Introduction:

Contracts can be used to register all the products or services the customer bought. In case the use of products or services is time limited the use of contracts allows you also to invoice these accounts periodically. Think about maintenance fee for software, subscriptions papers or magazines or to collect the contribution of members of organizations. During the contract prolongation process contracts are prolonged automatically as well invoices are created by a background process. These invoices can be imported in one of Exact back offices products like Exact Globe 200x.

Before using the contracts master data needs to be entered and some settings to be configured. This document describes the steps you have to take to set up the contract prolongation and is one of the three main documents that describes the total concept of contracts in e-Synergy. Although the document explains clearly the steps to be taken it sometimes can help to have examples in which the prolongation rules are explained.

• Setting up: Contracts for accounts

 Setting up: Prolongation of contracts

• Setting up: Invoicing accounts using Exact Globe 200x

Setting up: Prolongation of contracts:

After creating contracts the first step to take is to define the contract parameters. The parameters are used to determine the prolongation frequency, period, price index, etc. You can define parameters for every division. For one division you can set up the prolongation frequency for 1 year and for another division for 1 month and so on. If the parameters are defined it will effect all contract created for the accounts linked to this division. Note that you can define more than one parameters for one division. The latter created contract parameters are the ones that rules for contracts created with a prolongation date that is more recent than the one choosen in 'valid from' date of the contract parameters. Contracts with a prolongation date before the 'valid from' date of the latter contract parameters will be effected by the penultimate contract parameters.

• Step 1: Setting up contract parameters

Once the parameters are defined you can define the process type 'Prolongation'. The process is used to trigger the background job 'BLProcess' for checking the contracts and invoicing the accounts based on the contract parameters and the contracts themselves. As soon the background process is started it will check the prolongation settings in [CRM, Reports, Contract: Prolongation, Processes]. The contracts will be prolonged as soon the prolongation date of the contract items is in the range of the date defined in the prolongation process settings.

• Step 2: Contract prolongation processes

Before starting the job 'BLProcess' the document category in which the prolongation documents are created should be predefined. When the jobs run a document is created to inform the user about the number of processed contracts and the invoiced amount as well to attach the xml or htm file to the document. The documents category can be set in [System, Maintenance, Settings - General, Processes].

• Step 3: Defining document category for prolongation documents

Check the settings of the main category in [Document, Maintenance, Miscellaneous, Main categories/Categories/Subcategories] if any of the options is mandatory. In case one of the option is than this could lead to error message during the prolongation process. Reason is that the job can not gather the required mandatory information needed to create a document.

• Step 4: Checking settings document main category

Now you are ready to run the background job 'BLProcess'. In case you have not yet installed the background job than the next steps will help you in this.

• Setup application jobs in MS SQL Server Agent

To configure the job use the information in the next document. Search for the background job 'BLProcess'.

• Synergy and the background applications

After the job is configured you can run the job. The next document explains the prolongation process:

• Contract processes explained

After succesfully running the job the contract is now updated and will be invoiced again as as soon the prolongation date of the contract items is in the range of the date defined in the prolongation process settings.

Related Topics:

• Setting up: Contracts for accounts
• Setting up: Invoicing accounts using Exact Globe 200x
• Contract prolongation examples 
• Creating accounts