The sales team at this client has opportunities that are sometimes one time events, and sometimes recurring opportunities that are going to be billed monthly, quarterly or annually. The sales team needs to be able to see revenue reports that take recurring revenue into account.
Based on my research, I'm writing a Workflow Activity that will allow the sales guys to start a dialog, enter some information, and then have new opportunities created to represent the ongoing revenue opportunities. So, for instance, if there is an opportunity at a managed services customer that would be $5,000 a month for a year (Opportunity named Client A Managed Services), then the workflow would create 12 new opportunities called Client A Managed Services - November 2016 through Client A Managed Services - October 2017. The opportunities would be identical, except their Estimated Close Date would be the 15th of each of their respective months. That should let me build queries and reports to accurately reflect revenue projections that include recurring revenue.
That all seems a bit convoluted for a process that almost certainly happens at other companies, but based on the articles and answers I've read it's my best option. My question is, am I missing some other method of handling recurring revenue opportunities that isn't quite as complicated?