Contracts

Contract Agreement and Billing:

The contract is the agreement to rent. It is the signed document which indicates that rental equipment and sales items were received by the customer.
Generally, your company's terms and conditions for rental are pre-printed on the contract (either on the front or the back of the document). The contract is assigned a number when the equipment is sent out. This contract number will be referenced on billing to the customer.

By entering the contracts as the equipment leaves your firm, you will always know which customer has your equipment.
You will also know the availability of the rest of your equipment. This results in stronger inventory control. In addition, having the contracts setup in the software means your monthly billing is automatically prepared.

If the customer keeps the equipment for a month (or 28 days), the contract is generally billed, and an invoice is issued to the customer for the elapsed time.
If the customer keeps the equipment for three months (or 3 cycles of 28 days), the customer would receive three "monthly" invoices. Each invoice is automatically assigned the next sequential invoice number. The same contract number would print on all three invoices.

EXAMPLE:

Equipment, rented from January 5th, is billed monthly for three months. The client would receive:

        INVOICE#  34577  Billed From:   01/05/20XX 12:00    Billed To: 02/05/20XX 12:00
        CONTRACT# 10056

        INVOICE#  35598  Billed From:   02/05/20XX 12:00    Billed To: 03/05/20XX 12:00
        CONTRACT# 10056

        INVOICE#  36790  Billed From:   03/05/20XX 12:00    Billed To: 04/05/20XX 12:00
        CONTRACT# 10056

When the customer returns the equipment, a final invoice is issued, using the Rental Return program. This marks the items on the contract as returned, and makes them automatically available to be rented again. If the equipment was kept for less than a month (or 28 days), the customer would only receive one invoice, indicating when the equipment went out and when it was returned. Contracts already closed (all items returned) are automatically excluded from the monthly (or 28 day) billing.

If an invoice is required for other charges, such as sales of equipment or supplies, use Miscellaneous Invoices. Most rental invoices, however, will be made through monthly billing and rental returns.

Example Contract Header:

Customizable Document Parameter Settings:

Because most rental firms have varying preferred business practices, Texada SRM provides a series of parameters to define and control the functionality of the software.
These include the display of search windows, the setting of required fields, the pop-up windows that appear, valid discount processing, and many other document related features.
Refer to Counter Worksheet/Contract Tunable Parameters for a comprehensive list of these tunable settings, both company wide in Company Parameters and by division or store in the Division Parameters.

Refer to Counter Procedures for a flow chart diagramming the counter document process.

Regional Product Availability on Contracts:

Available rental and sales product quantities can be shared with the other locations in the same Inventory Region.
This process is useful when multiple divisions share an equipment yard.

This feature only applies to products when the availability checking on the Group is activated, and only applies on Contracts as well as the Counter Worksheet when it is converted to a Contract.
This process allows rental and sales products that are not available at the contract location, but are available within the same Inventory Region, to be put out on a Contract, and at that time a one-step Internal Transfer is created automatically to move the item from the shared location to the contract out location.
The Rental Return will then behave as normal returning the products to the Location specified in the return.
However if a transferred product is deleted from the contract, this does not reverse the transfer so any transfer would need to be generated manually to return the product to the source location if required.

Note: Serialized sales parts and Rental products with a Product Status Code that does not allow transfers, are excluded from this regional availability/transfer process.

To avoid region confusion, a division can not be assigned to more than one Inventory Region that has been checked as a Contract fulfillment region.

Utilization Of Date/Time Due Information:

• By definition, a rental contract is an agreement to rent for a specified time period.
  The printing of the Date and Time Due on the contract, is optional and is controlled by the Print Detail Line 2 option in the Divisional Contract Parameters.
• The software uses the Date and Time Due in order to determine which rental rate (day, week, month) and what amount applies to this item. When the rate calculation is accepted on the contract (or over-type the amount with a special rate), this also signals to the software that a specific ratio applies, when the original time period is exceeded.

  For example, if the time period is set to one day with the regular daily rate, and the rental eventually exceeds a week, then the regular weekly rate is used.
  But if the time period is one day and the daily rate is over-ridden by 25% less, and the rental eventually exceeds a week, then the weekly rate is calculated as 25% less the regular weekly rate.
  It is a ratio or relationship that us applied.

