Service Contract and Warranty Overview

Overview

ServiceCEO enables you to track basic Service Contracts and Warranties as part of the On-Site Equipment module. Service Contracts allow users to separate the sale of goods or services from the act of providing the goods or services. A service contract consists of a number of Service Contract Lines. Each Service Contract Line contains two things:

1. The Billable Amount - The amount the customer pays for the coverage
2. The Coverage Amount - What the customer receives for their money

The following are some examples of contract lines that can be created in ServiceCEO:

• Customer pays $5,000 for 100 hrs of HVAC service.
• Customer pays $10/hour for 50 hours of any service.
• Customer pays $10,000 for unlimited coverage of products and services/labor delivered or performed over a three-month period.
• Customer pays $500 for unlimited coverage of only one of their Dell computers (serial number 12345B).
• Customer pays $500 in advance for $700 worth of labor to be performed over the next two months.

As demonstrated by these examples, contracts may have an expiration date beyond which they may not be applied to jobs. Service contracts may also be restricted to covering only:

• Specific parts (Master Products)
• Labor (Master Services)
• Specific customer equipment (on-site equipment)

Note: You can view a training video that covers this topic in our Member Center. To view this training video, login to the member center in the usual manner, click the Watch Pre-Recorded Training Classes link (located in the Member Center Options section), and then click the Service Contracts link. The video will appear and automatically begin to run.

Creating and Editing Contracts

Enabling Service Contracts in ServiceCEO

Before you start creating service contracts, you must first enable Service Contracts in ServiceCEO. Note that only a system administrator can turn on service contracts. To enable the use of Service Contracts:

1. Select Tools - Options. The Options dialog box appears.
2. Click Contracts. The Contracts Options dialog box appears.

Tip: “Service Contract” is a vocabulary term which may be customized in the Vocabulary Options section (Tools - Options - Vocabulary).

3. Select the Enable Service Contracts check box.
4. Select the Print the Disclaimer and Agreement statements on Contracts check box to include the disclaimer and agreement on printed invoices.
5. Click Edit Disclaimer. The Edit Disclaimer dialog box appears.

6. Edit the disclaimer as necessary.
7. Click Save. The new invoice is saved.
8. Click Edit Agreement. The Edit Agreement dialog box appears.

9. Edit the agreement as necessary.
10. Click Save. The new agreement is saved.
11. Click OK.

Creating a New Service Contract

To add a new service contract:

1. Open the appropriate customer record.
2. Click the Service Contracts tab.
3. Click . The Properties tab of the Service Contract dialog box appears.

4. Type a summary of the service contract in the Summary field.
5. Select the contract's billing location from the Billing Location drop-down list.
6. Select the contract's sales representative from the Sales Rep drop-down list.
7. If necessary, select a new starting date from the Starting calendar box.
8. If you are defining an expiration date for the contract, select the Expires check box and select the date the contract ends from the calendar box.
9. Select the contract's status from the Status drop-down list.
10. If enabled, select the contract's sub-status from the Sub-Status drop-down list.
11. Click the Items tab. Before the items tab appears, the Service Contract Line dialog box appears. Note that some of this information may already be populated.

12. Type a description of this line item into the Description field.
13. Select the appropriate Coverage Mode option button for this line item. Your options are:
    • Qty - covers a charge based on a unit quantity, such as hours or units.
    • Cash - covers a charge based on the dollar amount of the charge.
14. Select the appropriate Coverage Amount option button for this line item.
15. Type the amount of the charge into the Charge field.
16. Select the appropriate tax check boxes.
17. To limit this item to specific products and/or services, click the Product/Service Restrictions tab.

18. Expand the list and select the appropriate check boxes to limit this line to the selected products and/or services.
19. To limit the item to specific items of equipment, click the Equipment Restrictions tab.

20. Select the appropriate check boxes to limit this line to the selected products and/or services.
21. Click . The Items tab appears, displaying the item you just entered.

22. To enter additional line items, click and repeat steps 12-21.
23. If necessary, you can create tasks on the Tasks tab or link customers, jobs, employees, URLs, or vendors to the contract on the Links tab in the usual manner.
24. Define the billing for the contract. See Service Contract Billing for more.
25. Click . The contract is now saved.

