. Functional areas shared by Growth and Advanced (but not Billing)
These are available in Growth and Advanced, but not in a Billing‑only license:
- Salesforce Pricing
The centralized pricing engine for charges, discounts, and price calculations. - Product Configurator
Attribute‑driven configurations, bundle rules, and compatibility logic. - Transaction Management (incl. Usage Selling & Advanced Approvals)
Manage quote/order “transactions” with usage‑based selling and advanced approval flows. - Document Builder
UI for building templates (for some scenarios, this sits alongside Doc Gen).
Mental shortcut:
If you’re doing full CPQ (configurator + approvals + advanced pricing), you’re in Growth or Advanced territory — not Billing‑only.
3. Functional areas that require Advanced specifically
Some capabilities are only in Revenue Cloud Advanced (not in Growth, not in Billing‑only)
- Salesforce Contracts
Contract records and lifecycles tightly linked with your quotes and orders. - Dynamic Revenue Orchestrator
Orchestration layer that automates downstream processes (order decomposition, integration to OMS/ERP, etc.). - Enhanced Billing (partial)
Advanced has some billing features (we’ll break that down later), but not the full Billing suite.
If your design requires contracts and revenue orchestration, you’re in Advanced land.
4. Functional areas that depend on Billing – sometimes with Advanced
Now the Billing story:
- Billing (core functional area)
- Growth: no Billing functional area.
- Advanced: “limited Billing features” – some basic Billing features are included.
- Billing license: full Billing feature set. Salesforce
- Salesforce Document Generation
Available with Advanced and Billing, not with Growth. - Consumption Management & Wallet Management
This one is subtle:- Growth: not available
- Advanced: not available on its own
- Billing: the features are present, but they require an Advanced license to actually use
→ In other words, you need Advanced + Billing to use full consumption / wallet patterns.
Billing features: Advanced vs Billing (the real differences)
The second part of the help article drills into Billing Feature Availability. This is where a lot of confusion happens in presales and solution design.
I’ll summarize it by category.
1. Billing policies, milestones, and payment terms
Both Advanced and Billing can:
- Define billing policies and treatments (how you bill and handle different situations)
- Set payment terms for invoices
Only Billing can:
- Define billing milestone plans (milestone‑based billing schedules, e.g., 20% on contract, 50% on delivery, 30% on acceptance)
Translation: If you’re doing milestone billing (common in projects, implementation services, etc.), you need the Billing license.
2. Billing schedules and invoice grouping
Both Advanced and Billing can:
- Generate billing schedules and billing schedule groups
Only Billing can:
- Create standalone billing schedules via API and actions
- Define invoice grouping on a billing schedule (e.g., one invoice per month per account, or per contract, etc.)
Translation: Advanced gives you schedules, but Billing is required if you want rich control over how and when schedules become invoices.
3. Invoice generation, previews, and sending
Both Advanced and Billing can:
- Configure tax calculation for invoices
- Generate invoices for one‑time and subscription products
Only Billing can:
- Generate invoices based on usage
- Generate invoices based on milestones
- Generate invoice PDFs
- Email invoices
- Set up sequential invoice numbering
- Use the full invoice preview experience:
- Advanced: API‑only invoice previews
- Billing: API plus UI previews plus preview PDFs
Translation: In Advanced, invoicing exists, but it’s more limited and API‑centric. If your business wants a complete billing and invoicing experience (usage, milestones, PDFs, email, previews from the UI), you need Billing.
4. Billing profiles and suspension
Here, Advanced and Billing are on par:
- Create billing profiles
- Suspend and resume billing as needed
Translation: Basic account‑level billing control is available in both Advanced and Billing.
5. Financial accounting features
Both Advanced and Billing can:
- Create legal entities
- Create and close accounting periods
- Assign legal entities to accounting periods
Only Billing can:
- Set up a chart of accounts and transaction journals
- Handle foreign exchange realized gains and losses
- Use deeper legal entity accounting capabilities
On top of that, Capture Transaction Amounts in Corporate Currency behaves differently:
- With Advanced or Billing, you can store corporate-currency amounts on Invoices and Credit Memos
- With Billing, you also get corporate-currency tracking on Payments, Refunds, and Debit Memos
Translation:If you need true AR & accounting inside Revenue Cloud (chart of accounts, FX gains/losses, more complete corporate currency tracking), you need Billing.Advanced gives you some accounting scaffolding, but not the full finance layer.
