Contracts

Recurring payment streams are modelled as contract schedules. This is primarily the support and maintenance obligations but can also include other recurring contracts such as hosting and rental agreements.

The recurring components of the order are grouped separately on the order form and follow an initialisation workflow separated from the delivery of the associated sales component. Once initialised, each of the future payments under the schedule are created in the database ready for release when triggered by the invoicing rules. Where the schedule has external support (CoGs) element(s), these can be initialised to a different timeframe and create a buy-side schedule and purchase obligations. Schedules follow renewal processing, see Renewals below.

The following specific business features are supported for schedules:

• Schedule billing can be in any frequency of weeks, months or quarters.
• Invoice lines are pre-created and placed upon the release list at a pre-determined invoice lead time so invoices are never late and take only seconds to create.
• Schedule initialisation drives the invoice events; initialisation can take place at any time after contract signature. Un-initialised schedules sit on the appending list, nothing is lost or forgotten.
• Buy-side schedules have their own initialisation dates allowing the system to model the supplier-payment stream unrelated to the invoice stream.
• Quantities can be split at initialisation to model-staged delivery with different support timeframes, split-quantity schedules can be cancelled independently.
• Incremental orders can be added to existing schedules (co-terminus model) or initialised separately.
• Where orders are added to existing schedules, the first invoice line is a catch-up invoice that can optionally bill to the next or next but one invoice period. This deals with the case of an incremental order (i.e. 5 more users) that is executed after an invoice has been issued but before the beginning of the relevant invoice period.
• CoGs schedules can have separate invoicing periods and price banding, they are tied by the order line but have totally independent terms, volume discounts etc.
• Buy-side suppliers can be chosen on initialisation, meaning the sales person does not need to know who will be providing support services on the order when it is executed (if outsourced).
• Buy-side schedules can be in a different currency from the order (i.e. you can sell support in Euros when CoGs are priced in US$).
• Schedule reports are available to allow publication to customers or for internal reporting purposes.
• Forward cash-flow reports can be run showing the run-off of all initialised schedules (less buy-side obligations).
• For co-terminus schedules, incremental values are calculated on a calendar-day basis.