Using CommitCRM for tracking AYCE MSP Contracts

[mcbsys]

Hi,

I'm wondering how others are handling MSP contracts in Commit, in particular for "All-You-Can-Eat" (AYCE) clients?

My goal is to be able to send the client an invoice for their monthly maintenance along with a list of tasks performed each month (tickets). For internal purpose, I also want to tabulate labor spent on each contract.

For the base monthly contract, I've got a recurring contract with a "Contract-price Charge". That seems fine.

But what about the tracking the time that I put in to each contract? I set up a Labor item called "MSP_SysAdmin" and a Fixed Rate of $0.00. I don't see any way to define the Item as non-billable. And whenever I create a charge based on this item, whether it it Billable or not, I get a popup "Not entered Price/Rate - Continue?"

Am I doing this right? How do I tell CommitCRM to allow non-chargeable services without giving me a popup every time?

Mark

[Support Team]

Re: Using RangerMSP for tracking AYCE MSP Contracts

Hi Mark,

Thank you for your question.

The best way to manage all-you-can-eat contracts is using a Block Of Money Contract in RangerMSP.

You should create a monthly Block Of Money Contract, and set the block to the amount the customer pays each month (probably the same amount which appears in your Contract-price Charge).

The nice thing about this type of contract is that each time you enter a charge against it, this charge will be automatically marked as "not billable", as the system assumes it is covered by the contract. In addition, the amount in the charge will be reduced from the block balance, so you can track how profitable this contract is. This way you can enter the charges with the regular items you use anyway, set their price like always, and have them set as "not billable" so they will not be billed to the customer. You will be able to include these charges in reports and in invoices, so you can show the customer all the work which was done for this contract.

You can find more helpful information on contract management on our Web site here.

I hope this helps!

Doron

[allenc]

Re: Using CommitCRM for tracking AYCE MSP Contracts

We assign a "standard" internal accounting rate to the item that you call "MSP_SysAdmin". CommitCRM then does not complain about a missing rate.

Your CPA can help you determine what your "fully burdened" internal rate is. That is, an internal rate that includes wages, taxes, share of office expenses, etc. Then at the end of the month you can get a reading of the profitability of the fixed price contract.

[mcbsys]

Re: Using CommitCRM for tracking AYCE MSP Contracts

Thanks to both of you.

Allen, I doubt my CPA would recognize me; I haven't seen him in four or five years ;). (Most of my accounting stuff as a sole proprietor is pretty simple and repetitive.) But you raise an interesting point: you're suggesting to set an internal rate for my time vs. the rate I would charge a customer if I were working hourly. So that means:

- I still need separate "Items" for MSP time as opposed to the commingling them with the "regular items you use anyway."

- I should theoretically be able to check my REAL profitability as opposed to "how much am I making/losing compared to billing this by the hour."

Right?

Mark

[mcbsys]

Re: Using CommitCRM for tracking AYCE MSP Contracts

And how do I set up a pro-bono contract? It's not accepting $0.00 for a Block of Money Contract.

[mcbsys]

Re: Using CommitCRM for tracking AYCE MSP Contracts

Well I tried a $1.00 contract and it keeps nagging me about it being out of funds.

Now I'm trying to enter a change for a block of time, from 9:15PM to 12:50AM. Found out that you're not allowed to work past midnight. So I tried entering two charges, and it seems you can't enter 12:00AM as a start time either--it keeps blanking it out.

[Support Team]

Re: Using RangerMSP for tracking AYCE MSP Contracts

Actually, for pro-bono contracts I would go about it the other way around - create a block of money contract, and set the block to a very high amount, to make sure you don't reach the block limit ever. This way you can log as many charges as you wish without the system alerting you about the block limit. Note that setting the contract block does not have any billing implications (only if you add a Contract-price Charge, this will appear as a billable contract). I hope this makes more sense now.

As for entering charges which span over midnight, the system prevents this, and this is actually the expected behavior in this case, as this requires two separate charges. There are many reasons for this, for example, how a multi-date charge should be handled when it related to Contracts that expires on this day (and the new day is not covered by the Contract)? To what date do we need to consider this work when printing employee activities reports when it spans on different weeks or months? There are many other questions/issues that this may cause, and the system currently lets the user make these decisions manually.

What you should do is create two separate charges, one for each day (on until 11:59, and one from 12:01). Note that you can create the first charge, and then copy it and change the time. It is very easy to copy a Charge record to the next one by right-clicking the charge and selecting the Copy option. All the charge details will already be selected including the Account, Ticket, Contract, description etc.