Viewing Service Contracts

To view the existing service contracts for a customer:

1. Open the appropriate customer record.
2. Click the Service Contracts tab.
3. Click on the Service Contract that you want to view. The Service Contract dialog box appears.

Service Contract Reports

From the Service Contract page, you can run two reports:

• Service Contract - This report displays details about the specific service contract.
• Costing Report - This report displays details about service contracts and what products, services, or equipment have been linked to them.

To run a report about a specific service contract:

1. Open the service contract on which you want to report.
2. Click the arrow next to the button and select the report you want to run.
3. If you made changes to the service contract, you will be prompted to save them now. The report appears.

Example of the Service Contracts report

Example of the Service Contracts Billing report

Service Contract Billing

The core concept behind service agreements is that your customer is paying for the agreement so that they will not be billed for parts or labor in the future. Thus, the billing of the service agreement is entirely independent of the billing or scheduling services provided under that agreement.

Note: All or part of the billing for specific job line items can be handed by attaching an existing service contract to the job. See Covering Jobs with Service Contracts for details.

ServiceCEO supports two methods for invoicing and billing service agreements:

• Automatic Invoicing - ServiceCEO generates a single invoice, dated on the contract's start date, for the full amount of the contract.
• Manual Invoicing - Enables the creation of multiple invoices so you can manually break up the billing of the contract over multiple invoices.

Note that if you enable manual invoicing, you must manually define the date and amount of each invoice.

Caution: Using the manual invoicing mode means that you are responsible for insuring that the full amount of the invoice is billed. ServiceCEO will not warn you if you over- or under-bill an invoice.

All of the invoices for the service contract are displayed on the Billing tab of the Service Contract dialog box.

In either billing mode, you may add or edit an invoice's Notes by clicking in the appropriate Notes field and typing the new value.

Covering Jobs with Service Contracts

By default, ServiceCEO assumes that the customer will be billed for the full charge of the all of their jobs when the job is completed. However, if the customer has purchased a service contract, then that contract may cover some or all of a job's charges, reducing the amount owed a specific job’s invoice.

Each line-item charge on a job can be covered either entirely or partially by a service contract line. To do this:

1. Open the appropriate customer record.
2. Click the Jobs / Schedules tab.

Tip: “Jobs” and "Schedules" are vocabulary terms which may be customized in the Vocabulary Options section (Tools - Options - Vocabulary).

3. Open the job record that contains the line-item you want to cover (or partially cover) with a service contract.
4. Click the Services or Products tab.
5. Double-click the line-item that you want to cover with a service contract from the right side of the page (the Step 2 section). The Price Change dialog box appears.

6. The Charge Type drop-down list displays all active service contracts for this customer along with the amount of coverage used or remaining for each contract. Select the service contract you want to apply to this line-item.
7. By default, the Full Coverage check box is selected, meaning that the entire charge is covered by the service contract. If only part of the charge is to be covered, deselect the Full Coverage check box.
8. If you deselected the Full Coverage check box, enter the exact amount covered in the Hours/Units or Charge fields.
9. Click OK.
10. Repeat steps 4-9 for additional line-items.
11. Click Save and Close.

Covering an Entire Job with a Service Contract

To cover an entire job with a single service contract:

1. Open the appropriate customer record.
2. Click the Jobs / Schedules tab.
3. On the General tab, select the service contract you want to apply to the job from the Default Service Contract drop-down list.
4. Click Save and Close.

Reporting

By default, the printed job invoices do not display information relating to which service contract covered each job charge. If you would like to see this information, you must configure ServiceCEO to use a different report definition file the invoice report – rptInvoice-ServCon.rpt – for the invoice report. This report will group charges by the contract under which they are covered. For detailed instructions on switching the default report definition file, see the "Editing the Report List" section of the Crystal Reports Tutorial document.

Feedback

Please send any feedback about this document to documentation@insightdirect.com. Please note that this email will not go to Technical Support. To receive technical support, please enter a support ticket by logging into the member center at http://www.insightdirect.com/support.html and clicking the Log a New Support Ticket link.