How Do I Create a New Service Agreement?

Congratulations!  You have a sold a new maintenance contract to a customer.  Now you have to enter it into ESC so that you can track it, schedule the visits and setup the renewal invoice.  

There are several ways to generate a new agreement for a customer:

• Locate the customer in the Customer Center. Right-click on the customer's name and select Add Agreement.  You may also click the Add Agreement option in the Details Panel on the right side of the screen (under Active Agreements).
• From the Agreement List view, click the Add Agreement button on the toolbar. When the Agreement screen opens, select the Customer and Location for this agreement.
• If this is a new customer you are creating the Agreement for and they have just been added into the New Customer screen, you may open the Activities menu and select the Create an Agreement option.
• If you are in Legacy Mode, and have the customer open in the Qualification screen, you may select the Create an Agreement option from the Activities menu on the toolbar.

When a new agreement is generated for your customer, the Agreement screen will open and display the customer's information on the top.

The General tab is the first tab you will see on the Agreement screen. This contains all of the basic information for the agreement, such as important dates, the Contract Amount, the Type of agreement and even a section for Notes.

To begin your agreement, it is a good idea to assign an Agreement Type (which is only 3 characters) as a way of categorizing the agreement for easy reporting and posting. The Department field will carry over to all invoices generated by this agreement; and so will the Sales Person and Job fields.
Note: If you have already set your default Department in the System Setup → Agreements tab, then you should not need to set the Department for each individual agreement.

The Technician field will default to "Serv Agr 9999". When a dispatch is posted from this agreement, that is the Non-Tech column it will appear under on the Electronic Dispatch Board (EDB). Assigning specific technician's to an agreement is not recommended, as that technician may not be available for the date the agreement is due for service.

Contract Period controls how far ahead the Expiration Date jumps when an agreement is renewed. That date can be generated by the Original Contract Date (which is the date the contract was initially purchased) or the Last Renewal date, which is when the contract was most recently renewed. You'll also notice a Contract Amount squeezed in between these date fields. This field can either be filled in manually, or will auto-populate based on the invoice amounts entered into the Invoice tab of the same agreement.

Finally, you'll be able to track service and invoice dates using the Last Invoiced, Last Paid and Last Serviced fields. Note that these fields are only updated by invoices and dispatches in ESC that have the agreement number associated to them. The Last Paid field will not be updated if the payment is recorded in a separate accounting program.

Step 2: Scheduling Agreement Dispatches