Service Contract
Content
Contents
Introduction: ................................................................................................................................................. 3 Service Contract Selling Process: .................................................................................................................. 3 Service Contract Flow : ............................................................................................................................... 4 Types of Contracts : ...................................................................................................................................... 4 Service Contract consists of Header, Line & Subline .................................................................................... 5 Creating a Contract: ...................................................................................................................................... 7 To create a contract using a template: ......................................................................................................... 8 Copying Information from an Existing Contract ......................................................................................... 10 Setup Process for Service Contracts : ......................................................................................................... 13 High-level relationship between Core Contract Table:............................................................................... 13 CORE API ..................................................................................................................................................... 14
Introduction:
Oracle Service Contracts provides a complete contract authoring execution solution to manage warranties, extended warranties, usage, subscription services, as well as complex service agreements. With Oracle Service Contracts you can: • Sell multiple types of service • Define pricing and billing schedules • Ensure timely service entitlement checks • Automate renewals for recurring revenue opportunities • Simplify change management • Minimize service revenue leakage
Service Contract Selling Process:
Service Contract Flow :
Define Service Contract-->Define contract Renewal triggers-> Apply customer payment options-->Review contract for QA Compliance-->approve contract-->sign contract
Types of Contracts :
Oracle Service Contracts enables you to create and manage the following types of contracts: • Warranty: If a serviceable product has an associated warranty, the warranty contract is automatically created when the product is shipped. You can view the new contract in Oracle Install Base and Oracle Service Contracts. The contract start date is set to ship date plus any delay time that is defined for the warranty. Whenever possible, when multiple products are sold on one order, one warranty is created for all the products. If the warranties on products sold on one order differ (for example, by duration), one contract is created but the unique terms of the warranty are tracked on separate contract lines. A warranty may also be created when a new product, with associated warranty, is added directly to the installed base. To view the contract in Oracle Install Base, query the product number and select the contracts link. The Contact Detail page displays the covered products.
• Extended Warranty: An extended warranty contract is automatically created
when an extended warranty is sold on a sales order. The extended warranty may cover products that are being sold at the same time (immediate service), or it may cover products already owned by the customer (delayed service). To reduce administrative overhead, extended warranty contracts can also be consolidated in a similar way to warranties.
• Service Agreement: A service agreement contract is created when a service item is sold via the contract authoring process.
• Subscription: You can use subscription contracts to sell tangible items such as magazines, newspapers, CDs, or newsletters; or intangible items such as memberships, digital assets, or services. For tangible subscriptions, a delivery schedule can be created as part of the contract. This schedule drives the release of the subscription items to the customer, via Oracle Order Management.
Service Contract consists of Header, Line & Subline
Header Level – It is consist of field of the top of the Service Contracts Authoring form as well as the summary tab. The summary tab includes Contract Number: It is contract number like as party number. Effectivity Dates: It is the period of the contract. Parties: Information about the parties including Bill to and Ship to addresses. Pricing / Billing: Price list and various accounting rules for pricing and billing contracts.
The service contracts usually retrieves the contractual prices of the services or usages from Oracle Advanced Pricing, however the pricing can be done manually in some situations. Renewals: Define the renewal rules for contract whether it is automatic or manual.
Administration: Define administrative components used to process the contract, such as QA Checklist, Contract groups and Workflow. Security or Text: Grant Contract Access by the resource group or user level.
Line Level: Line list the individual service, usage and subscription items included in the contact. There are Three Line Types. Service Lines: Covers broad category of item that can include activities such as field service, Depot repairs, call center, technical support and any other user defined business activities. Usage Lines: Charge the customer for usage. Subscription Lines : Covers subscriptions for both tangible and intangible items. It covers several secondary tabs. Accounts Exemption/Payment Option Effectivities Counters Pricing/Product Events
Sublines Levels: Sublines specifies what the service covers or the counters where the usage is tracked. Service Lines: Sublines for service lines specify what the service covers. A service line Cover a Party, Customer, Site, System, Product or an Item. Usage Lines: Sublines for usage lines specify the counters where the usage is tracked. Subscription Lines: Subscription lines do not have a sublines.
Creating a Contract:
You can create contract manually or from template. When you log in to appropriate responsibility and click on Launch contract you see following window
To create a contract manually: 1. Select the Create a New Contract Manually radio button. 2. Select a category using the list of values (LOV): If you are creating a contract with service agreements for individual items (covered products) in the customer’s installed base, then select Warranty and Extended Warranty or Service Agreement. Warranty and Extended Warranty category does not permit you to add usage lines or to sell service to other levels of coverage (a party, site, or system).