6. Credits, payments, collections, and debits
Both Advanced and Billing can:
- Manage credit memos
Only Billing can:
- Manage debit memos
- Process payments and issue refunds
- Manage collections at the account level
- Write off invoices
Translation:
Advanced is not a full AR system.
If you want to manage payments, collections, and write‑offs inside Salesforce, you need Billing.
7. Billing account pages and operations
Both Advanced and Billing can:
- Use the Billing Account page and related details
- Access the Billing Operations Console
Translation: Operational views for billing are available across both licenses; the difference is in what you can do with them (based on the other features above).
8. Billing access for partner and customer communities
Both Advanced and Billing include:
- Billing access for partner and customer communities
Translation: If you want to expose billing data in Experience Cloud (self‑service portals), both license types support that.
Putting it together: which license fits which scenario?
None of this matters in isolation. Let’s tie it back to real‑world patterns.
Disclaimer: final licensing and combinations always depend on your Salesforce contract. Use this section as guidance, not a quote to legal.
Scenario 1: “We just need modern CPQ, billing stays in ERP.”
- Complex products, attribute-driven configurations
- Approval flows, smart pricing, usage‑based selling
- Billing and accounting remain in SAP/Oracle/Netsuite/etc.
Typical fit:
- Revenue Cloud Growth or Advanced (depending on how deep you go with contracts/orchestration)
- No Billing license, because invoices and AR live elsewhere.
Scenario 2: “We want quote-to-invoice in Salesforce, but finance still closes the books in ERP.”
- Salesforce generates invoices, maybe PDFs
- ERP handles GL, FX, final reporting
Typical fit:
- Revenue Cloud Advanced with selected Billing features
- Or Advanced + Billing if you need usage, milestones, PDFs, and email‑based invoicing directly from Salesforce.
The key question:
Do you need usage/milestone invoices, PDFs, email sending, and rich invoice previews?
If yes → you’re in Billing territory.
Scenario 3: “We want Salesforce as our full revenue & billing engine.”
- Configure, price, quote and bill in Salesforce
- Manage payments, refunds, write‑offs, collections
- Maintain chart of accounts, accounting periods, FX gains/losses inside Revenue Cloud
Typical fit:
- Revenue Cloud Advanced + Billing
- Advanced gives you CPQ, contracts, orchestration
- Billing gives you full AR & accounting features on top
This is the classic “end-to-end revenue platform” scenario Salesforce talks about in their Revenue Cloud / Agentforce messaging.
How to actually use the Salesforce help table in your work
The official article is short but dense. Here’s how I recommend using it as a practical tool:
- Start with the contract.
Confirm exactly which license(s) the customer has: Growth, Advanced, Billing (and combinations). - Check the Functional Area table first.
- Do they have Contracts, Dynamic Revenue Orchestrator, Billing at all?
- Is Consumption/Wallet Management supposed to be in scope?
- Then drill into Billing Feature tables.
- Are we promising usage or milestone invoices?
- Do we need invoice PDFs and email sending?
- Are payments, refunds, collections, write‑offs part of the Salesforce scope?
- Is FX and chart of accounts needed inside Salesforce?
- Highlight gaps early in presales.
If the design assumes a feature that the license doesn’t include, surface it early as either:- A licensing uplift, or
- A scope change (the feature stays in ERP or another system).
- Tie back to event billing / usage.
Some Revenue Cloud features are billable usage types (event‑based). Make sure finance/legal know that usage volume may affect the invoice from Salesforce.
Closing thoughts
Salesforce’s “Functional Area and Feature Availability in Revenue Cloud Licenses” article is only a few sections long, but it encodes most of the practical licensing truth for Revenue Cloud / Agentforce Revenue Management.
If you:
- Work in presales, it protects you from promising features the license doesn’t include.
- Work in architecture or delivery, it keeps your design realistic and avoids “We thought Billing could do X” moments.
- Work in customer success, it helps you spot sensible upsell paths (for example, when a customer outgrows Advanced‑only billing).
My suggestion:
Bookmark the article, and keep this mental model in your head:
Growth = CPQ core, Advanced = CPQ + orchestration + some billing, Billing = full billing + AR + accounting.
