Renewing Maintenance Contracts

When you renew a contract, you can use the information on the Revenue/Costs window to help determine how profitable the contract was so that you can increase or decrease the billing amount for the new contract accordingly. New billing and revenue recognition schedules are created, and maintenance tasks are reset. The frequency and schedule assigned to a task at contract renewal time are used to schedule the new task dates; if the newly calculated schedule date falls within the new contract period, the new task schedule is created from the last schedule date.

The contract task schedule dates are preserved for the new contract period if the contract that is being renewed has new dates that are the same month and day for both the start date and expiration dates.

Example: Contract 2020 with Start Date 01/01/2020 and Expiration Date of 12/31/2020 is being renewed. If the Start Date 01/01/2021 and Expiration Date of 12/31/2021 are entered for the new contract, then the contract task schedule dates remain the same in the new contract period.

When the dates differ from the contract being closed to the new contract date, you must verify your tasks and task schedule dates upon renewal as they cannot be preserved in all scenarios.

If you are renewing a contract that has a spending plan, and you are keeping the same estimate costs as the previous contract, the breakdown of the estimated costs on the spending plan is transferred to the new contract. For example, if you are renewing a contract that runs from 1/1/2020 through 12/31/2020 with labor estimates of $600 in April and October and $100 in May through September, the same estimate costs default into the same months of 2021.

You may want to wait to renew a contract until it has been completely billed and revenue has been recognized for each period. If you allow the renewal process to close the current contract, all billing schedule, revenue recognition, and contract information are moved to history based on the setup option.

However, if you need to renew a contract before it can be closed, you have the option of leaving the current contract open, to be closed later. For example, you need to renew a contract that runs from 1/1/2020 through 12/31/2020; however, you cannot close the old contract until costs are posted for the last appointment on 12/28. You can renew the contract and generate new tasks while holding the old contract open until all costs have been posted for the last service call. This ensures that costs will be posted to the correct contract period without having to reconcile.

You may have a contract that is open multiple times if it is left open during individual contract renewal, mass contract renewal, or master contract renewal. See Leaving a Contract Open for more information on contracts that are left open.

If the Customer or Location is inactive, you will not be able to create or renew maintenance contracts.

When renewing a contract that has a task list with inactive tasks, only the active task codes will be assigned to the contract. This applies to maintenance contracts, master contracts, as well as mass renewing contracts. You can print a report before renewing by selecting Print > Contract Inactive Tasks that shows any inactive tasks or task lists on the contract(s). This report will automatically print after renewing if there are any inactive tasks or tasks lists that were not added to the new contract(s).  See Setting up Maintenance Task Codes and Task Lists.

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