BMS Contracts | Recurring services

Introduction

Recurring services are used when you need to charge a customer for your services on a pre-arranged schedule. Any routine charge can be set up for billing for a certain period of time.

Our PSA helps you create recurring services for billing your customers periodically and renew automatically. Maintenance Services, Monitoring Services, Subscribed Onsite Services are some of the examples where recurring services can be utilized.

Features

  • Recurring service contracts can be set up for your CRM clients based on the Fiscal year(Calendar based) or based on start dates specified.
  • Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly cycles are the periods available to choose for Billing.
  • Options to set default SLA and contract on a ticket can be specified on the contract. 
  • The ability to add attachments and custom fields are available in the contract.
  • Notifications on changed units for a recurring contract can be set under the notifications tab. 
  • Contract history shows you the details of service modifications for the contract.
  • The ability to exclude various roles or work types for a contract is available in the exclusions tab.
  • Billing is always based on the effective date of a service item.
  • Prorations are auto-calculated based on the start date, end of contract date, and the effective date of the service item. Prorated units are added in separate line items. 

Invoice options 

Items are billed manually under Finance > Billing review > recurring services or can be automated to run using Billing automation. Issue Invoice on the field in a contract controls the ability to show billable entries for a certain time range.
If you bill at the beginning of a period the billable items will be seen only if the date range selected falls on or before the start date. If its end of the period the billable items will show up to be posted only when the date filter matches on or after the end date.

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Billing Cycle

Contracts are created with a specified start and end date to be repeated based on the Billing cycle. Billing cycles offered in the PSA are Contract Length, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly.

Billing periods are further classified to be billed based on (Fiscal) Calendar and non-calendar years. 

  • For Calendar year billing each subsequent period would start at the first of a period and end on the last day of a period based on the calendar.
  • In non-calendar year billing the start date and end dates of the contract are taken into consideration. 

Contract Length

  • Contract length is used when you need a one-time payable contract with no repetitions. The contract length will always be one period. This billing period will allow you to generate one invoice for the complete billable cycle.
  • Contract length is also used when customers do not need prorations. As this is a one time deal it will be billed for the start and end date specified in the contract.

Weekly

  • Contracts created for Weekly billing repeats itself every week.
  • For Billing based on Calendar years, a week starts with Monday and ends on Sunday.
  • For non-calendar years, billing is calculated from the start date to a week from the start date. 

Monthly

  • Contracts created for Monthly billing repeats itself every month.
  • For Billing based on Calendar years, the system takes the start date of the contract and the period ends with the last day of the calendar month. 
  • Each subsequent period would begin on 1st of the month and end on the last day of the month.
  • For non-calendar years, billing is calculated from the start date to a month from the start date. 

Quarterly

  • Contracts created for Quarterly billing repeats itself every Quarter.
  • For Billing based on Calendar years, the system takes the start date of the contract and the period ends with the last day of the calendar quarter.
  • Each subsequent period would begin on 1st of the quarter and end on the last day of the quarter.
  • For non-calendar years, billing is calculated from the start date to a quarter from the start date. 

Yearly

  • Contracts created for Yearly billing repeats itself every year.
  • For Billing based on Calendar years, the system takes the start date of the contract and the period ends with the last day of the calendar year.
  • Each subsequent period would begin on 1st of the year and end on the last day of the year.
  • For non-calendar years, billing is calculated from the start date to a year from the start date. 
Tip! Refer to this article to learn more about how fiscal and non-fiscal billing periods are calculated for the above cycles

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Steps

  1. Create a contract
    • Navigate to Finance > Contracts > New > Recurring Services.
    • Fill the name, account details, and billing options for this contract.
    • Click Save
  2. Add service items.
    • Service items are derived from the Admin module. Service details can be overridden when creating the contract.
    • You can choose one of the items under Setup automated billing for this service. For more information, see Billing IT Glue Flexible Assets in BMS, Bill by User (for Contact Count) and Bill by Device (for Device Count). Previously, Contact Count was called Bill by User and Device Count was called Bill by Device.
      Contract_add_service1.png  
      • To prevent proration errors, users cannot change the way units get derived after a service is saved. Recurring Services Contract > Services > Add/Edit Services > Setup automated billing for this service options will get disabled.
  3. Activate the contract

Note : Once a contract is activated changing the billing period won't take any effect.

Admin dependencies :

When creating a contract the options seen below are derived from the Admin module. You can create them in the Admin > Finance section. 

  • Services: Services are created in Admin > Finance > Services
  • Work type: Work types are created in Admin > Finance > Work Type
  • Role: Roles are created in Admin > Finance > Roles
  • SLA: SLA information is derived from Admin > Service Desk > SLAs
  • Zero value items: Admin > My Company > Company Settings > Invoice > Bill Zero Value Items>Yes, to list zero value items in billing by default.

Exclusions

Exclusions are used to define conditions in a contract. You can use this when you want to have a specialized service and bill it out of the contract.

  • When you add roles and work types under exclusions in a contract, entries using these types will not be billed under this contract.
  • You can choose to either define a fallback contract or leave it blank to use rates defined in Admin > Finance. These items will show up to be posted under the billing review.
  • The fall back contract can be any other type of contract. The Default Fallback Contract drop-down will list all contracts for the Account it is associated with.
  • Exclusions will be applied when you are posting the hours in billing. 

Tips!

  • Billing is based on the effective date of a service item.
  • The effective date of billable items created in a contract should always fall within the contract start date and end date to show up for billing review. 
  • Time entries logged against a recurring service contract are considered zero value items.
  • If you would like to list them in your invoice you can choose Yes in the checkbox, when creating a billing job. This can also be enabled by default under Admin > My Company > Company Settings > Invoice.

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