I hope this helps.

Doron

[mcbsys]

Re: Using CommitCRM for tracking AYCE MSP Contracts

Okay thanks for those explanations and the tip on copying hours.

While we are clarifying contract options, perhaps one more question: how to handle the client that gets x hours for a flat fee, then pays and hourly rate over that. Do I need to set up a Block of Time contract _and_ a Global contract, charging the initial time to the first contract, and additional time to the second?

[Support Team]

Re: Using RangerMSP for tracking AYCE MSP Contracts

Yes, that is one possible option to go about it. the benefit is that when you work with the global contract, these charges will be automatically marked as "billable".

Another way would be to use the same contract all along, but set the charges which are over the block limit as "billable" manually. This way you will be able to easily see how much time was spent over the block limit. This can help you analyze the block profitability for the customer, and maybe offer them a better deal next time...

Doron

[AN-Tech]

Re: Using CommitCRM for tracking AYCE MSP Contracts

Back on the all you can eat scenerio....

The instructions for How to use Recurring Contracts says to use Contract-price charges to automatically bill the customer for the new contract.

Our all you can eat is a flat rate on a per workstation and per server basis. What type of item should we be adding to this tab in this case? One line item for the total price of the contract? One line item for workstations with the total qty and another line item for total servers? Would these be product part charges or labor items?

[Support Team]

Re: Using RangerMSP for tracking AYCE MSP Contracts

ascendnet - I believe you can do this in various ways, like you suggested, depending on your specific needs.

Basically, in order for the contract-price charge to be flexible, I would suggest adding an item, which represents a single workstation price per month, and an item for a single server price per month. These items can be Labor items, which are unit-based (rather than based on hours).

Then you can add one line for workstations and one for server (as you suggested), and each contract-price charge will include the quantity of workstations/server which are covered. Whenever this number is updated (e.g. if the customer wants to add an additional server), you can update the contract-price charge, and the new quantity will be reflected next time you renew the contract.

You may find some more examples for different ways to use the Contract-price Charges in the user guide in this section.

I hope this helps.

Sherry

[AN-Tech]

Re: Using CommitCRM for tracking AYCE MSP Contracts

I've got a problem with using the all you can eat contract the way you describe with using a block of money. Lets say a technician creates a ticket, goes onsite, performs work, adds his labor to the ticket, then adds a part that is needed to the ticket. When the part is added to the ticket the part is not set to billable.

What I'm describing above seems to be doing what we've told it do, mark all items as non billable and warn if going over a predefined dollar amount. Because of this I'm not sure block of money is the best route to go for MSP services or All You Can Eat programs. These are typically labor only contracts and do not include parts as well as other labor items not covered under the contract.

I know we can tell the techs to click billable on the parts or services not covered but it is inevitable that this will not always occur and when it doesn't it can be a VERY costly mistake.

Have another suggestion for us?

[mcbsys]

Re: Using CommitCRM for tracking AYCE MSP Contracts

Could you put the parts under the Global System Contract? Or a generic "parts" contract? If they're not covered under your ACYE contract, I'm thinking maybe they belong elsewhere.

Mark

[AN-Tech]

Re: Using CommitCRM for tracking AYCE MSP Contracts

You can manually put the parts under any contract you like when adding them to a ticket but unless something occurs automatically it will not get done 100% of the time by the techs.

There has to be a better way of doing this.

[Support Team]

Re: Using RangerMSP for tracking AYCE MSP Contracts

Hi,

Thanks for the additional input on the way you implement this at the moment. This is interesting stuff.

I believe I can suggest a way to implement an "all you can eat" contract in a slightly different way, which includes only labor (parts not included), and I hope this will work for you. The block-of-money contract, which was suggested previously serves well in case all is indeed included, labor, parts and expenses. Perhaps in the case you describe, it would be better to use a different type of contract.

What you can do is use a block-of-time contract in this case, and set it with a very high "hours" block (there is no real limit here, so you can set it to a very high number, to avoid reaching the limit). Each time a technician enters a labor charge against this block, it will be automatically marked as not billable. However, Product/Parts or Expense charges are not covered by block-of-time contracts, and therefore they will be automatically marked as billable. This way your techs will not need to remember to set these charges as billable or log them against a global contract, as the system will automatically take care of this.

You can still use the Contract-price Charges in order to reflect the kind of service you provide in this contract and the price, as explained previously. Only the management of the "regular" charges will be affected by this change.

I hope this makes sense.

Doron