Adding Costs to a Maintenance Contract

Costs can be added/charged against a maintenance contract in the Maintenance Costs window. The Maintenance Costs window is only used to capture costs to record how profitable the maintenance contract is. No billing amounts are calculated and no invoice is generated. MCC invoices are created during a separate procedure. Maintenance costs are only created from service calls having a call type of MC or MCC. While the Maintenance Costs window looks different than the Service Invoice window, many functions are the same.

If you are using the manual method of revenue recognition, the Service Invoice window opens when you choose the Invoice button in the Service Call window. The Maintenance Costs window is not available with the manual revenue recognition method.

1. Choose Cards > Service Management > Service Manager.
2. Select a customer and choose the History indicator.
3. Double-click an MCC call.
4. Choose Invoice. Add costs to the maintenance call, following the same procedure as service invoices. You are not able to select a different tax schedule ID or customer ID in the Maintenance Costs window.
5. Close the window or choose Post to post the costs. After posting the costs, the letter "P" appears next to the Cost Transaction Number field. Choose the expansion button in the Cost Transaction Number field to open the Cost Transaction Numbers Posted window. Double-click an invoice to open the Posted Maintenance Costs window.

View posted cost amounts from the Revenue/Costs window. You can close the Maintenance Costs window without posting or canceling. While this records your costs, you must choose Post for the costs to appear in the Revenue/Costs window. Costs that are added from a purchase order do not appear until the purchase order is received.

If you have the Use Service Debit Accounts option marked in Service Options, the Create COGS Distributions for Invoices option marked in Invoice Options, and the Create Separate GL Transactions for Costs option marked in Maintenance Options, posting costs directly to the maintenance contract debits COGS and credits WIP and/or Accrued Cost. You will see a posting journal entry.

If you do not have these options marked, posting costs directly to the maintenance contract has no immediate accounting implication. Since costs are accumulated through the accounting modules or through the Service Management manual-add feature, the appropriate general ledger accounts were already debited or credited or will be once batches are posted.

Editing the contract spending plan

If estimate costs for the contract are distributed per month, you may choose to compare estimate and actual costs at any point during the life of the contract and, if necessary, revise your estimates.
You may also have to edit cost estimates if, for example, the length of a contract changes. If a contract is shortened, any months that no longer fall within the contract date range are automatically removed from the spending plan; if lengthened, months are added. When the contract length changes, estimate costs need to be manually redistributed for each cost category.

1. Choose Cards > Service Management > Service Manager. Choose a customer, and use the Contract icon to open the Maintenance Contract window.
2. Select a contract, and choose Revenue / Cost to open the Revenue/Costs window.
3. If you want to edit the monthly breakdown of an estimate for a cost category, you can use the expansion button next to any estimate field to re-open the appropriate Estimate Costs window. If you want to edit the total estimate amount for a cost category, the new amount that you enter will be automatically distributed among the months of the contract per the existing percentage of the total estimate amount for each month.
4. For additional distribution options, choose the expansion button after editing the total estimate amount. You will receive a message asking how the amounts should be generated.
   • Evenly
     Choose this option if you wish to split the new estimate amount evenly among the months.
   • Recent
     Choose this option if you wish to base the new monthly estimates on each month's previous percentage of the total cost category estimate.
   • Manual
     Choose this option if you wish to manually distribute the new estimate amount. The previous estimates populate, and it is up to you to add or subtract the appropriate amounts to equal the total estimate amount.