Service Contracts

[DaveTTS]

We have clients on monthly service contracts (i.e. 8hrs/month). These contracts have a term of one year.

Do we have to create 12 monthly contracts for each of these clients each year, or is there an easier way to do this. And if not, will it be in upcoming releases?

[Support Team]

Re: Service Contracts

To manage monthly contracts (or any other recurring term), you should first create a contract record for the first month, fill in all the relevant contract information as agreed with the customer, such as service terms, initial Block of Time, etc.

There is no need to create 12 Contracts in advance. When the contract period ends you can easily copy the contracts using the Batch Copy of Contracts option, and create a new Contract for the next period of time. This will let you create many new contracts which will automatically set a new date range for the new contracts.

When copying contracts to the next date range, the original contract information is copied to the new contract, (service terms, initial Block of Time, Notes, etc). Also, the contract sub-code will automatically be incremented, so you can generate reports using Contract Codes ranges and receive all the information for these Contracts together.

When adding new Tickets or Charges, the system will automatically select the new copied contract to be used, based on its Start Date. This means that you can copy a contract at any time prior to its end and the system will only start using it when the previous contract expires.

For more details on the wizard, I recommend that you read our FAQ topic about Batch Copy of Contracts wizard.

I hope this helps.

Dina

[robzen]

Re: Service Contracts

It is complicated. Why shouldn't we enter contract for one (or two, three...) year, with monthly action (4hr/month, one visit/month), and have the CommitCRM produce 12 reccuring tickets that wil pop-up every first day of the month? We have over 50 annual contracts, and we have to copy (batch copy or other) every month 50 contracts, creating 50 tickets etc. We suggest you to use the same system as for reccuring tasks, for tickets and contracts.

[Support Team]

Re: Service Contracts

Thank you for the feedback. Managing service contracts accurately is very important, and this is why we provide all the tools and options for you to have maximum control over your service contracts. Using the batch copy you can carefully track the status of each contract and easily renew the contracts that need to be renewed, and notice any problematic situations (renewing contracts in a single batch is easy using the batch copy).

For recurring jobs, you should create a recurring Task in RangerMSP (which may also include a reminder), and when the task is due, you can easily create a Ticket out of the Task (by right-clicking the Task). We may automate this further in the future, while keeping the user in control.

HTH

Eitan

[raymond]

Re: Service Contracts

I concur with robzen... we should be able to setup a single contract with an auto re-occurring block of time (or whatever we use for the contract). We need to be able to track the amount of time (or tickets or whatever) for each month... given the current parameters, I think setting up 12 separate contracts, 1 each for each month is the only way to properly do this... using recurring jobs/tasks will not allow us to properly track the resources in the contract.

On this, are we close to the point where we can customize our own contract types? We really (really!) need to be able to set up a block of time contract that defaults labor charges to "billable"...

thanks --

//ray

[Support Team]

Re: Service Contracts

ray,

The idea of a Block of Time Contracts is that the block of time is being payed for in advance, and therefore you do not intend to bill your customers for the labor charges under this contract.

Having labor charges default to Billable under a Block of Time means that you intend to charge you customer for this time and that it is not covered under the block of time... so I don't think you should use a Block of Time contract but rather a global one.
Block of Time should be normally used when you do not want to charge your customers for the time spent, as long as it is covered by the block.

Anyway, your request to be able to customize this and overwrite the system default will be logged into our system (if it's not already there), and will be considered.

Bracha

[Budman]

Re: Service Contracts

I have another question about "Block of Time Contracts". First, just FYI, I am currently in the trial period of this software and I'm trying to get it configured for our company needs. With our company, we have the Block of Time Contracts that are payed for in advance (so it is awesome that CommitCRM has this feature). But, we need to be able to have the service work that is covered under the block of time contract to be displayed on our invoice to the customer as a $0 charge and show the remaining time on their service contract. Is there a way to configure or customize CommitCRM to handle this? We are using Quickbooks 2007 Pro for our invoicing.

Thanks,
Budman

[Support Team]

Re: Service Contracts

Budman, Charges logged under a Block of Time Contract are automatically set to Not Billable so you will not charge extra for them (and actually, you've already issued an Invoice for them when charging your customers for the block).

What you may do to achieve what you want is to manually set these Charges to Billable and zero their totals so they will be included in an invoice but will not affect the QuickBooks invoice total amount.

However, before doing this you should keep in mind the following:
(1) It requires some additional, though not too much, manual work
(2) Zeroing these Charges can affect your ability to analyze your IT business performance - the original idea in RangerMSP is that these Charges will be kept with their "real" amounts and you'll just not bill the customer for them (as they are covered by the Block of Time contact and are automatically set to Not Billable), this is because keeping the Charges with their original amounts lets you compare the amount you would have received had these Charges been paid by the hour. This helps you tune your contracts and see your profit/loss.

