Block of Time Contracts

[wereman]

Hi Support,

We predominantely use Block of time contracts for billing customers, with our current system (custom made), when a customer exceeds the number of hours they have prepaid the hours just build up in arrears on the account and are then automatically subtracted off the next block of time sold, this is very handy in an instance where they may only have a couple of hours left on a block of time, but have a job that goes over this, rather than having to break up the charges aross individual contracts. Is this possible inCommitCRM?

[Support Team]

Re: Block of Time Contracts

Hi wereman,

Thanks for the question.

I see what you mean, and I can see how this can indeed be handy in some cases, so I logged your feedback into our requests list. On a side note - I know that not all businesses handle contracts this way - for instance - some prefer to bill the customer for the over-used hours (even using a special over-used hours rate) and not transfer them automatically to the next contract.

At the moment, what you can do when adding charges which exceed the block of time, is split this time into two charges - one for the hours up to the block limit, and one for the rest of the time. You don't even need to have the next contract in the system at this point - you can create both charges on the current contract, and when the new contract is created, you can simply open the charge details window, and transfer it to the new contract. You can easily see which contract were being over-used by generating a "Contract List by Type and Expiration" report from the Report > Contracts section.

This may actually help you achieve more control over the contracts usage and profitability :-)

Ethan