Guaranteed Maintenance Overview

Modified on Fri, 19 Apr 2024 at 11:55 AM

Guaranteed Maintenance Setup

Some dealers have Guaranteed Maintenance contracts with customers. Softbase will track on a per-customer, per-unit basis all Income and Maintenance for each unit. This is an overview of how to set up your software to do the following:

Invoice Customer monthly for contract amount on a per unit basis.

Internal Invoicing of service work for the unit that is on contract. This is usually billed to a service department expense account associated with guaranteed maintenance billing.

Invoice customer for service work not associated with guaranteed maintenance. This is done as standard service billing to a customer.

Reporting of units on Guaranteed Maintenance with an Income / Maintenance overall for a given time.

Set Up Customer Equipment in Equipment setup window as usual.

Under the Guaranteed Maint. tab make sure the following is filled out:

Guaranteed Maintenance is checked.

Start Date - The date the contract started.

Number of Billing Periods – Is the total # of Billings for this customer (ex. 3 year contract would be 36).

Periods Billed – The number of billings that have occurred so far. The system will then assist you in Invoicing for the difference of the Number of Billing Periods and the Periods Billed.

Last Income Invoice # - Leave Blank.

Hours Allowed – Is informative data for the user.

OT Rate Per Hour – Is informative data for the user.

Customer Owned Unit – Must be checked

Note: Whenever a work order is opened against this serial no, a message will appear to the user. See below.

Sale Code Setup

From the Softbase main menu, Administration tab, select Sale Codes.

You need to set up a Sale Code for each department that will Invoice Maintenance on a Guaranteed Maintenance Unit. (Usually Road, Shop, PM and sometimes Rental)

Note: Most Guaranteed Maintenance or LTRFM is sold to the customer at a higher than normal internal labor rate. To allow the service department to bill internally at a labor rate established for GM, you can change the "Labor Rate Over-ride" drop down box to a specific rate. This will effectively allow the service department to bill at that rate anytime this sale code is used.

Enter the Revenue and Cost Account for Parts, Labor, Rental and Misc.

Make sure the Guaranteed Maintenance box is checked. Don’t check customer sale because this is going to be internal billing as per the expense code. You can set an automatic expense code as well to make it simpler for the end user when opening a service order.

You also need a Sale Code setup in the department through which you will be invoicing the customer for the monthly guaranteed maintenance agreement. Invoicing the customer will always come through Misc entry therefore this will show a Misc entry with the revenue account that you want the monthly maintenance amount to be recorded into. There is no Cost Account for this entry. The cost comes from your maintenance invoicing. Be sure to select the Guaranteed Maint flag on this sale code so that the billing will be tracked appropriately. Also the Customer sale flag should be checked.

Expense Code Setup

From the Softbase main menu, Administration tab, select Expense Codes.

You need to have an Expense Code for the Cost of Sale of Guaranteed Maintenance. This account should be the offset of the Revenue account that was set up for Customer billing. Make the code name meaningful so that employee’s that open Invoices can pick it out easily.

Note: When the invoices close for Guaranteed Maintenance (Maintenance side) the totals will update the Internal Expense buckets and the Guaranteed Maintenance Service bucket in the Equipment “Info” Icon.

Internal Invoicing

Create a sales order using the internal guaranteed maintenance sale code for the service department. If you set the automatic expense code, the Expense information will populate for you. If not be sure to set the Expense Information section to expense to the appropriate department and expense code to offset the monthly maintenance. Set the Ship to customer to be the appropriate customer account that the service is being performed at/for. The Bill To account should be your internal customer account for internal billing. Under the Service 1 tab identify the equipment record that you are performing service on. Open the order, charge out all necessary line items. Invoice the order and the value should be visible in the Equipment window, History button, Guaranteed Maintenance section.

Customer Invoicing

Create a sales order in the appropriate department to bill the customer for the monthly guaranteed maintenance agreement.

Under the Misc tab is where the equipment entry will need to be added to the work order. Enter the Description you would like your customer to see. Select the appropriate Sale Code that was setup specifically for billing Guaranteed Maintenance. Enter the monthly amount. In the GM Serial # field select the equipment record you are billing for. Click the Add button to add the line item to your order.

The income bucket is only filled when you invoice under Misc. Entry for a unit that is on Guaranteed Maintenance. The system will automatically duplicate the Invoice for the “Number of Periods” left in the Equipment section. It will also carry over all Misc. Entries for ease of Invoicing next time. Make sure you put in the serial # and hour meter information in the GM Serial # area. This tells the system what serial # to apply the Misc. invoicing too.

Reports

Use the Guaranteed Maintenance Reports (or GM reports) for an overall recap of all of the units on Guaranteed Maintenance.