Order generation from sales contracts

You can generate orders from contracts. This supports executing and billing regularly recurring services such as maintenance and inspections, as well as the monthly or quarterly billing of items without an interval, such as licenses or services. The following are supported in detail:

• Generating service orders according to the billing interval.
• Transferring contract items with execution intervals to the order along special rules (for example, maintenance, inspections).
• Creating flat-rate items per service object in the contract billing order.
• Controlling which contract types are covered by the job.
• Generating sales orders.
• Transferring contract items without an execution interval to the order (e.g., license items).
• Changing current contracts without contract versioning.

The “Create orders for contracts” job (PSA_CRE_CTR_SVC_ORD) lets you create service orders from active contracts in a configurable planning horizon, controlled by settings of the respective contract. You can use the CTR_STY parameter to instruct the job to only include specific contract types (project subtypes). In the standard system, service and maintenance contracts are covered.

For a contract, you can control which order type is generated from it. There are two selections for this in the “Order creation” section on the Invoice tab.

• Sales order or service order
• The order type selection offers the subtypes for sales orders and the service contract types (SVC_ORD processes) for service orders.

For contracts, there are two tabs displaying the generated orders: Orders (Service) and Orders (Sales). With sales orders, the contract component is presented under by Contract.

Order generation provides meaningful order keywords that show the period of the invoice interval, for example, “Keyword from contract (01.02.24-30.04.24)” for quarterly settlement.

For contracts, the Create orders function is available. This allows orders to be created interac­tively as an alternative to the job. The function must be executed after a contract has been created or changed. You are automatically reminded of this when the status of the contract changes to active.

For sales orders, all items without an execution interval (Interval column = EMPTY) are copied to the invoice orders. The following rules apply:

• At all top positions, the quantity is divided between the invoice orders, for example:
  Quantity in contract = 12 months
  Invoice interval = quarterly
  Quantity in invoice order = 3
• The subitems are copied over without changes.
• The delivery date is shown in the scope of delivery of the sales order. The item delivery date is set to the order start date.
• The system uses a check function in the contract delivery scope to ensure that no items with intervals are present in the structure of items without intervals. The check function is executed before the order is generated and prevents this if the scope of delivery is set up incorrectly.
• The value calculation for an order permits a negative order value. This allows credit notes to be mapped, e.g. if the scope is reduced in an ongoing contract. Negative position and order values are taken into account in all calculations in the system (drill-down, cockpit elements, etc.).

JustRelate CRM allows contracts without versioning to be extended or reduced. To do this, add items (for reductions with a negative quantity) and enter a start date for the item. The start date can also be seen in the costing view of the contract. Then set the contract status to Con­tract changed.

The order generation job identifies the changed contract and performs the following actions:

• It calculates the difference quantity for the added items on the basis of the start date entered until the next regular billing date, and transfers this to an order generated separately. The order keyword of this separate order receives “CR” (Change Request) as a postfix.

• The job regenerates all future orders.
• It sets the contract status to Active.