Salesforce AP-223 - CPQ and Billing Consultant Accredited Professional

Error:

“Attempt to de-reference a null object” while amending migrated contracts/subscriptions.

This is the classic CPQ issue when legacy contract/subscription data is missing required fields.

Subscription Start / End Dates

Quantity

Price fields

Billing Frequency

Term

Amendment-related fields (AmendmentStartDate, etc.)

Subscription Product

Related Order Product

Related Asset (if asset-based)

During amendment, CPQ expects:Missing or incorrectly populated fields cause CPQ code to attempt to reference null values → null pointer exception.

Thus:

✔ C. Required fields are missing or incorrectly populated

Why the other options are incorrect:Option

Why Incorrect

A. Migrated contracts cannot be amended

False. Salesforce explicitly supports amendments on migrated data if fields are populated correctly.

B. Asset-based renewal required

Not required—CPQ supports quote-based and asset-based renewal models.

D. Missing lookup to source Quote Line

Not required for legacy subscriptions; CPQ amendments work without source quote lines.

Thus C is the only valid root cause.

Document generation performance in CPQ depends heavily on template content size, not price rules or QLE performance.

✔ C — Use compressed image formatsLarge JPG/PNG images dramatically slow down:

Template rendering

PDF generation

Email attachment creation

Compressing images is a documented best practice.

✔ E — Reduce the number of line columns in the quote documentEach additional column:

Adds more data retrieval

Increases merge time

Slows PDF rendering

This is one of the primary causes of slow Quote Document generation in CPQ.

Why the other answers are incorrectOption

Why Wrong

A & B — Product rules / constraints

They affect quote calculation, not document generation.

D — Fields in QLE

QLE configuration does not affect document generation speed.

Thus C and E are correct.

The requirement:

"Bulk discounts include previously purchased quantities for pricing calculations."

This refers to cross-order discounting, where historical quantities affect pricing on the new quote.

To support this:

✔ B – Contracts, Subscriptions and Assets should be populated with historical dataCPQ reads existing Subscriptions/Assets to determine previously purchased quantities.

Historical install base must be migrated for correct discounting.

✔ E – Discount schedules with Cross Orders checkedSalesforce CPQ includes an OOTB feature:

Discount Schedule → Cross Orders = TRUEThis allows the quantity tiers to consider historical purchases.

Incorrect options:

A Custom Action unnecessary unless data is external (not indicated here).

C Summary variables cannot aggregate off-contract historical quantities.

D Migrating invoices is not required for quantity-based pricing.

Thus, the validated answers are B and E.

Before a scoping session, the consultant should understand:

A – Sample proposals → reveals quoting format, pricing models, product structure.

B – Product brochures → clarifies offerings, catalog categories, bundles.

D – Approval matrix → shows governance controls required in CPQ.

Incorrect:

C Salesforce release notes are irrelevant to understanding customer requirements.

E Financial statements do not contribute to CPQ/Billing scoping.

Correct answers: A, B, D.

The CPQ Quote Calculator is hosted by Salesforce in specific service regions.

Performance is optimized when the service region matches the Salesforce org location.

Since the German operation is hosted in the EU Salesforce instance, the performance-optimized setting is:

✔ Europe regionThis keeps latency minimal and significantly improves quote calculation speed.

Salesforce Billing uses Usage Summary to combine usage records per:

Billing period

Order Product

Rating characteristics

To simplify future usage uploads after amendments, Billing requires a stable reference to group or map usage lines.

✔ Matching ID is designed exactly for this purpose.It is:

Unique

Persistent across amendments

Used by external rating or mediation systems

Can be used as an External ID

Other fields cannot uniquely support usage upload reconciliation.

Thus, E is the correct answer.

The Salesforce Safe Harbor statement exists to remind customers:

They should only make scoping, planning, design, and purchasing decisions based on current, available functionality, not forward-looking statements or roadmap presentations.

Salesforce does not guarantee:

Release timing

Exact feature delivery

Backward compatibility