Contract Manager (Legacy)
Contract Manager Help and User Guide (Legacy) will take you through the features and settings for the Sicon Contract Manager module for Sage 200.
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This guide is for the legacy “SOP” Contract Manager, a new Help and User guide for the new Contracts Module is available.
The Contract Manager Help and User Guide (Legacy) will take you through the features and settings for the Sicon Contract Management module for Sage 200.
It looks like any other Sage 200 module, making it easy to use for anyone already familiar with the Sage 200 environment.
Reports are available within the Sage 200 report designer so they can be amended to suit specific business requirements.
1. Contract Maintenance
The contract maintenance screen is used to maintain contract details and generate sales orders on a regular basis for each contract.
NB: The Copy…, Change Customer… and Change Next Due Date… are only available when enabled in the module Configuration Settings screen (see below).
The Copy… button may be used to copy an existing contract to another customer or replicate a contract for the same customer.
The Change Customer… button may be used to change the customer account linked to an existing contract.All orders/invoices previously crated against this contract will remain on the existing customer’s account.
The Change Next Due Date… button can be used to adjust the next sales order/invoice generation date for a selected contract.
The Auto-Create button is used to generate sales orders/invoices for all selected contracts. When this button is pressed, the user is prompted to select a date which ‘next due’ dates are based on.
As an example:
Contracts are required to be generated on a monthly basis on the 1st of each month. If the 1st of May is a Saturday, contract sales orders/invoices could be processed on Friday 30thApril.
In this case, the Next due dates must be set ‘based-on’ 1st May as this will result in the following month’s contract sales orders being due on 1st June.
If this date were not changed to 1st May, the contracts would be updated with a Next due date of 30th May (i.e. 1 month after the processing date of 30th April).
If a contract is selected for sales order/invoice generation which is not yet due, a warning message will be displayed.
The details of generated contract sales orders may be viewed using the View Order… button on the Template Detail tab of the Contract Maintenance screen.
Following generation of contract sales orders, these transactions should be processes through the standard sales order processing functions (stock allocation, goods despatch, invoice printing, etc.) and are manually entered sales orders.
The View Transactions button can be used to display monthly sales revenue journals for annually invoiced contracts (see Monthly Journal Postings for Contracts below).
Previously (manually) created sales order can be retrospectively added to the contract using the Add Sales Order button in the Sales orders added to template section. After an order has been added using this method, deferred transactions can be viewed (or created) using the View Transactions button.
2. Contract Details
The Template Details tab displays information related to the contract customer and repeat frequency.
The Order Details tab displays the list of items (stock, free text, additional charge and comments) to be included on contract sales orders/invoices.
The Delivery & Invoicing tab displays the customer addresses, tax details, discounts and analysis codes.
The Contract Details tab displays additional information specific to the contract such as start date, contract type, etc. The module also includes a group of configurable fields, which may be shown on this screen (see Configurable Settings below).
3. Monthly Journal Postings
Following entry of a ‘non-monthly’ contract, (i.e. annual, 3 monthly, 6 monthly, etc.) the system can be configured to perform the following posting to the nominal ledger.
When the contract sales order/invoice is generated, total (annual) revenue will be posted to a nominal ledger ‘control’ account.
On a monthly basis this sales revenue can be journalled from the nominal ledger control account into the original revenue nominal account (for each contract item). As a default, the system will automatically split the contract value evenly on a month-by-month basis, however these values can be edited manually if required (see item 4. below).
To post revenue to the nominal ledger in this way the following process should be used:
- Each contract must be created with the nominal ledger control account selected and the Create monthly journal postings from deferred revenue box ticked on the Contract Details tab.
- As contract sales orders/invoices are generated, all revenue will be automatically posted to the selected nominal ledger control account.
- On a monthly basis the Monthly Journal Postings for Contracts screen is used to journal revenue between the nominal ledger control account and the original contract sales revenue accounts.
- The Contract Maintenance View Transactions button can be used to display all previously journalled (posted) and outstanding amounts for the current contract year. Manual adjustments to monthly journal values and dates are possible via the Edit Transactions button. NB: This example uses an annual contract split over 12 months. However it is also possible to use this process for quarterly, six-monthly contracts, etc.
