Viewing Service Contracts

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You can access the Service Contracts page by clicking the Service Contracts sub-tab on the Account Details page, as shown in Figure 1.

 

accountdetails

Figure 1 Accessing the Service Contracts Page

The Service Contracts feature is designed to fit the needs of organizations that provide long- or short-duration contracted services to their customers. For example, electrical maintenance contracts or computer hardware maintenance contracts are well-suited for this module.

Contracts are attached to accounts, and may also have assets attached to them. Assets are items under contract, and may include hardware of various sorts, or computer software, or even a swimming pool for a pool-maintenance business.

The Service Contracts page summarizes the contracts in place for the account in question, as shown in Figure 2.

When you click action_icon, a context menu is displayed. This menu provides the following options:

View Details - view details of an existing contract.
Modify - modify details of an existing contract.
Delete - delete an existing contract.

 

account_servicecontract

Figure 2 The Service Contracts Page

Click the Add Service Contract link to add a service contract. The Add Service Contract page is displayed, as shown in Figure 3.

Note: A truncated image of the Add Service Contract page is displayed in Figure 3.

You can enter the following details:

Contract number and value of the contract
Initial contract date
Start and end dates of the contract
Category and type of the contract
Labor categories of work done in connection with this contract
Customer contact for the contract
Description and billing notes for the contract
Hours off the contract, for an hourly-based contract and Service Level Agreement (SLA) information
Service model options indicating the response time and details of telephonic, email, and onsite services

Important: All fields marked with a red asterisk are mandatory.

 

Accounts_addservcontract

Figure 3 The Add Service Contract Page

Using Contracts

Contracts can be used in several ways. They are referenced from the Help Desk module. When a customer has a problem and a help desk ticket is created, it is associated with a contract. Contracts provide the following information:

How to charge the customer for a fix?
How quickly must you respond?

If the customer has paid for a block of service time, then the time used to fix a problem gets automatically subtracted from the service hours left on the contract. A variety of SLA fields in the contract are used to escalate problems and deliver special alerts.