Salesforce tracks installed equipment as Asset records, one per serial-numbered unit, linked to the customer account and the product sold. Service contracts and entitlements record what each customer is owed. With Field Service licensed, maintenance plans then turn those promises into scheduled work orders by date, by usage or by a measured condition. Without Field Service, core Service Cloud can still hold the installed base, contracts and cases, but recurring visits need custom automation.
Who needs an installed base in Salesforce?
Any company whose revenue continues after the equipment ships. That covers machine builders, equipment distributors that sell service plans, and service companies that maintain equipment they did not make.
The common thread is a question the CRM cannot answer from orders alone: what is running at this customer site right now, and when is it next due for attention? Order history tells you what was sold. An installed base tells you what is still in service, where it sits, who owns it and what condition it is in.
Sales uses them too. A unit near the end of its warranty is a replacement conversation. A fleet of older models is an upgrade campaign.
How does the Asset object model installed equipment?
An asset is one purchased or installed product, usually one physical unit with its own serial number. It links to the account that owns it, the product it was sold as, and optionally a contact.
Standard fields worth filling from day one include serial number, install date, status, quantity and the product lookup. Status values such as installed, in repair and decommissioned decide which units count in coverage and maintenance reports.
Asset hierarchies handle machines built from components. Each asset can point to a parent asset, and Salesforce derives a root asset for the top of the tree. A packaging line might be the root, with a filler, capper and labeler beneath it, each carrying its own serial number. Service can then be logged against the exact component that failed.
When a unit is swapped out, keep the old record and mark it obsolete or replaced. Salesforce supports asset relationships for recording that one unit succeeded another, which preserves the service history of both.
Where does each asset physically sit?
Account address alone is rarely precise enough. Multi-plant customers need a site-level answer for technicians and territory assignment.
Field Service adds a Location object for warehouses, vans, work sites and similar places, and locations can nest under parent locations. Associated locations link a location to one or more accounts over a date range, which suits shared sites such as industrial parks. Assets can reference a location, so a unit carries its own site rather than borrowing the account's billing address. Without Field Service, teams usually add a custom site object or address fields on the asset itself.
How do assets get into Salesforce in the first place?
Automatically, from the system that already knows a unit shipped or was installed. Manual asset entry tends to decay within a few quarters, because nobody is accountable for keeping it complete.
For most manufacturers that system is the ERP. Serial numbers are assigned at production or shipment. An integration can create the asset when a serialized item ships, then update it at commissioning. Agree field ownership up front. A typical split is ERP for serial number and ship date, Salesforce for install date, site and status.
- Backfill the existing fleet once, from ERP shipment history and service records, and mark the confidence of each record.
- Create new assets from shipments or completed install work orders, not from closed opportunities.
- Reconcile periodically: units with no service activity in years may be decommissioned, scrapped or resold.
- If quoting runs on Revenue Cloud, check how its asset lifecycle interacts with your ERP.
How are warranties tracked against each unit?
Field Service includes warranty objects, and they are worth evaluating before building custom fields. Confirm availability for your licenses with your Salesforce account team.
A warranty term defines what is covered: percentages of parts, labor and expenses, each with a duration, plus the warranty type. A product warranty term applies that standard warranty to a product or product family. An asset warranty records coverage for a specific unit, including any extension or exclusion. Salesforce also offers warranty and claims features in Manufacturing Cloud, which suits manufacturers handling claims through dealers.
The practical payoff is at case creation. When a service agent can see that a unit is inside labor coverage but outside parts coverage, billing disputes drop. How cases then route and escalate is covered in our case management guide.
How do service contracts and entitlements fit together?
A service contract is the agreement itself; contract line items name the products or assets it covers; entitlements define the support each customer is owed. These are standard Service Cloud objects once entitlement management is enabled.
Contract line items require products in your org, and they live on service contracts rather than sales contracts. Link each line to the specific asset it covers wherever possible. That single link powers coverage reporting, warranty-versus-contract decisions at case intake and renewal pricing based on the actual fleet.
Keep contract tiers simple. Two or three plan levels, each with its own entitlement process, are easier to sell, report and renew than bespoke terms.
How do maintenance plans schedule work automatically?
Maintenance plans in Field Service generate future work orders for covered assets on a defined schedule. They can link to the account, work type, location and service contract that the visits fulfil.
Each covered unit becomes a maintenance asset on the plan, and one asset can sit on several plans. Maintenance work rules set how often the work happens, and an asset can carry several rules. Salesforce describes three rule styles.