- Month on month the nominal ledger control account will be debited until the balance posted to this account for this contract is reduced to zero (at the end of the contract year).
Notes
- If multiple sales order lines exist on the template, then multiple transactions will be created for each sales order line when the order is generated.
- The nominals for the journal postings will be what are on the sales order line and contract on the template at the time of posting the journal, not the original settings. So if the nominals are changed on the template, then all future journals will change as well.
- If you create transactions on an order already generated from a contract (this can be done by selecting View Transactions on the generated order in a contract), then the transactions before today’s date will be marked as posted by default. This is because it assumes that you have done the postings manually. This can be changed after the transactions are created.
- Journals are created from the start of the bill cover date. In other words, the first transaction will have a transaction date of the bill cover from date on the contract.
- Sales order lines on the template must be set to where you want the revenue to end up, the deferred nominal is set on the contracts tab. When the sales order is created, then the nominal on the sales order line is changed to the deferred nominal. Transactions are created to transfer amounts from deferred back onto the nominal set on the template line.
- If contract is deleted, the transactions will continue to post. So be aware that you may want to delete the transactions before deleting the contract. This may change in future versions.
4. Renewals (optional)
The renewals screen may be used to change the Annual review date on one or more contracts.
The annual review date is used for reference/reporting purposes, therefore adjustments to this date will not affect the contract sales order/invoice generation process.
5. Maintenance
The following contract related drop-down selections can be maintained via the Maintenance menu:
- Contract Type
- Payment Type
- Visit Frequency
- Who Sold
- Deletion Reason Codes
6. Reports
The following reports are available via the Reports menu:
- Contract Deferred Postings (allows reporting of deferred revenue or costs by date range)
7. Configuration Settings
The module includes several configurable options such as spare fields, which may be set using the Configuration Settings screen shown on the Utilities menu.
Setting Description (Constant) | Notes |
| AllowContractCopy | If ‘Yes’ the copy button will be enabled on the Contract Maintenance screen |
| AllowContractCustomerChange | If ‘Yes’ the change customer button will be enabled on the Contract Maintenance screen |
| AllowContractNextDateChange | If ‘Yes’ the change next contract date button will be enabled on the Contract Maintenance screen |
| ContractOrderLinesFixedPrice | If ‘Yes’ the system will force all contract order lines to ‘fix price’ when a contract is saved. |
| CreateOrdersForOnHoldCustomers | If ‘Yes’ contract sales orders will be created for ‘on-hold’ customer accounts.If ‘No’ contract sales orders will not be created for ‘on-hold’ customers, an information message will be displayed.If ‘Prompt’ the user will be prompted to confirm creation of orders for ‘on-hold’ customers. |
| DefaultMonthlyDeferredCostsTicked | If ‘Yes’ the ‘Create monthly journal postings from deferred costs’ tick-box will be checked by default when entering a new contract. |
| DefaultMonthlyDeferredRevenueTicked | If ‘Yes’ the ‘Create monthly journal postings from deferred revenue’ tick-box will be checked by default when entering a new contract. |
| EnableCustomerOrderNumberCheck | If ‘Yes’ the system will not allow entry of a contract order without a Customer Order Number. |
| MaintenanceItemsEnabled | If ‘Yes’ the ‘Maintenance Contract’ tab will be displayed in the stock item maintenance and enquiry screens. |
| SalesOrderAnalysisxValue | 6 settings used to force a specific value into contract generated sales order analysis codes.If ‘blank’ the analysis code value set on the contract will be replicated. |
| SpareDateTimex | 5 settings related to the label shown on-screen for each of the contract spare date/time fields. If ‘blank’ this field will not shown.See ‘Configurable (Spare) Fields‘ below. |
| SpareNumberx | 5 settings related to the label shown on-screen for each of the contract spare number fields. If ‘blank’ this field will not shown.See ‘Configurable (Spare) Fields‘ below. |
| SpareTextx | 5 settings related to the label shown on-screen for each of the contract spare text fields. If ‘blank’ this field will not shown.See ‘Configurable (Spare) Fields‘ below. |
| StockItemSpareNumberxLabel | 5 settings related to the label shown on-screen for each of the stock item spare number fields.If ‘blank’ this field will not shown. |
| StockItemSpareTextxLabel | 5 settings related to the label shown on-screen for each of the stock item spare text fields.If ‘blank’ this field will not shown. |
NB: SpareDateTime, SpareNumber and SpareText fields 1 and 2 are reserved for system use.
