Adding or editing a billing subscription

The Description field appears on many Autotask entities. On entities like ticket, task, note, and to-do, the Description field is a core part of the data record. Wherever it is available, it tracks essential information about the record. This field is often prefaced with the entity name. For example, Quote Description.

Enter a detailed description of the entity instance, the issue with which the customer needs help, or the service that they requested.

This field appears on entities where you can set the time increment between payments. It determines the billing frequency.

Contracts:

On recurring services only, select from: Monthly (default), Quarterly, Semi-Annual, and Yearly.

IMPORTANT  You will not be able to change the Contract Period Type after you save the contract.

Products:

For products, the period type is typically One-Time.

Services:

On a quote item, the period type is inherited from the service or bundle and cannot be edited.

The choices are Monthly, Quarterly, Semi-Annual, and Yearly.

When the service/bundle is assigned to a contract, the period type will be used in conjunction with the contract period type to determine the time interval at which the service will be billed.

NOTE  Once a service/bundle is saved, the Period Type can no longer be edited.

• If the service/bundle has a longer billing period type than the contract, the service/bundle will be billed in its entirety. If the service/bundle period type is quarterly and the contract period type is monthly, the service/bundle will be billed for the entire quarter on the next contract billing date.

• If the contract billing period is longer, the service/bundle will be billed for the number of times that would have occurred since the last billing. For example, if the service/bundle period type is quarterly and the contract period type is semi-annual, service will be billed twice on the next contract billing date. The table below illustrates the combinations of monthly and quarterly periods for services/bundles and contracts.

Subscriptions:

It is possible to use a One-Time subscription period for a straight product sale, but the recommended method is to bill products as a ticket charge, contract charge, or project charge. Refer to Adding or editing a ticket charge.

This field appears on entities that can be set up ahead of their intended use or modified effective in the future. It marks the earliest date the entity is active or the earliest date a new price is in effect.

Enter a valid date and time. Subject to your security permissions, it can be edited.

This field appears on entities that need to become unavailable at a predetermined date. It marks the last date the entity is active. Subject to your security permissions, it can be edited.

Subscriptions have a 30-year limit.

The status indicates how far the entity has progressed in a particular process.

EXAMPLE  On a ticket, status examples are New, In Progress, Ready to Bill, Complete, Active, etc. On other entities, status names are different.

Most entities come with a default list of statuses that you can customize. The Status field is often required, since it is frequently used as a condition in workflow rules.

NOTE  Outsource status is separate from the standard ticket status.

Charges:

If an Estimated Arrival Date was added to the purchase order item, it is displayed in parentheses after the status.

• If Procurement is enabled, the status options are conditional based on the current status, and some statuses are set automatically. For details on charge status in the procurement process, refer to Introduction to Inventory.
• If Procurement is not enabled, you can manually select any status. For consistency, your company should set guidelines for charge status selection.
• If you set the status of a charge to Canceled, the Unit Cost and Unit Price fields are zeroed out and the charge is removed from Approve & Post.

A vendor is an organization whose primary business relationship with your company is to provide goods and services.

• Products can be associated with multiple vendors, one of which is designated as the default vendor.
• All other entities that reference a product vendor are associated with one specific vendor (the one from which the item was actually purchased). The field will default to the Product Default Vendor, but additional Product Vendors (associated with the product) and Other Vendors (not associated with the product) are available from the dropdown menu.
• Services can only have one vendor. If you change the vendor of a service, contracts that include the service will reference the new vendor as of the next billing period.

The Period Price is linked to the Total Price. Enter the Subscription Period Price (the amount due each time an installment is billed) or enter the Subscription Total Price and the other field will calculate automatically.

The total price may already be populated from the selected product, but it can be overwritten.

If multi-currency is enabled, these fields display a currency indicator and are shown in the customer currency. Click the currency indicator to display the price in the internal currency.

The Period Cost is linked to the Total Cost. Enter the Subscription Period Cost (the cost for each installment) or enter the Subscription Total Cost. The other field will calculate automatically, factoring in the number of periods over the course of the entire subscription.

These fields are automatically populated from the Product Cost field of the device or the Unit Cost of the quoted item if you create the device and subscription from a quote. Period Cost and Total Cost will remain editable. This will allow you to set a cost for your subscriptions so profitability can be accurately calculated on the Financial reports on the Organization page.

The Period Price is linked to the Total Price. Enter the Subscription Period Price (the amount due each time an installment is billed) or enter the Subscription Total Price, and the other field will calculate automatically.

The total price may already be populated from the selected product, but it can be overwritten.

If multi-currency is enabled, these fields display a currency indicator and are shown in the customer currency. Click the currency indicator to display the price in the internal currency.

The Period Cost is linked to the Total Cost. Enter the Subscription Period Cost (the cost each time an installment is billed) or the Subscription Total Cost. The other field will calculate automatically, factoring in the number of periods over the course of the entire subscription.