- Calendar-based: a fixed interval, such as a quarterly inspection on a set day.
- Usage-based: a threshold on a measured value, such as hours run or units processed since the last service.
- Criteria-based: a condition on asset fields or asset attributes, such as a temperature reading outside its range.
Usage and criteria rules rely on recordset filter criteria and on asset data being current. Treat them as a second step, after calendar plans run cleanly. Confirm with your Salesforce account team which rule types your Field Service edition includes.
A generation timeframe and horizon control how far ahead work orders appear. Set them so dispatchers can plan without a flood of premature work orders.
Can IoT or meter readings trigger service work?
Yes, though the hard part is the data pipeline rather than Salesforce. Readings must arrive on the asset, as fields or asset attributes, before any rule can act on them.
Most equipment does not stream telemetry directly into a CRM. Readings typically pass through a device platform or data layer that summarizes them, then an integration writes the latest values to the asset. From there, a usage or criteria rule can generate a work order, or a Flow can open a case for review. Salesforce also markets predictive service features; treat those as roadmap items to evaluate, not a phase-one dependency.
What about spare parts and renewals?
Parts and renewals both hang off the installed base. Inventory belongs to the Field Service build; renewals belong to the revenue team.
Field Service tracks parts by location, including vans and warehouses, and technicians record consumption on the work order. A scent-marketing manufacturer we worked with kept its technicians to their own territory's stock through territory-based sharing. Its mobile case flow copies customer and site details from the work order, and the design was validated against its ERP. Our Field Service implementation guide covers inventory setup in depth.
Service contract renewals are recurring revenue and deserve a pipeline of their own. Create renewal opportunities ahead of each contract end date, priced from the covered assets and their age. Our customer success guide explains how renewal ownership and forecasting work in Salesforce.
Which objects carry the installed base, and what do they report?
Each object has one job. The table below shows what it tracks, what usually creates it and the report it feeds.
| Object | What it tracks | Usually created by | Report it feeds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asset | One installed unit: product, serial number, account, site, status | ERP integration at shipment or install | Installed base by account, product and age |
| Location (Field Service) | Customer sites, warehouses and vans | Site setup or integration | Units and visits per site |
| Asset warranty (Field Service) | Parts, labor and expense coverage for one unit | Automation from product warranty terms at install | Units leaving warranty soon |
| Service contract and contract line item | The agreement and the assets it covers | Sales or renewals team | Coverage rate and contracts due for renewal |
| Entitlement | Support each customer is owed, with milestones | Service contract setup | Milestone compliance on cases |
| Maintenance plan, asset and work rule (Field Service) | Which units get serviced, how often and why | Service operations | Planned visits by period and territory |
| Work order | The job performed on a unit | Maintenance plan, case or dispatcher | Overdue maintenance and service history per asset |
What should reporting show once this is live?
Three views earn their keep early: coverage, overdue work and asset service history. Each depends on clean asset links rather than clever dashboards.
- Contract coverage: installed units with no active contract line, by account and region. This is the clearest upsell list a service team has.
- Overdue maintenance: generated work orders past their suggested date and still open, grouped by territory.
- Repeat failures: assets with more than one corrective work order or case in a period, by product and component.
- Uptime proxies: downtime is rarely captured cleanly, so start from corrective visits and time between failures per model.
Define each measure in writing first, including whether a rescheduled visit counts as overdue.
What if Field Service is not licensed?
Core Service Cloud covers more than many buyers expect. Assets, asset hierarchies, cases, service contracts, contract line items and entitlements are all available without Field Service.
What you give up is the scheduling layer: maintenance plans, work rules, the dispatcher console, optimization, the offline technician app and Field Service inventory. Some teams bridge with a scheduled Flow that creates cases or tasks from contract terms. That works for small fleets, but it is custom logic you must maintain. Our comparison of Salesforce Field Service and standalone field tools helps with the licensing decision.
What should an installed-base phase one include?
Get the installed base accurate and connected before automating any schedule. Every later feature reads from it.
- Asset records for the active fleet, with serial number, product, account, site and status.
- An ERP integration that creates or updates assets on shipment or install.
- Service contracts with contract line items linked to specific assets, plus entitlements for response targets.
- Calendar-based maintenance plans for one product line, if Field Service is licensed.
- Coverage and overdue-maintenance reports reviewed by service leadership.
Usage and criteria rules, telemetry, warranty claims and renewal automation come next, one at a time. One packaging-automation client of ours had a scheduler installed but never configured. Getting skills, territories and 37 work types right came before any talk of scale.