If you are creating a usage contract or a service agreement for levels other than items in the customer’s install base (Products), then you must select Service Agreement.
If your contract includes subscriptions, then select Subscription Agreement. Subscription agreements permit you to enter subscriptions, service, and usage lines. However, they do not permit electronic renewals.
To create a contract using a template:
Select the Create a Contract from a Template radio button. Select a template using the Template LOV. If you do not know the template name you can search for the template by description and other criteria by clicking Click Create. The Service Contracts Authoring window appears. The category you selected appears in the Category field at the top of the window. The start date defaults to today’s date.
The application supplies a contract number for you automatically after you first save the contract, but you can instead enter a number of your own. The contract number can be a combination of any characters, but it must be unique.
Optionally, enter another short identifier in the Known As field to help you identify the contract later. Specify the dates the contract is effective by entering: • The start date or end date • Duration and period The dates you enter here are automatically defaulted to each new line in the contract. The dates individual lines are effective cannot fall outside this range, they cannot have a start date earlier then the contract start date or an end date later than the contract end date. If you enter dates outside this range in a contract line, then you must extend the contract dates accordingly for your contract to pass Quality Assurance (QA).
To help you identify the contract later, enter a description in the Short Description field. Save your work. You are now ready to enter the rest of the contract information required for your contract to become active:
General contract information about the contract as described in Entering Defaults for Contracts; This includes the vendor and customer, what quality check the contract must pass to become active, and how the contract will be renewed. You can create different versions of the contract for your customer and at different price points and send them out for review. Check to see if you have entered all the required information in the contract or if there is some external reason why the contract cannot be implemented, by running the quality assurance (QA) check. The QA check alerts you of any issues with your contract.
Following are examples of issues that are tracked in the QA check: • Failure to create a billing schedule for the customer. • Failure to include an e-mail address for the customer contact. • Sales Credits for contract lines are absent • Accounting department has placed the customer credit on hold. Your contract becomes active only after it passes the QA check list and obtains the approvals required by the Oracle Workflow process specified in the contract.
Copying Information from an Existing Contract
You can copy information from an existing contract into a new contract, an existing contract, or to a new modifier of the existing contract. Note: For existing contracts, you cannot copy the components of a contract across categories. For example, you cannot copy the components from a Warranty into a Service Agreement.
To copy information from an existing contract:
From the Contract Navigator window, right click a contract and select Copy. The Copy window appears and is populated with the contract number that you selected.
Select the information you wish to copy in the left half of the window. You can make multiple selections by holding down the Shift or Ctrl keys on your keyboard. You can expand the tree outlining the information by clicking on any of the nodes. Use the right arrow button to copy information from the left-side of the window to the right (the new contract). From the Copy To field select New Contract. To copy into a new contract, and make that contract a template, select the Template check box. When you create a new contract, you will see that template in the list of available template contracts. If you are copying a large contract and you do not want to utilize too many system resources, you can select the Submit as Concurrent Program check box. Click Create. The application confirms the copy with a message.
From the message window, select OK to view the new contract. Note: Your administrator can set the profile OKS: Copy Notes to control whether notes are copied. If this profile is set to yes, the notes within the existing contract are copied into the new contract. Within the Notes window, the Entered By field indicates ANONYMOUS if the note was copied from an existing contract.
And then Enter All The Defaults for Contracts • Enter Parties to the Contract • Enter Party Contacts • Create or Modify a Customer Contact Record • Specify a Receivables Transaction Type for Payment • Specify How Billed Amounts Appear on Invoices • Suspending Billing for a Contract • Placing a Hold On Credit Memos • Requiring and Specifying a Purchase Order for Service Charges • Specify How a Contract Will Be Renewed • Having the Automatically Renewed Contract Submitted for Approval • Specify How the Renewed Contract will Be Priced • Allowing a Grace Period for Renewals • Specify Grace Period for the Current Contract • Specify a Grace Period for the Renewed Contract • Grant the Additional Access Privileges if any. • Enter an Additional Description or Comments.
Setup Process for Service Contracts :
C:\Documents and Settings\mlakdawala001\My Documents\OAUG\Articles\Converting
High-level relationship between Core Contract Table: Oracle 11i Contracts for services shares its table / data structure with Oracle Core Contracts. In fact the service API’s after setting the flags depending on the profile options and other set-up values call the core contract APIs to create the contract. Below ERD establishes high-level relationship between Core Contract Table.
