One Contract for Many Customers

[WTIQuest]

Is there a way to create a Global Contract that is used by multiple customers? We offer a month to month service where we provide unlimited remote labor and a reduced on-site labor rate for a fixed monthly fee. I have many customer on the same service. Can I create one Contract that gets applied to all of these customers?

Also, it would be nice if there was an option to create a Global contact with no expiration date. Our service is month to month forever unless the customer cancels.

[Support Team]

Thank you for posting this. A Contract is always related to an account and cannot be shared by several accounts. This is on purpose. Even if the terms are common you probably still looking at charging your customers for each Contract by the month, so each month when the contracts are renewed (customers probably pay something for the unlimited remote support), with the Contract-Price Charges feature you get to easily bill your customer (and optionally invoice it with QuickBooks right from within RangerMSP).

From your question we're not sure if you actually invoice your customer each month with RangerMSP and QuickBooks, in case you do not and just want to have special pricing terms (e.g. Remote Support $0 where on-site support $50, for example) then you should consider using the Custom-Pricing feature at the Account level and not using Contracts at all.
Side note: In case you do need to use Contracts then simply use the Custom Pricing feature at the Contract level.

Also - you can easily copy the custom pricing settings you've set from one account (or contract) to the other by using the 'Copy from...' option located at the top right corner of the Customer-Pricing tab.

Hope this helps.

[WTIQuest]

Yes, I invoice my customer each month but I currently do it with a recurring invoice in Quickbooks. If I set my Contract in CommitCRM to monthly is there a way to have it automatically renew or do I have to manually create a new Contract each month by copying it from the previous month.

What I am really concerned with is having the system default to the correct Item in a Charge. I have an Item created for this this but currently my technicians must select it properly for each Charge. Making it the default Item for the Contract seems to do that. However there does not appear to be a way to automatically disable the Billing check box in the Charge for this Item. We do not invoice for Charge with this Item. How do I automatically remove the Billable check box from Charges that have this item?

[Support Team]

You control which Contracts are renewed. Renewing Contracts can either be on a one by one basis or using the Batch Renewal option that lets you renew any number of recurring Contracts with just a few clicks. Click here to learn all about it.

Indeed you should select default Items for Contracts and then these will be selected automatically when you add Charges under the Contract. In regards to the Billable flag- its default value is determined automatically based on the type of Contract you selected and not the Item (I believe that we have a feature request for this and I will add your vote, thanks for asking). Click here to learn how the default value for the Billable flag is set.

Hope this helps.

[raymond]

this is a very timely post... another request for custom contracts specifically related to being able to modify the default behavior of the "Billable" check box in a charge!

WTIQuest -- not sure how your systems are set up but I'm thinking along the lines of CommitCRM when they suggested just using custom pricing and skip the contract all together. The other option (and what we do for contracts) is set the due date out a year and renew it on a yearly basis (you could set it out 100 years but I like the idea of reviewing and creating a "new" contract on a yearly basis).

CommitCRM -- here is another example where having the option to link custom pricing directly to another (template) account would save folks a TON of time and reduce potential user errors.

cheers!

//ray

[WTIQuest]

raymond - Thanks for the input. Right now I dont use Contracts or Custom Pricing for my Accounts. I simply have multiple Items for each different pricing option and my techs have to choose the correct one each time the create a Charge. Needless to say they dont always choose correctly. What really bothers me though the the billable flag. If I could simply have the billable flag set by default in the Item it would solve a lot of problems for me. Like you I dont like having to renew the contracts all the time and if I change my pricing I have to go in and change it in every contract or customer if using custom pricing.

I only have two pricing models. I wish I could just create a second global contract that is applied to my chosen customers and when I make a change it is applied to all customer that have that contract.

[raymond]

I guess I don't understand... if you don't use contracts then you would always be using the global system contract which always defaults charges to "billable".

We are just the opposite... we do NOT want the billable check box checked... in fact, we would love to have it so that it all defaulted to non-billable and only select users could mark anything as billable.
Our work workflow is such that all tickets are worked over time, when a tech says it's done (and they have entered a resolution), they mark it as "completed pending review" in the status drop down (we have customized ours). This triggers a manager to review the ticket who then makes sure that what the client asked for is done, the resolution is good, and all the charges make sense (if anything needs to be corrected, either they fix it or send it back to the tech for cleanup)... the manager then marks each charge as billable and closes the ticket. This triggers the bookkeeper to bill it. When a tech forgets to uncheck an item as billable, the charge bypasses the manager and goes straight to the bookkeeper... not good... (!)

On the custom pricing thing, if we could have one account simply reference a second account's custom pricing tab, then you would be able to simply set up two template accounts with the items entered (and their correct pricing structures) and link accounts accordingly... not only would this save you time, it would also allow you to cut the number of items in half (because you said you only have two pricing models) and errors would be greatly reduced.

Commit... we need custom contracts and the ability to link custom pricing directly to other accounts... pleeeeeeeaaaaase!!

:-)

//ray

[Support Team]

Feedback noted. Thanks.