• The Date and Time Due are required in order to determine the rental rate applicable to this contract. This rate can be printed out on the contract as an estimated rental charge, assuming the customer returns the equipment on time.
  The estimated rental charge is only printed on the document when the option to PRINT EXTENSIONS during contract printing is employed. Printing the estimated rental charge is very useful for firms which do a substantial Cash rental business. Often, the rental charge is printed for customers paying cash in the Home and Garden sector, the Party Rental sector, and the Computer rental sector. When the customer is On Account, the estimated rental charges (EXTENSIONS) are rarely printed on the contract.
• The Date and Time Due are used when determining the Availability of the item. (Availability is the current quantity available to rent after all reservations and contract bookings have been considered.) This is especially important when making reservations for Party items. The Due Date of the items is considered to be reliable (or your best guess) as to when equipment will be returned, and therefore is available for the next rental. If the Due Date on a contract has expired (older than today) and the equipment is not returned, the Due Date is no longer considered reliable and is ignored when calculating future Availability.
• Weekend and Overnight Default rate codes can also be setup to apply at pre-determined times. Refer to Divisional Rate Parameters for further information on setting up this option.
• An equipment pickup schedule can also be generated from Pickup Report for your drivers, based on the Date and Time Due. The Pickup requirement can be set during contract entry.

Note: Even if your firm doesn't normally ask for date or time due, the Date and Time Due is still required by the software for the reasons stated above. Your firm should make a company policy regarding the number of days to use as a default for Date Due. Generally, the Due Date is set to be one day after the Date Out. This can be defined in the Rental Period settings on Divisional Rate Parameters.

Ship To Address and Job Sites:

The contract allows for two addresses, the Bill To Address and the Ship To Address.

1. The Bill To address is stored in Customer Information and indicates where the invoice should be sent.
2. The Ship To Address indicates where the equipment will be used. During contract entry, the Ship To address defaults to the Bill To address, since most equipment is used at the same place as it is billed. If the Ship To address if different, this address can always be over-typed with the actual place the equipment was used.

If the customer often uses this job/site number, store this customer's job/site numbers and address in Customer Site Information.
The job/site # can also store the address, special instructions and P.O. number, so that counter staff does not have to type this in each time. New documents can only be created for open sites.

In some areas, this site address indicating where equipment is actually being used, is also relevant to the tax formula calculations.

If the job/site # for the customer is defined, Customer Statements by Customer by Site can be used.
The Site # is also displayed in Customer Account Inquiry in the invoice window .

Contract Customer discounts for a Customer Site Information can be set by Product Class, in Contract Customer Discount.
These site discounts take precedent over other product and customer discounts.

A flag in the Additional Information for each customer can be set, forcing the operator to enter a valid site code on each document for this customer, with the exception of Point Of Sale Invoices.
The Site window can be set to open automatically in the Contract Header. This is controlled by the division flag in the Additional Pop-Up Windows, in the Divisional Contract Parameters.
New documents can only be created for open sites.
For more information on Ship To Sites and Global Sites refer to Customer Site Information.

GLOBAL SITES

Global sites are job numbers or site numbers or shipping addresses used by several customers.
e.g. For party rental firms, the local convention centres or halls or malls as could be setup as global sites.

Global sites can track the combined activity of several customers at one job.
This would be the case one company has several branches, each with their own Customer Number, and a site cost total is still required. (Each branch would have its own customer number ONLY if each branch was individually responsible for paying its own invoices.)

Customer or Global sites can be setup in Customer Site Information.

The ability to add new Global Sites "on-the-fly" in the header of a document can be activated by the Allow Add Global Sites in Doc flag in the Divisional Miscellaneous Parameters.

Clerk Security:

A setting in the Company Security Parameters can be set to prompt the operator for a clerk code, when an existing contract is accessed.
A Note can then also be entered about the nature of the changes being made to the contract.
The clerk code and the notes are tracked in Clerk Document Access Log.

Field Access Security:

Additional role security can be set to restrict certain actions in document entry by field as defined for the operator in Security Role Permissions.
This security feature can be used to control the operator's ability to over-ride field values include discount percents, dates/times, quantities, rates, price, and terms.

Mandatory Fields:

Individual flags can be set in the Required Document Information in the Company Contract Parameters to force the operator to enter values for the Site, Postal or Zip code, billing City, Salesman, Name Check List and/or Business Source.