8. Configurable (Spare) Fields
It is possible to setup a number of configurable ‘text’, ‘numeric’ or ‘date’ fields to be maintained against each contract.
When a value is entered for any of the SpareDateTimex, SpareNumberx or SpareTextx fields this text will enable the fields on the Contract Maintenance screen with the name/label being the configured value.
NB: It is not possible to configure the number of decimal places shown for ‘numeric’ spare fields.
9. Stock Item Maintenance
If the MaintenanceItemsEnabled option is selected in the Configuration Settings screen an additional Maintenance Contract tab will be displayed on the ST – Amend Stock Item Details screen.
This will display additional ‘spare’ fields as specified in the Configuration Settings.
Any configured spare fields maintained on this tab are for reference/reporting purposes and therefore do not affect the details of contracts or contract sales orders processed through the system.
When a stock item is configured as a maintenance contract item, the system will automatically show a new Maintenance Contract box on the sales order entry/amendment screen for the item.
A contract start date may then be stored against the sales order line.
10. Contract Reconciliation
Section 1 above:
- Nominal Balance Year to Date : Shows Actual YTD Balance on relevant Nominal Account
- Pending Posting Value : Value of Deferred postings within the Nominal Ledger on the relevant Nominal Account. This value includes deferred postings that may not be relevant to contracts (i.e. if you use this nominal account for non-contract postings)
- Nominal Balance : Shows the value posted to the relevant nominal account from Contract Management whilst contracts are live
- Contract(s) Balance : Shows the value , remaining on the contract at that point in time (Still to be posted to Nominal). This may include contracts that have been auto-generated from within Contract Management but NOT yet posted from SOP through to Sales ledger/Nominal Ledger
Section 2 above:
- List of Contracts : Shows the contracts relevant to the contract balance (for the line highlighted on top screen)
11. Enable Module
This screen is used to enter a module enable string to allow use of the system.When entering the initial enable string for the module, it is necessary to select if the module is fully integrated with the Sicon Job Costing module.This setting is retained for future extension module enable strings.
12. Appendices - Variable Fields
The number of variables that can be added to a sales order line template is limitless.
The format for a variable is as follows:
- %%type:Name%%
For example, the following variable will be a date variable and it will represent the ‘from date’:
- %%date:BillCoverFromDate%%
When the sales order is created, the user will be prompted to enter these values. These values will then appear on the sales orders.
If the name of a variable is the same as a field on the contract, then the value stored on the field will be used and the user will not be prompted to enter this value. Therefore, different values could be set on each sales order generated according to the value stored on the contract. These contract specific variables can be inserted using the Insert Variable button on the Item Line Description of the sales order line.
The following variables names may be inserted using this method:
- AnnualReviewDate
- BillCoverFromDate
- BillCoverToDate
- ContractTypeText
- CustomerContact
- OrderDate
- PaymentTypeText
- RemovedDate
- SpareDateTime1 to SpareDateTime7
- SpareNumber1 to SpareNumber7
- SpareText1 to SpareText7
- StartDate
- VisitFrequencyText
- WhoSoldText
NB: All fields are read from the contract SiSOPRepeatContract database table.
13. Release Notes
The Release Notes document below shows which release of the Contract Manger system includes which new features and for which version of Sage these will work.
The version number indicated in the Contract Manager Release Notes includes a full release number and a sub version number; e.g. ’6.1′ indicates the full release version number of the software. Pre-release version builds of the software are available to certain clients requiring new or enhanced features being developed from the wish list. If these versions are installed on your system, you will see an additional number e.g. 39.113 making up a specific database version and interim build number of 6.1.39.113.
It is unlikely that these features will be documented in this help and user guide until the end of the development phase.
Sicon Contract Manager Release Notes