re-assigning charges to different accounts/tickets --

[raymond]

couple of problems here:
1) whenever a charge is re-assigned to another account, the price field resets to zero... this is causing us problems when we re-allocate inventory items (we are using CommitCRM to track a very small amount of inventory). Is there a way to get the price to stay (i.e. it would be really nice to be able to simply select an existing product/part and re-assign it to a different account/ticket without having to manually go back and edit the item)?

2) when selecting an account to apply a charge to (in particular a charge generated directly from the charges window or an existing charge that is being re-assigned to another account), finding the proper ticket is a HUGE inconvenience.... why doesn't the system show us ONLY the tickets associated with the selected account (this should be a default) -- when would it ever apply that I would select a ticket that is listed under another account? My assumption is "never" and in fact, should probably be prohibited.

thanks --

//ray

[Support Team]

Re: re-assigning charges to different accounts/tickets --

Hi ray,

1) The charge price can be determined automatically from the item, or manually in the charge price field itself. When you switch accounts, this changes the contract as well, and the item price is recalculated according to the new terms (each account or contract may have custom pricing, etc.). This is the desired behavior, and it is also the correct behavior in this case. I'm not sure I fully understand the way you work with the charges at the moment, however, in day-to-day charging, it is not a common operation to switch the charged account.

In case you wish the price to stay for your particular needs, you may consider setting a fixed price for the item, so whenever the charge is recalculated the price stays the same (or takes into account any specific custom pricing).

2) When using the pull-down tickets list for selecting tickets in a "new charge" window, this currently indeed displays the full tickets list. In case you create the charge from the appointment or from the ticket itself, the ticket is already automatically selected, so this does not bother. If you create the charge from the main charges window, as you mentioned, this can be more cumbersome. Note that you may click the magnifying glass in order to find the ticket, and filter the list according to the account. Not ideal, but does the job. We do plan on changing the list behavior to be context-sensitive, and show only tickets which are relevant according to the selected account. This has come up a few times, and we will probably implement this in one of our next releases. Thanks for bringing it up.

Cheers,

Neta

[allenc]

Re: re-assigning charges to different accounts/tickets --

Item 2) is a big nuisance for us too. Additional context-sensitive behavior will help.

[raymond]

Re: re-assigning charges to different accounts/tickets --

>> I'm not sure I fully understand the way you work with the charges at the moment...
We don't carry much inventory but what we do have has been problematic to track. The solution we have put together is that whenever something is purchase, we immediately record it in Commit, no matter if we know who it's going to or not. e.g. I just purchased 2 hard drives, one for an existing job/account, the other for inventory -- in this case, one of the drives is entered/charged to the client account and the other is entered (as an un-billable item) into an internal account called COMPANY INVENTORY. We currently have about two dozen items listed under this account -- when the item is sold to a client, it gets re-assigned from the COMPANY INVENTORY account to the client account. The problem in this case is that the pricing info gets lost in the switch. I understand the custom pricing part (as a matter of fact, we love this and use it for tracking hourly rates) but for products it's a bit of a chore. Because product make/model and pricing changes so often, we use generic items for product (i.e. INV-DRIVE) so assigning a specific price to an item (product/part) doesn't make much sense. I'm wondering if when something is re-assigned, could it prompt to "retain all info or overwrite as required" or something like that.

Another thought is to set up a TRUE inventory tracking module, one that allows us to enter product as it's purchased, assign a price and quantity (plus some other bells and whistles) then allows us to draw down/re-assign subsets of the inventory to clients quickly and easily. This module should also allow us to "assemble" items meaning if we purchase a hard drive and an external drive cage separately, we should be able to combine them into a new part/product (maybe called an external drive kit) and sell it as a single item.... there's LOTS that could be done on the inventory side of things... ...I certainly would pay $'s for a good inventory module!

>> We do plan on changing the list behavior to be context-sensitive, and show only tickets which are relevant according to the selected account.
excellent!

thanks --

[allenc]

Re: re-assigning charges to different accounts/tickets --

You might want to consider whether Assets (assigned to your "Company Inventory" account) would work for your needs. You can reassign them to another account when you sell it, create a ticket off the asset and then charge the ticket. Alternatively, if you have a number of instances of the Asset, you can make a copy of the Asset, reduce the count in "Company Inventory" and proceed as above.

[raymond]

Re: re-assigning charges to different accounts/tickets --

interesting idea but that doesn't really work... it would mean that an asset would need to be added for each item.... if we have 5 firewall's in inventory, then an asset would need to be created for each one -- not necessarily a bad idea for larger items but this makes no sense when trying to track things like hard drives or backup tapes, etc.

again, I would pay extra for a real inventory tracking module.... (!)

thanks --

//ray