CONTRACT ENTRY:
The customer information and the contract header information can be entered on the left portion of the header screen. The right portion displays the chargeable amounts on the document.
Contract entry is similar to entering a document in Counter Worksheet, except it always begins with the customer information screen.
Refer to Counter Worksheet Header for details on entering the document header.
Refer to Contract Details for details on entering the product details.
Refer to Contract Summary and Totals for details on completing the contract, including adding services, deposits, taxes, and payment.

Changing Contracts:

To make changes to a contract select Contracts and in Change mode, type in the Contract number to be altered, or select it from the Contract Search window.

• Customer Change:
  An Override/Logging Setting flag in the Company Security Parameters can be set to control the ability to change the customer on a contract once any items or services are added to that contract.
  This parameter can be set to allow complete access to change the customer, or to prevent any change, or to restrict the change to only the parent or other child accounts of the same parent.

  If the Site is mandatory and the customer is changed, the site information must be confirmed.
  If the Name Checklist feature is activated and the customer is changed, a name must be re-selected.
  If the 'Open Cust Notes In Doc Entry' parameter is activated in the Company Miscellaneous Parameters and the operator has Security Role Permissions then the Customer Comments and Notes pop-up w window is triggered for the new customer.

• Date Change:
  If dates are changed in the document header, they only impact any additional products added to the contract.
  To make changes to an existing product relating to Date/Time Out or Date/Time Due or the Rental Rate, window on the Unit Price field to access these values.

  Date range controls set on the Operator, can be configured for Contract dates by the RSCH module in Date Range Control.

  Dates on an existing Contract including outstanding details, can be modified in the Change Contract Date Out/Date Due utility.
  Using this update utility, detail dates are NOT changed on Sales parts, Off Rented items which also includes items on Delivery and Pickup tickets, and items that have already been returned, or billed.

• Product Change:
  If the wrong product number was entered on the contract, delete it and then add the correct number.
  If one item is being exchanged for another at the same rate, (e.g. swap one 150 CFM Compressor for another due to equipment breakdown), use the program Exchange Products On Contracts instead to properly split the revenue over the two products.

  To add new items to an existing contract, change to Add mode in the contract details screen.

  Note: The Date/Time Out and Date/Time Due will default automatically to the dates/times selected on the Contract Header, unless the Use Current Date box is checked in the Date Out/Date Due window for the document.
  If this is incorrect for this item, window on the Unit Price field and fill in the correct dates and times to ensure correct billing of the contract.

  Once the equipment has been returned or sales items sold, those item details can no longer be altered on the contract.

• Cylinder Contracts:
  Contracts generated from Cylinder Entry specifically to track cylinders, bottles, or containers as they are delivered and returned, cannot be modified in this program.

Delete a Contract:

The DELETE button is only active when the role assigned to the operator in Operators has permission to delete contracts.
The role permission is setup in Security Roles on the Security tab of Configure System Settings.

To delete an existing contract, click the DELETE button before selecting the contract number, as outlined in Delete a Contract.

This delete utility makes permanent deletions of the entire contract selected and should only be used if the contract was voided.

If a contract is deleted, an audit record is generated tracking the operator and the date when the contract was deleted. This can be viewed in Delete Log for function RSCH99.

Deleting Product Details:

Only Sales and Rental products that have a Status of 'O' indicating that they are Out on the Contract can be deleted, and only if they have no accumulated billings.
Any accumulated billings can be viewed in the "Rental Period Calculations" window on the Unit Price field.

Individual Components from a Power Kit also cannot be deleted, as they are linked to a primary non-bulk rental.

Because of these restrictions on what products can be deleted from a contract, this requires an extra level of security against contract product deletions that doesn't apply to quotes or reservations.
In the Contract Details screen, click the DELETE button or press <F7> to open a Delete Product window displaying a list of products on this contract that are eligible for deletion. These are the only products on the contract that can be deleted.
Click on the sequence number of the record to delete to highlight it and click the DELETE button at the bottom of the screen.
Confirmation is required.

When a product detail line is deleted from a Contract and the Add to Delete Log for Contract/Invoice Details is set in the Company Security Parameters, then an audit record is written to the Delete Log for RSCH02 to track the operator and date of deletion.

If this contract detail has generated a Purchase Order to order any sales products, re-rental equipment, or services, a warning is generated reminding that follow up may be required and the link to the contract is removed on the P.O. detail.
Refer to Contract/Purchase Order Link Overview for details on this feature.