CORE API
Below mentioned is the core API’s that team uses to convert Oracle Service Contracts. It is assumed that billing schedules are not converted and they will be generated within application. OKS_CONTRACTS_PUB.Create_Contract_Header: This API is used to create contract header information. The API is called using P_K_Header_Rec, P_Header_Contacts_Tbl, P_Header_Sales_Crd_Tbl and P_Header_Articles_Tbl. Depending on your conversion needs and the available information in the legacy application you would be required to populate each of these in-parameters. However if no information is available for sales credit or contract articles you could leave the P_Header_Sales_Crd_Tbl and P_Header_Articles_Tbl NULL. However it is a must that you populate the P_K_Header_Rec with all the values. At least 1 contact information for the vendor should be created In P_Header_Contacts_Tbl. The value for the contact_object_code would be ‘OKX_SALESPERS’. If you need to create additional parties on the contract header depending on your billing requirements and other entity relationships you may have to call Okc_Contract_Party_Pub.Create_K_Party_Role. Also you would need to determine in advance how do you wish to bring these contracts into the Application. These contracts can be brought in as ‘ENTERED’, which would mean the process owners would have to submit the contract for approval using Contracts Approval Workflow.
OKS_CONTRACTS_PUB.Create_Service_Line This API is used to create Contract Service Line for each contract header. The API is called using P_K_Line_Rec, P_Contact_Tbl and P_Line_Sales_Crd_Tbl. Again depending on your needs and available information you would populate each of these parameters. However if no information were available for the P_Contact_Tbl and P_Line_Sales_Crd_Tbl, it would be okay to let them be NULL from conversion perspective. The key aspect of service line API is to understand the relationships between the shipping entity and the billing entity. Especially if the item is serviceable with a usage component and has been leased out using a third party company. Also important is to attach this item with the appropriate Install Base record if Install Base application is in use. OKS_CONTRACTS_PUB.Create_Covered_Line This API is used to create Covered Lines for each service line you create. Before you call this API you are required to set values for P_K_Covered_Rec and P_Price_Attribs_In. Depending on your pricing needs values for P_Price_Attribs_In will have to be set. If there is no complex pricing requirements it is okay to leave the value for this record type null. Values of certain columns of P_K_Covered_Rec should be same as P_K_Line_Rec e.g. value for PERIOD in the record should be same as the value for the P_K_Line_Rec.Usage_Type or value for Line_Renewal_Type should be either FUL/DNR/KEP.
Introduction: ................................................................................................................................................. 3 Service Contract Selling Process: .................................................................................................................. 3 Service Contract Flow : ............................................................................................................................... 4 Types of Contracts : ...................................................................................................................................... 4 Service Contract consists of Header, Line & Subline .................................................................................... 5 Creating a Contract: ...................................................................................................................................... 7 To create a contract using a template: ......................................................................................................... 8 Copying Information from an Existing Contract ......................................................................................... 10 Setup Process for Service Contracts : ......................................................................................................... 13 High-level relationship between Core Contract Table:............................................................................... 13 CORE API ..................................................................................................................................................... 14
Introduction:
Oracle Service Contracts provides a complete contract authoring execution solution to manage warranties, extended warranties, usage, subscription services, as well as complex service agreements. With Oracle Service Contracts you can: • Sell multiple types of service • Define pricing and billing schedules • Ensure timely service entitlement checks • Automate renewals for recurring revenue opportunities • Simplify change management • Minimize service revenue leakage
Service Contract Selling Process:
Service Contract Flow :
Define Service Contract-->Define contract Renewal triggers-> Apply customer payment options-->Review contract for QA Compliance-->approve contract-->sign contract
Types of Contracts :
Oracle Service Contracts enables you to create and manage the following types of contracts: • Warranty: If a serviceable product has an associated warranty, the warranty contract is automatically created when the product is shipped. You can view the new contract in Oracle Install Base and Oracle Service Contracts. The contract start date is set to ship date plus any delay time that is defined for the warranty. Whenever possible, when multiple products are sold on one order, one warranty is created for all the products. If the warranties on products sold on one order differ (for example, by duration), one contract is created but the unique terms of the warranty are tracked on separate contract lines. A warranty may also be created when a new product, with associated warranty, is added directly to the installed base. To view the contract in Oracle Install Base, query the product number and select the contracts link. The Contact Detail page displays the covered products.
• Extended Warranty: An extended warranty contract is automatically created
when an extended warranty is sold on a sales order. The extended warranty may cover products that are being sold at the same time (immediate service), or it may cover products already owned by the customer (delayed service). To reduce administrative overhead, extended warranty contracts can also be consolidated in a similar way to warranties.
• Service Agreement: A service agreement contract is created when a service item is sold via the contract authoring process.
