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Bulk Renewing Service Contracts

When a contract reaches the end of the contract terms, e-automate considers the contract expired. When a contract expires, e-automate pulls bill code for service calls automatically from the equipment record instead of the service contract. If you have configured the equipment with a time and materials style bill code, the system automatically starts charging the customer for services rendered on service calls and supplies through equipment associated sales orders and invoices. This is your protection from providing services or supplies that are not covered under contract once the contract is expired and not renewed.

You can determine which contracts are up for expiration by using the Contract Expiration Worksheet report or using the Contract Renewal window. The Contract Expiration Worksheet report is by default located in the Reports Console under Service on the left and Contract Expiration Worksheet on the right (Users can move reports, if it is not located in the default directory, look under All Reports). If you want to individually analyze each contract and renew it manually, the expiration worksheet is an excellent way to determine which contracts are up for expiration. You can configure the expiration worksheet to look into the future as well as to look at meters. Another available option for notification about contracts that are expiring is the e-agent task, Contract Expiration Notice. This task can be configured to run on a schedule and send you automated notification of contracts that are expiring based on your e-agent task settings. See e-agent for additional information.

As mentioned above, you use the Contract Renewal window to specify a date, percentage complete, Expiration type, and a profit margin and then direct the window to query for contracts that meet your criteria. This option allows you to bulk renew contracts that meet your criteria. If one or more contracts do not meet your criteria, you can still renew them but you are required to renew them individually.

When specifying an Expiration type in the Renew Contracts window, you can choose from the following:

Expire By Date Contracts Only: This filter allows the Contract Renewal window to display only contracts that expire by date.

Expire By Copy Contracts Only: This filter allows the Contract Renewal window to display only contracts that have the capability to expire by copies. When a contract is configured that can expire by copies, they often have a date component as well. e-automate treats these contracts as expired whenever one even occurs either copies or date.

All contracts: Displays all contract regardless of the method of expiration.

In addition to the above filters, when you are filtering the Contract Renewal window with the filter Expire By Copy Contracts Only, e-automate displays the additional Forecast expiration checkbox. When using this checkbox, it turns the Contract Renewal window into an informational window about contracts that may or may not be expired based on your identified settings. The Forecast expiration checkbox, when checked calculates values in the column, Est. accum copies in the Contract Renewal window. When checked, e-automate examines the window settings, the Renewal cutoff date, the Percent complete, and the Minimum profit margin (if checked), and then determines at what accumulated meters point the contract would need to be to meet the specified settings. This information can give you a list of contracts that may or may not be expired even if you are missing meter reading.

E-automate lists all renewable contracts in the Contract Renewal window based on your applied filters. If you are filtering your list of contracts based on a profit margin associated with the expiring contract you can view the exact profitability by right-clicking on the contract and selecting View contract profitability report. e-automate opens the Contract Profitability report parameter window with the contract pre-selected and allows you to enter additional options prior to running the report. If a contract is configured to expire by meters, you can right-click and select View meter readings to see meters associated with the equipment on the contract.

When a contract is renewed using the batch renewal process, e-automate rolls the contract dates forward as appropriate and increments the revision number. The batch renewal process does not adjust contracts that have meter/copy expiration settings. If you want to automatically renew contracts that expire by meter/copy, you can use the e-agent task, Contract expiration by copies. If the renewed contract has a contract rate schedule associated with it, e-automate automatically moves the rate schedule forward to the renewed contract.

One of the functions of the contract type is to identify contract settings that affect contract renewal. You can configure two settings on the contract type that affect the contract status. One is the status or new contracts and the other is the status of renewed contracts. When a contract is created and a user selects the contract type, if the new contract status is populated on the contract type, e-automate automatically places the status on the new contract. When a contract is renewed, whether renewed one contract at a time or bulk renewed, e-automate automatically places the status identified on the contract type on the renewed contract. For example, you could recognize that a contract is about to expire and use the e-automate Contract Renewal window to renew a contract or a list of contracts. When you batch renew a contract, the contract type could have been configured to put a proposal status on the renewed contract. This would mean that renewed contracts could be proposed instead of being active contracts. Proposed contracts travel through the billing queue similarly to active contracts only the user creates a proposal, not an invoice. If the proposed contract is accepted, e-automate can automatically activate the contract upon customer payment. If the proposal is not accepted, a user can void the proposal.

