Batch copy contract feature needs more work

Hi,

I now have an 8-step procedure for setting up contracts for the next month. Way too much work!

Please enhance the batch copy contract feature:

- Automatically update each account's default contract with the corresponding new contract.

- Automatically set the Status of each expired contract to Completed.

- Automatically update all open tickets that reference an old contract to use the corresponding new contract.

I guess you could add a page to the wizard to make each of these updates optional (might not want to do them if someone runs the wizard before month-end), but it adds a lot of work to have to do all this manually after running the batch copy wizard each month.

Thanks,

Mark Berry

Hi Mark,

Thank you for pointing out these great points. These are indeed items which we have heard as requests from other users as well. As you mentioned, this will not fit everyone's work-flow, however, it can be helpful in many cases.

I've added your vote for each of these features and I hope we will be able to provide at least some of these additional capabilities to the existing wizard. Thanks for your great feedback!

Sheli

Thank you.

It will use the new contract as the default now - unless you have multiple contracts for that date range.

On your other points, add my vote too! :)

--Luke

Hi Luke,

Many thanks for the input, I've added your vote to the feature request.
Please keep the ideas coming, your opinions are very important to us.

Reno

Ditto for me. We use multiple contracts for our MSP clients.
1. One MSP fixed price contract
2. contract for Out-of-MSP-contract charges - often accounting has to move charges to this area as techs do not always make the desired call on whether work is in or out of contract (we run our Out-of-MSP-contract from 1/1/2009 through 12/31/2009 so we don't have to keep recreating it). This works better for us than making charges <billable> under a single MSP fixed price contract.
3. One or more individual contracts for any project work we do for the client (new server, new software system install, etc.). These project contracts have a start and end date of their own.

So for any given MSP client, we will always have two active contracts and could possibly have 3, 4 or more active contracts at any time.

This is what works for us. Mark Berry's request would suit us to a T.

Hi Luke,

I have two contracts for a client so currently I have to manually re-assign the default contract.

Mark Berry

RE: "Automatically update each account's default contract with the corresponding new contract." - would cause me a problem. Only used one cycle so far, but I think my setting of default contract is sticking. If it auto updated, it'd cause a problem (hosting charges vs. IT support). So if you add this, please make it an optional setting on the run. Thanks.

Joshua,

Your say your default contract is "sticking." Does that mean that your default contract does _not_ expire each month? Mine does. So maybe the request should be phrased, "Check each account and if the default contract is the one you are replacing as part of the batch copy (meaning that the default contract has expired), replace it with the corresponding new contract."

Mark Berry