• Subscription: You can use subscription contracts to sell tangible items such as magazines, newspapers, CDs, or newsletters; or intangible items such as memberships, digital assets, or services. For tangible subscriptions, a delivery schedule can be created as part of the contract. This schedule drives the release of the subscription items to the customer, via Oracle Order Management.
Service Contract consists of Header, Line & Subline
Header Level – It is consist of field of the top of the Service Contracts Authoring form as well as the summary tab. The summary tab includes Contract Number: It is contract number like as party number. Effectivity Dates: It is the period of the contract. Parties: Information about the parties including Bill to and Ship to addresses. Pricing / Billing: Price list and various accounting rules for pricing and billing contracts.
The service contracts usually retrieves the contractual prices of the services or usages from Oracle Advanced Pricing, however the pricing can be done manually in some situations. Renewals: Define the renewal rules for contract whether it is automatic or manual.
Administration: Define administrative components used to process the contract, such as QA Checklist, Contract groups and Workflow. Security or Text: Grant Contract Access by the resource group or user level.
Line Level: Line list the individual service, usage and subscription items included in the contact. There are Three Line Types. Service Lines: Covers broad category of item that can include activities such as field service, Depot repairs, call center, technical support and any other user defined business activities. Usage Lines: Charge the customer for usage. Subscription Lines : Covers subscriptions for both tangible and intangible items. It covers several secondary tabs. Accounts Exemption/Payment Option Effectivities Counters Pricing/Product Events
Sublines Levels: Sublines specifies what the service covers or the counters where the usage is tracked. Service Lines: Sublines for service lines specify what the service covers. A service line Cover a Party, Customer, Site, System, Product or an Item. Usage Lines: Sublines for usage lines specify the counters where the usage is tracked. Subscription Lines: Subscription lines do not have a sublines.
Creating a Contract:
You can create contract manually or from template. When you log in to appropriate responsibility and click on Launch contract you see following window
To create a contract manually: 1. Select the Create a New Contract Manually radio button. 2. Select a category using the list of values (LOV): If you are creating a contract with service agreements for individual items (covered products) in the customer’s installed base, then select Warranty and Extended Warranty or Service Agreement. Warranty and Extended Warranty category does not permit you to add usage lines or to sell service to other levels of coverage (a party, site, or system).
If you are creating a usage contract or a service agreement for levels other than items in the customer’s install base (Products), then you must select Service Agreement.
If your contract includes subscriptions, then select Subscription Agreement. Subscription agreements permit you to enter subscriptions, service, and usage lines. However, they do not permit electronic renewals.
To create a contract using a template:
Select the Create a Contract from a Template radio button. Select a template using the Template LOV. If you do not know the template name you can search for the template by description and other criteria by clicking Click Create. The Service Contracts Authoring window appears. The category you selected appears in the Category field at the top of the window. The start date defaults to today’s date.
The application supplies a contract number for you automatically after you first save the contract, but you can instead enter a number of your own. The contract number can be a combination of any characters, but it must be unique.
Optionally, enter another short identifier in the Known As field to help you identify the contract later. Specify the dates the contract is effective by entering: • The start date or end date • Duration and period The dates you enter here are automatically defaulted to each new line in the contract. The dates individual lines are effective cannot fall outside this range, they cannot have a start date earlier then the contract start date or an end date later than the contract end date. If you enter dates outside this range in a contract line, then you must extend the contract dates accordingly for your contract to pass Quality Assurance (QA).
To help you identify the contract later, enter a description in the Short Description field. Save your work. You are now ready to enter the rest of the contract information required for your contract to become active:
General contract information about the contract as described in Entering Defaults for Contracts; This includes the vendor and customer, what quality check the contract must pass to become active, and how the contract will be renewed. You can create different versions of the contract for your customer and at different price points and send them out for review. Check to see if you have entered all the required information in the contract or if there is some external reason why the contract cannot be implemented, by running the quality assurance (QA) check. The QA check alerts you of any issues with your contract.
Following are examples of issues that are tracked in the QA check: • Failure to create a billing schedule for the customer. • Failure to include an e-mail address for the customer contact. • Sales Credits for contract lines are absent • Accounting department has placed the customer credit on hold. Your contract becomes active only after it passes the QA check list and obtains the approvals required by the Oracle Workflow process specified in the contract.
Copying Information from an Existing Contract
You can copy information from an existing contract into a new contract, an existing contract, or to a new modifier of the existing contract. Note: For existing contracts, you cannot copy the components of a contract across categories. For example, you cannot copy the components from a Warranty into a Service Agreement.
