Contracts Inquiry

[FunctionOne]

Hello,

Please excuse me if this has been tread - I've found some relevant answers already but I'm trying to evaluate the software (though, I think I've already decided it's a YES!) and need some assistance in getting things set-up to properly reflect our client situation.

In the current time tracking/invoicing tool we're using (freshbooks.com) - we manage our monthly contracts by creating items to reflect our different offerings:
Hosted Exchange is an item
RemoteBackup is an item
Monthly Service is an item and so on...

We have created custom items for each client that reflects their current pricing for that service/product.

For most of our contracts we also provide a default number of hours each month - beyond which we charge for the additional hours. So a customer may have 3 hours prepaid - and then we begin billing beyond the fixed Monthly Service Fee.

At the end of the month we run a report which generates an invoice based on a timeframe (usually the last month)
THis report pulls all hours billed during that month to which we add in the apporpriate products above.

In the end of this process we have create an invoice which includes the associated products (monthly recurring fees) and all labor done to which we apply a credit that handles the prepaid hours.

If you're still with me - thank you! What I'm trying to ascertain is how we can map this current process toCommitCRM.

I'm assuming we'd create a base contract - say -a one year Global.
Then at the end of each month we'd simply run a charges report - pull all the tracked support hours - add charges for the services/products per client (as above) and then export to Quickbooks?

Does this sounds plausible?

I'm looking for suggestions here on the optimal way to make this work.

Thanks in advance!

Joe-

[Support Team]

Re: Contracts Inquiry

Hi Joe,

Thank you for your detailed description of your current process. It actually sounds to me that you would be best using monthly contracts in RangerMSP, and copy all the monthly contracts to the next month at the end of each month. This can be done using the Batch Copy Wizard, which helps you to easily copy many contracts at once to the next date range.

You should probably use block-of-money or block-of-time contracts, which are pre-paid. When you reach the block limit, the system warns you, and you can go on and add additional charges, but set them as "billable" so they will be included in the invoices at the end of the month.

As for invoicing, if you use QuickBooks, you can run the Invoice Creation Wizard (from File > New > QuickBooks Invoice), which helps you easily create invoices for all open balances, in the Account, Contract or Ticket level. If you are not using QuickBooks, you can generate charge reports in carious filters and formats, and attach them to your invoices.

If you haven't done this yet, I recommend on reading the Introduction to Billing user guide, which provides a great overview of how to use contracts and charges in RangerMSP, and how to generate reports and invoices for them.

I hope this helps.

Doron

[FunctionOne]

Re: Contracts Inquiry

Would love to get some user response as to how you've configured the system to fit your needs? Anyone?

[brills]

Re: Contracts Inquiry

We offer tiered managed services i.e. bronze, silver, gold.

We create a global contract for the managed service offering, we use the notes to define the level of service, we attached the signed agreement and then bill our monthly managed services out of this global contract. We also bill hosted exchange, web hosting, spam filtering and other products out of this contract.

Our silver agreement offers two hours of remote support each month. So to track this we create another contract in CommitCRM with a two hour limit for the current month. We set this contract as the default contract. We title the contact the client abreviation then the month year i.e. Atech1 Aug 2008. At the end of the month we copy this contract to the next month and name it Atech1 Sep 2008 etc., then set this new contract as the default then mark the old contract as completed. WE DO NOT BILL OUT OF THESE MONTHLY CONTRACTS.

To ensure we don't overlook items we create tasks under the global contract to bill for managed services then set it to recurring monthly for the duration of the signed agreement, we then also create monthly tasks for the product billings i.e. hosted exchange, web hosting etc. We find if we don't do this, little items often get missed and not billed.

Since our tiered services offer different price points for on-site, remote, and the product delivery itself the new custom pricing module has been fantastic. Under the global contract we go through and define all the custom pricing items based on the signed agreement.

Automating this process is something we're hoping CommitCRM will improve on in the future as it's a very tedious process, but it works and knowing CommitCRM they'll offer an improved billing module in the future.

Thank you,
Brian Williams
Advantech NW

[FunctionOne]

Re: Contracts Inquiry

Hi Brian,

Thanks for taking the time out to convey how you guys are using CommitCRM to handle your service offerings - this is very similar to our format as well.

Question: I'm assuming for items like hosted exchange, spam filtering etc you're just added these into the system as product items?

We have some contracts like your Silver that include hours as well. How are you handling this - once the hours are used up - are you then billing against the global contract?

One problem we saw in testing was that all tickets and charges applied to a contract with hours weren't itemized when we went to generate a test invoice. This would be a problem for us as we need the client to see all work done - even non-billable work so they can understand all that we are doing for them both on and off the clock.

Am I mistaken - is there a way to list all the items applied to a Contract w/Hours on an invoice? It would seem to be best if the charges covered by the hours simply appeared with a $0 charge and those that went beyond the hours listed their appropriate hourly.

I too like the concept of the custom pricing but I think we would most likely continue to do this the way we have laid out in our current platform. We have items entered that represent each service: hosted exchange, remote backup, monthly contracts etc - that are customized for each client. This way when they are applied to a monthly invoice they display that customers custom pricing and include the description which is verbose (justifying the expense for future controllers or accountants that may not have hired us) and lists all of the elements the client has included.

Let me know if you can give more on the above.

Thanks!

Joe Markert
FunctionOne

[brills]

Re: Contracts Inquiry

Joe,

Our two-included hours is for remote support, so to be honest we haven't had a silver client exceed the two-hour inclusion. What we plan on doing is the time we exceed the 2-hour limit CommitCRM will pop-up stating that we've exceeded the 2-hour limit, we'll just switch over to the global contract and bill the overage.

When we bill our monthly bill just shows Silver agreement X servers, X desktops.

In our monthly email report, we email them the ticket's report which shows what was covered during the current month so that they're aware of all the issues handled.

In our Gold service which includes unlimited remote support and unlimited on-site support we use tickets for every single item, but the part I just can't do is create $0 dollar charges for every single issue, it just makes a mess out of the billable tab and it's too time consuming. I wish there was a better way to calculate time spent on the clients without having to bill $0 charges.

Thanks again,

Brian Williams
Advantech NW

[FunctionOne]

Re: Contracts Inquiry

Thanks for that clarification Brian ! :)