Customer Contracts and Billing

Billing now allows organizations to set up contracts with their customers to include pre-paid per-incident support. This enables organizations to manage customer support and billing based on the a time period, block of hours or a combination of the two. 

Before activating the Billing facility as an Administrator, here are some tips:

• Assign Global Items to a User/Org.Unit – prior to activating the Contracts facility, all Global Items must be assigned to a User or Organizational Unit. Where it is not appropriate to assign the Item to a specific User, LiveTime recommends ownership to a specific department.
• Time Expired Contract option – when the Administrator activates the Contracts facility, they need to specify what happens to the time spent on a Request should a Contract expire during the Request resolution process. Select the Rollover option, if the time is to be applied against a future contract. Or, apply the Ignore option if the time is not to be covered by a future Contract.
• Contracts can be applied on a Per Request basis, which covers the life a service request from the time it is opened until it is closed. Per Item Contracts can be applied in three ways:
  • Subscription - covers a period of time (eg. a year)
  • Time Limited Subscription - a contract that covers a period of time or a number of support hours, whichever limit expires first
  • Support Hours - a contract that has a set number of support hours.
• Contract Validation – When enabled, Service Requests cannot be created in the system without a valid contract. A contract can be applied to an Item, Customer or Org Unit. As part of the contract validation process, LiveTime will look for a valid contract in the following order: 
  1. Item (with a valid contract).
  2. Customer (with a valid contract).
  3. Org Unit (with a valid contract).
  4. Item (with a pending contract).
  5. Customer (with a pending contract).
  6. Organizational Unit (with a pending contract).
  7. No contract found, then either a Per Incident or Per Item contract is created through the Incident.

For more information about Billing, refer to the Finance section of the LiveTime Service Manager User Guide.