Getting to Batch RenewalsGetting to Batch Renewals

From the Service menu, select Renew Contracts to open the Contract Renewal window.

Basic InformationBasic Information

In the Renewal cutoff date field, enter a date that e-automate can use to compare with contract expiration dates.

Note: E-automate allows you to enter any date in this field so you can determine and renew contracts that will expire in the future. For example, you may want to see contracts that will expire at the end of this month or next month.

In the Percent complete field, enter a complete percent parameter.

Note: E-automate will only show contracts in this list that are in excess of the percent complete value on the renewal cutoff date. e-automate calculates the number of days from the start to the expiration of a contract and then determines the Percent complete based on the based on the Renewal cutoff date, if the percent complete of the contract in days exceeds the value in the Percent complete field, the contract is listed in the Contract Renewal list.

In the Expiration type field, use the drop-down menu and select an appropriate type.

Note: If you selected Expire By Copy Contracts Only, you can additionally check the Forecast expiration checkbox. You use the forecast functionality to request e-automate to forecast whether a contract that expires by meters based will be expired based on the date identified in the Renewal cutoff date field. E-automate calculates this value by calculating an average daily click amount and using it to estimate future meter expectations.

If you want the list to filter by contracts that meet a minimum profit margin criteria, check the Minimum profit margin checkbox and specify your minimum profit margin.

Note: E-automate displays all contracts in the resulting list that are expiring based on your criteria; however, it does not allow the contracts that do not meet the minimum margin criteria to be bulk renewed and displays a message in the Status column explaining the reason.

Click [Go] to display all contracts that meet your criteria.

To filter the list using the QuickSearch, do the following:

To perform a basic QuickSearch, do the following:

In the unlabeled column field (the first field in the QuickSearch region), use the drop-down menu to select the column of data you want to search.

In the unlabeled comparison operator field (the second field from the left in the QuickSearch region), select the method by which the value you specify for this field must relate to the value in the field by which you are searching for the system to consider the record a match. The available options may include any of the following, depending upon the data type of the column: equals, contains, does NOT contain, begins with, does NOT begin with, ends with, does NOT end with, is less than, is greater than, is in the range, is NOT equal to, and is NOT in the range.

In the unlabeled value field(s) in the QuickSearch region, which may be a single entry field for specifying a value, a set of entry fields for specifying a range of values, or a set of radio buttons for selecting a specific value, enter the value or range of values for which you wish to search.

Note: Observe these guidelines:

If the field is a monetary/currency field, do not enter the monetary/currency symbol in the field.

If the field is a text entry field, the search is not case-sensitive.

If the comparison operator you select is based on sorted values (e.g., you set the comparison operator to is greater than), the system sorts data in numeric-alpha order; a search for column values greater than A1 will exclude all values that begin with a number.

Click [Go] to perform the search.

To use advanced QuickSearch functionality, see the Using the QuickSearch topic.

Completing Batch RenewalsCompleting Batch Renewals

Select the contracts you want to renew by placing a check in the checkbox beside each contract or click [Check all] to check all contracts in the list. As necessary, use [Uncheck all].

Note: You can manually check contracts to renew or you can narrow your QuickSearch as necessary so you can use the [Check all] button.

Once you have the list narrowed and the contracts checked, renew the contract(s) by clicking [Renew contracts]. e-automate renews the checked contracts.

Note: A renewed contract retains the same major contract number with an incremented revision number. Incremented revision numbers tell you how many times the contract has been renewed.

Manual Contract RenewalsManual Contract Renewals

From the e-automate toolbar, click [Contracts] to view the Service Contracts list window.

Select the contract to be renewed.

Click [Renew] to open the Edit Service Contract window with the contract prepared for renewal.

Verify and make any changes to the contract for the upcoming contract period.

To enter a beginning meter reading on the contract, do the following:

Click the Equipment/Item tab.

Double-click on the metered equipment to open the Edit Contract Equipment/Item window.

Click the Meters tab to bring it forward.

In the Meter type field, use the lookup icon to select the meter type you intend to enter first.

In the Start Meter field, enter the meter display for the selected meter type.

Repeat Steps d and e for each meter type.

Click [OK]. E-automate saves the new meters and returns to the Edit Contract Equipment/Item window.

Click [OK]. The Attention Required window displays.

Click [Yes] to renew and save the contract.