To copy information from an existing contract:
From the Contract Navigator window, right click a contract and select Copy. The Copy window appears and is populated with the contract number that you selected.
Select the information you wish to copy in the left half of the window. You can make multiple selections by holding down the Shift or Ctrl keys on your keyboard. You can expand the tree outlining the information by clicking on any of the nodes. Use the right arrow button to copy information from the left-side of the window to the right (the new contract). From the Copy To field select New Contract. To copy into a new contract, and make that contract a template, select the Template check box. When you create a new contract, you will see that template in the list of available template contracts. If you are copying a large contract and you do not want to utilize too many system resources, you can select the Submit as Concurrent Program check box. Click Create. The application confirms the copy with a message.
From the message window, select OK to view the new contract. Note: Your administrator can set the profile OKS: Copy Notes to control whether notes are copied. If this profile is set to yes, the notes within the existing contract are copied into the new contract. Within the Notes window, the Entered By field indicates ANONYMOUS if the note was copied from an existing contract.
And then Enter All The Defaults for Contracts • Enter Parties to the Contract • Enter Party Contacts • Create or Modify a Customer Contact Record • Specify a Receivables Transaction Type for Payment • Specify How Billed Amounts Appear on Invoices • Suspending Billing for a Contract • Placing a Hold On Credit Memos • Requiring and Specifying a Purchase Order for Service Charges • Specify How a Contract Will Be Renewed • Having the Automatically Renewed Contract Submitted for Approval • Specify How the Renewed Contract will Be Priced • Allowing a Grace Period for Renewals • Specify Grace Period for the Current Contract • Specify a Grace Period for the Renewed Contract • Grant the Additional Access Privileges if any. • Enter an Additional Description or Comments.
Setup Process for Service Contracts :
C:\Documents and Settings\mlakdawala001\My Documents\OAUG\Articles\Converting
High-level relationship between Core Contract Table: Oracle 11i Contracts for services shares its table / data structure with Oracle Core Contracts. In fact the service API’s after setting the flags depending on the profile options and other set-up values call the core contract APIs to create the contract. Below ERD establishes high-level relationship between Core Contract Table.
CORE API
Below mentioned is the core API’s that team uses to convert Oracle Service Contracts. It is assumed that billing schedules are not converted and they will be generated within application. OKS_CONTRACTS_PUB.Create_Contract_Header: This API is used to create contract header information. The API is called using P_K_Header_Rec, P_Header_Contacts_Tbl, P_Header_Sales_Crd_Tbl and P_Header_Articles_Tbl. Depending on your conversion needs and the available information in the legacy application you would be required to populate each of these in-parameters. However if no information is available for sales credit or contract articles you could leave the P_Header_Sales_Crd_Tbl and P_Header_Articles_Tbl NULL. However it is a must that you populate the P_K_Header_Rec with all the values. At least 1 contact information for the vendor should be created In P_Header_Contacts_Tbl. The value for the contact_object_code would be ‘OKX_SALESPERS’. If you need to create additional parties on the contract header depending on your billing requirements and other entity relationships you may have to call Okc_Contract_Party_Pub.Create_K_Party_Role. Also you would need to determine in advance how do you wish to bring these contracts into the Application. These contracts can be brought in as ‘ENTERED’, which would mean the process owners would have to submit the contract for approval using Contracts Approval Workflow.
OKS_CONTRACTS_PUB.Create_Service_Line This API is used to create Contract Service Line for each contract header. The API is called using P_K_Line_Rec, P_Contact_Tbl and P_Line_Sales_Crd_Tbl. Again depending on your needs and available information you would populate each of these parameters. However if no information were available for the P_Contact_Tbl and P_Line_Sales_Crd_Tbl, it would be okay to let them be NULL from conversion perspective. The key aspect of service line API is to understand the relationships between the shipping entity and the billing entity. Especially if the item is serviceable with a usage component and has been leased out using a third party company. Also important is to attach this item with the appropriate Install Base record if Install Base application is in use. OKS_CONTRACTS_PUB.Create_Covered_Line This API is used to create Covered Lines for each service line you create. Before you call this API you are required to set values for P_K_Covered_Rec and P_Price_Attribs_In. Depending on your pricing needs values for P_Price_Attribs_In will have to be set. If there is no complex pricing requirements it is okay to leave the value for this record type null. Values of certain columns of P_K_Covered_Rec should be same as P_K_Line_Rec e.g. value for PERIOD in the record should be same as the value for the P_K_Line_Rec.Usage_Type or value for Line_Renewal_Type should be either FUL/DNR/KEP.
