How to create contracts for fixed fee maintenance contracts

[Ryan1975]

Hello All,

I am new here and looking for some advice and support.

I run a small IT support business where we offer clients unlimited telephone, remote and onsite support for fixed annual fee. We often bill the clients monthly. There are different packages and pricing but a typical example would include telephone, remote and onsite support for maintenance but expansion and work related to changes would become chargeable.

I have been going through the Contracts options for CommitCRM CRM and I can only see 4 options:
* Global
* Block of Time
* Block of Money
* Block of Tickets

It seems like none of these types fit into the model that I am talking about. Can anyone advise how I can do this?

I am currently evaluating CommitCRM CRM, and this is a big factor or me.

[lpopejoy]

Ryan,

The "CommitCRM way" of doing this, is to do a "Block of Money" contract. I believe the only way to do it is to create a contract for the same period of time the client is paying for. So if they are month to month billing, create the contract as that. Then, every month, you use the "Batch Contract Copy" function to "copy" all expiring contracts to the next date range, and the "Batch Complete" (both found under the "contracts" menu) to complete all expired contracts.

Plug your billing amounts into the "contract-price-charges" tab in the contract window. This will automatically create charges for the contract each month when you renew it.

One nice thing about creating a "block of money" contract is that it will alert you when you go over the set block of money amount. You can also report on the profitability of that contract (kind of). This only works if you create tickets and charges against that ticket for all of the time you work - it doesn't bill for those charges, it only decreases from your block of money. When you go over, it still doesn't auto-bill for these charges, it just creates a negative block of money value.

For any charges you create under a ticket that are NOT covered by your contract, you will need to choose the "Global System Contract" for each charge of that type. That allows it to be "billable" and not to decrease from your block of money amount.

Hope that helps you out!

Luke