Introduction
Seasonal contract pricing will allow you to have a Service that is charged at a single price, regardless of the number of Visits that are going to be done. For example, there may be a snow clearing contract for the season for $5000 (with all visits included). This is set up on the Service (in the Costbook) and is then carried through to the Maintenance Estimate and Maintenance Job.
Setting the Seasonal Charge Type
On the Details tab of the Service in the Charge Type drop-down there is a ‘Seasonal’ option (along with the ‘Per Visit’ and ‘Time & Material’ ones). Selecting ‘Seasonal’ will allow the Service to be priced for the entire season. There will be an ‘Expected # of Visits’ field which can be used to help determine the seasonal price.
Once ‘Seasonal’ has been selected as the Charge Type, the ‘Include’ option will automatically be set to ‘As Needed’, and cannot be edited. This is because the exact number of visits is not known but will be created as required by external circumstances (i.e. the number of times that a snow event occurs).
Seasonal Pricing on an Estimate
When adding a Seasonally priced Service to an Maintenance Estimate, the total price of the Service will be determined by the expected number of visits and the price per visit. This Service will also be added to the ‘Included – As Needed’ section on the Services tab.
The expected number of visits can be adjusted per estimate to account for the typical number of visits that would be done in a season (this can be based on the previous years data). The overall seasonal price can also be directly adjusted without affecting either the expected visits or the individual visit price.
Billing Options #
When a Seasonal Charge Type is used on an Estimate, only Periodic Billing or full Prepayment options are allowed to be used.
Seasonal Pricing on a Job
When a Maintenance Estimate that has a Seasonally priced Service is won, the overall process is very similar to other Services. The biggest difference is that no Visits will be automatically created for these Services. The ‘Exepected # of Visits’ is only used on the Estimate to help determine the overall price, while on a Job, the Service is treated as a standard ‘As Needed’ type of Service.
These Services can be added to any Route that includes the Service and allows ‘As Needed’ Services as well and can be used as any other Route.
Job Actuals #
Seasonally priced Services are also included in the Actuals tab of the Maintenance Job. The overall Service profitability is based on the total number of actual visits that are completed.
If the actual number of Visits exceeds the estimated amount of Visits, then this will decrease the overall profitability of the Service.