These fields are automatically populated from the Product Cost field of the device or the Unit Cost of the quoted item if you create the device and subscription from a quote. Period Cost and Total Cost will remain editable. This will allow you to set a cost for your subscriptions so profitability can be accurately calculated on the page Financial reports on the Organization page.

The Material Code is the billing code associated with products. It is a required field for products, and is inherited by devices and subscriptions, but it can be overridden when you create subscriptions or charges from a product. Its most important function is to determine the tax category of a product or charge, and allow exported billing items to be mapped to the proper general ledger account in an external accounting software package.

Select a Material Code.

Organization or Organization Name refers to the organization associated with the entity. This field is always required.

• In View mode, the name will appear as a hyperlink for users with permission to view the organization, and as plain text for all others.

• In New mode, enter the name of the organization. As you type, Autotask will suggest possible matches. Click an organization name to select it and populate the field. Alternatively, you can click the selector icon to choose the organization from a list. On some entities, such as ticket and opportunity, you can click the plus icon to the right of the selector icon to quickly create a new organization. Refer to Adding an organization.

• In Edit mode, this field cannot be modified for some entities (for example, projects and devices).

For this field, you can select a different local term. In your Autotask instance, it may be labeled Account, Business Unit, Client, Company, Customer, Organization, or Site. Refer to Selecting a currency and local terms and symbols.

For this field, you can select a different local term. In your Autotask instance, it may be named Device (default), Asset, Configuration Item, Installed Asset, or Installed Product. Refer to Selecting a currency and local terms and symbols.

A device is a product associated with an organization that is being supported with a ticket or affected by a subscription. When you select a device on a ticket, the Primary identifying information to display for devices on a ticket system setting will determine which device field populates this field. Options are Product Name, Serial Number, Reference Name, or Reference Number.

• Selecting a device on a new ticket will populate the Organization, Contact, Contract, and SLA fields.
• To add a new device, click the next to the Device field. You can do this only after you have selected an organization.
• To associate an existing device with a ticket, search for it by name, serial number, reference number, or reference name.
• To find a device associated with a ticket's contact, click the contact icon to open a device selector that presents only devices associated with a tickets' contact (available only if a contact has been selected for the ticket).
  
• If you add a device that has a default billing contract, the device's contract will override any other contract associated with the ticket (for example, a default service desk contract), even when the Contract field is hidden by the ticket's category. If the device is also associated with a specific service or service bundle, it will be automatically selected, but you will be able to select a different service or bundle from the same contract.

The serial number identifies a particular stocked item in your inventory, or a device installed at an organization. This field appears only if the product associated with the device or stocked item has the Serialized check box selected. Serial numbers can be up to 100 characters long.

Enter the serial numbers of the items currently being added, separated by line breaks.

Devices:

• Serial numbers cannot be updated using an import.
• Serial numbers linked to a stocked item cannot be deleted, but if the serial number of the stocked item is modified, the serial number of the device is updated automatically.
• If you enter a duplicate serial number, you will see a warning indicating that a device with this product and serial number already exists. The import will fail for this row.
• If you enter a serial number for a non-serialized product, the import will fail for the row.
• If the item you are installing is a printer associated with the Xerox PageConnect/XPPS program, the Serial Number is required.

Inventory:

• The count of serial numbers you are adding in the list will equal the number of items added in the Items Added field, and will be equal to On Hand (New) - On Hand (Old).
• When adding a stocked item, you can type or paste the serial numbers into the field. Each number must be on a separate line or the serial numbers must be separated by a comma.
• You can use a keyboard wedge option with a bar code scanner to quickly enter serial numbers.
• When editing a stocked item, if a serial number is reserved or picked, the Ticket Number,Project Name, Contract Name, or Quote Name is hyperlinked on the row.

Reference numbers work like serial numbers, but you can assign them by using your own system. Reference numbers are not required by product categories. You can report on this field by using standard reports or LiveReports (refer to Reports on products that are associated with customer organizations as devices).

The Subscription Periods field is a calculated field based on the Subscription Period Type (how often payments are due), the Effective Date (when the subscription starts), and the Expiration Date (subscription ends).

Use this field as a reference to ensure that you have entered the effective and expiration dates correctly.

The first date a customer is billed for a service. The First Billing Date is the same as the Effective Date, since each period is billed in advance.

A calculated field that displays the next unbilled (un-invoiced) payment. If that date is in the past and a payment is waiting to be billed, the date shows in red. If all subscription installments have been posted and invoiced, this field will be blank.

The last date a customer will be billed for a subscription or a service.

Subscriptions:

The final billing date is calculated by subtracting the subscription period from the expiration date. It displays the date of the last billing item that will be created, or the date of the last invoiced item if all of the subscription installments have been invoiced.

Recurring Service Contract:

The final billing date is equal to the last period billing event associated with the contract.