Also, you can simply print various Contract Charges' reports from RangerMSP and hand them to your customer instead of sending an additional invoice. These reports will show how your customers used their Block of Time, who did what, when etc.

Sherry

[Budman]

Re: Service Contracts

Sherry, thanks for the quick reply. I do want to stay away from manually zeroing the charges and I see what you mean by printing the contract charge reports for the customer. However, we send invoices to our customers upon completion of the task at hand (break-fix, upgrade, etc) and in our case, our blocks of time cover the onsite/in house labor costs but not the parts or travel. So, if we do an onsite for a service contact customer outside of our specified "free travel" area, there is a charge for the travel that is billed to the customer. For our service contract customers, they receive an invoice for the applicable travel charges and any billable parts/software. Also on that invoice is a description of the labor involved, technician, date, and the amount of time expended along with their remaining time on the service contract.

Anyway, I think your work around could work for us but I have another couple of questions. If we set the charges to billable and then zero the totals, will the time still be deducted from the customer's service block time? Also, is there a way to display on the invoice the remaining amount of time on the service block or should that be added manually also? I suppose as an alternative we could move to a "monthly report" for our service block customers instead of mailing them invoices detailing the work for each "task" but I don't know if my partners would want to make that kind of change.

Thanks,
Budman

[Support Team]

Re: Service Contracts

Yes, the time will be deducted from the Block of Time even when zeroing the Charge amount. When printing Contracts with Charges reports you may print to balance left as well.
As for the invoices - as you charge customers for your travel time and parts used, I recommend that you log these under another service contact (or under the system default one which is automatically created for each customer) and they will automatically be set as Billable and be transferred to the monthly/periodically QuickBooks invoice.

HTH

Sherry

[raymond]

Re: Service Contracts

Thanks Bracha... I've had this conversation MANY times with different people over @ CommitCRM and it always comes to the same conclusion... very long story short is that this view of an unbillable block of time, while I understand it, is NOT compatible with proper accounting practices -- for proper bookkeeping, if you bill a client (say $5,000 for a block of time) for a service that is not used immediately, you should offset this charge with some kind of credit (we use asset accounts for each of our clients to keep this step clean) -- this is how quickbooks keeps things balanced and more importantly, the reports generated from QB accurate. That said, we (personally) need CommitCRM to send ALL blocks of time labor charges to quickbooks (i.e. we have to manually rememver to tag all blocks of time as billable which is a huge problem) for proper accounting and record keeping. If we use global contracts as you suggest, then we lose the ability to track time which is one of the reasons why we went with CRM in the first place.

The simple answer would be to allow us to create our own kinds of contracts -- this should be a very simple addition, one that would allow us to do our accounting the way we need to in order to be compliant. It would afford us the abiltiy to create blocks of time that are billable under a proper accounting practice as well as create block of time contracts that are to be used stricktly for maintenance as is being brought up by DaveTT and robzen.

thanks --

//ray

[Support Team]

Re: Service Contracts

Thank you for the clarification. We understand the process as you describe it here and although, to our knowledge, this way of accounting is less common, we understand why you wish to work this way.

As said, the request for allowing flexible contracts is logged into our system, and I will make sure your comments are attached to, and that the relevant people will look into this. Thanks.

Neta

[Budman]

Re: Service Contracts

Sherry, I had asked about printing the service block time on an invoice as $0 charge by setting the time as billable:

"What you may do to achieve what you want is to manually set these Charges to Billable and zero their totals so they will be included in an invoice but will not affect the QuickBooks invoice total amount."

I am unable to figure out how to do that - the "Not Billable" button is grayed out. I could put it under the regular contract that would allow it to be billable time but then I have to enter the work description twice. Is that what you meant? Could you clarify how to accomplish what you wrote above?

Thanks,
Budman

[Support Team]

Re: Service Contracts

The "Not Billable" button you mentioned is there for something else (this can be confusing) - when you have "Billable" charges, this button will say "Mark as Billed" (only for non-billable-Charges the button shows "Not Billable"). You can use this button in order to set the Charges as "Billed", after you actually bill the customer for them.

In order to set a Charge as "Billable" or "Not Billable", you should open the Charge window, and set the "Billable" checkbox in the bottom-right corner of the window.

I hope this is clearer now.

Sherry

[Budman]

Re: Service Contracts

Sherry, thanks again, it is very clear now. It is amazing sometimes how easy it is to miss something like that check box. Thank you for being very helpful.

Budman