Transferring Costs and Billing from a Service Call to a Job

You can move costs from a service call to a job. For example, a service call might be deemed too large and longer in duration, and it might be prudent to transfer the costs to and track everything as a job. Or, your service organization might use Service Management to provide labor resources or equipment to a job, but use Job Cost to capture budgets and costs, and invoice customers.

In the first scenario above, you would completely transfer costs to be maintained - and invoiced - at the job level. In the second scenario, you would only bill the costs to the job; the costs would remain with the service call, but are billed as cost plus markup to recognize revenue.

The process involves mapping cost categories in Service Management to cost codes in Job Cost. See Transferring or billing costs for more information.

This procedure requires Service Management and Job Cost, and is performed from within Service Management. This feature requires a Microsoft Dynamics Full User license.

In addition to the ability to transfer an entire cost category to a specific cost code, you can also map transactions within a cost category to more than one Job cost code. See Transaction Mapping for information on mapping transactions.

During the transfer, the following occurs:

• The service costs which were transferred to the job are credited against the service call via general ledger journal transactions that are created during the transfer process, resulting in a net zero cost balance on the service call. The batch number used for the general journal transactions is established during the Transfer process.

• The job is debited with the new costs, via the offsetting general journal transactions.

  

  If the service costs are billed to the job as opposed to transferred, the ‘cost’ applied to the job is the marked up billable amount of each service transaction.

• The batch of general journal entries is posted.

• The service call is closed.

This feature also works for credit memos (negative transactions). In this case, the job would be credited and service call would be debited. Certified Payroll jobs cannot be transferred.

With the Signature 2018 R4 release, we've removed the ability to add a job on the fly in the Job Transfer window. However, if you utilize this feature, you can turn this back on by adding EnableTransferToJobCreateJob=TRUE to the Dex.ini file.

Set Up Moving Costs from a Service Call to a Job

Setting Up Mapping Defaults for Cost Codes

You can set up default JC cost codes to use for mapping with cost categories in Service. You can map the Labor category to any cost from any element as a default for labor. When you transfer costs from a service call to a job, these defaults will be used automatically. You can also change them at transfer time.

1. Select Microsoft Dynamics GP > Tools > Setup > Job Cost > Account Setup > Service Transfer Mapping. The Map Service Cost Categories to JC Cost Codes window opens.
2. Select a Job Cost Division.
3. For each cost category, select the corresponding JC cost code.
4. Save your defaults.

Repeat these steps for each division, as necessary.

Setting Up an Intra-Company Account (Bill to Job Only)

An intra-company account is required and will be credited to service when costs are moved from a service call to a job.

1. Select Microsoft Dynamics GP > Tools > Setup > Service Management > Invoice Setup > Invoice Accounts. The Invoice Accounts window opens.
2. Select an Intracompany Sales account, then select Save and close the window.

Transferring Costs or Billing Amounts to a Job

1. From the Service Call window, select the Transfer to Job button. The Transfer Service Costs to Job window opens.
2. Select the transfer type radio button:
   • Transfer to Job - Transfers the cost amount to the job.
   • Bill to Job - Transfer the billing amount as a cost to the job.
3. Enter a Batch ID.
4. In the Job Cost Fields section, select an existing Job Number. The job information is displayed in this section.

5. In the Mapping section, if Job cost codes were set up for the selected division, they will display by default. (See Setting Up Mapping Defaults for Cost Codes above for more information.) Otherwise, use the lookup to select the Cost Code in Job Cost that you want to map to each Cost Category in Service Management. To transfer service cost category transactions to specific job cost codes, see Transaction Mapping below. 

   

   If the cost code does not display, verify that the cost code was not marked inactive on the job in the Job Cost Codes Setup window. To verify this, go to Cards > Job Cost > Jobs, select the job and then select Cost Codes. If the Inactive check box is marked, the cost code will not display for that job.

6. Select Transfer. Select Yes to the confirmation message to begin the transfer. If you select Clear and then Continue, the window will be completely cleared and any transaction mapping you've done will be removed.
7. When finished, if successful, you will receive a Transfer successfully completed message. Select OK. The General Posting Journal will be available to view or print. This report shows the GL transactions created because of the costs being moved. The call from which you moved costs is now marked as Closed.

Transaction Mapping

You can map separate transactions within a Service cost category to multiple job cost codes. While not all cost categories have to have the transactions mapped separately, if you do select to map a category's transactions, you will need to map all of the transactions within that category. A warning indicator will display on the Transfer Service Costs To Job window by the service cost category name if some of the transactions within that category haven't been mapped. You will need to map the remaining transactions before you can save the batch in the Transfer Service Costs To Job window.

In the Transfer Service Costs To Job window:

• If you selected Transfer To Job, the receipts will display in the Unmapped Service Transactions.
• If you selected Bill To Job, the purchase orders will display in the Unmapped Service Transactions.

To map cost category transactions:

1. From the Transfer Service Costs to Job window, select the Cost Category blue arrow icon.
2. In the Transaction Mapping window, the following information defaults from the Transfer Service Costs to Job window:
   • Service Call
   • Job Number
   • Cost Category - This defaults the cost category arrow selection. You can select a different cost category as needed.
3. Select the Cost Code Number. The lookup opens the Job Cost Codes Lookup window and displays the cost codes specific to the Cost Category.
4. The Unmapped Service Transactions section displays all unmapped service transactions that exist for the cost category for the service call.
5. You can select one or more transactions in this section. To mark more than one transaction, hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard and mark the specific transactions. You can also mark all by holding down the CTRL key and pressing the letter A.
6. Select Map from the menu bar, or right-click and then select Map To Job Cost Code. You can also double-click on a transaction to map the transaction.

7. As transactions are mapped, they are moved from the Unmapped Service Transactions section to the Mapped Service Transactions. To unmap a transaction, in the Mapped Service Transactions section you can right-click on a mapped transaction and select to unmap or select the transaction and then select Unmap from the toolbar or you can double-click the mapped transaction.

8. In the Mapped Service Transactions section, mark Show All Cost Categories to display all of the mapped transactions for all the Cost Categories, not just the mapped transactions for the selected Cost Category.

9. You do not have to map all of the transactions to the same cost code number. You can select a different cost code number and then continue mapping any remaining transactions.
10. While still in the Transaction Mapping window, you can select a different Cost Category to set up the mapping for that category in the same method as described above.

11. When you are done mapping individual transactions, close the Transaction Mapping window to return to the Transfer Service Costs to Job window.

    1. Cost Categories that have all transactions mapped will display *Mapped by Transaction instead of a specific cost code.

    2. If a Cost Category has some of the transactions mapped, but not all will display an icon.
    3. Any transactions that aren't mapped separately in the Transaction Mapping window will be mapped to the Cost Code displayed for the Cost Category on the Transfer Service Costs To Job window. (See Transferring or Billing Costs.)
       
12. Continue with step 6 under Transferring or Billing Costs.

Viewing the Results after Moving Costs

When a cost transfer is complete, a General Posting Journal is available immediately for viewing and printing. In this section, we will illustrate what happens after a move and differentiate between a full transfer and a billing transfer.

General Posting Journal - A familiar report that shows the journal entry created for the GL transaction during the move costs process, along with each account that is credited/debited. Notice that, during a Transfer to, each account is credited and debited accordingly. In the Bill to, only the intracompany sales account is credited.

Transfer to:

Bill To:

Service Invoice Inquiry window - Access this window by opening the Service Call window and choosing the Invoice button.