Siebel Field Service Guide > Charges and Invoices >

About Cost, Price, and Rate Lists

Cost, price, and rate lists must be set up for charges and invoices to be created correctly. Each list type is described in the following sections. For more information about cost lists, price lists, and rate lists, see Siebel Pricing Administration Guide.

Cost Lists

Field Service contains a costing infrastructure that allows users to track the costs as they are performed, and then export these costs to financial systems for posting to the general ledger. Previously, service organizations could only estimate the costs of performing service. Now they can associate costs of service calls at the time the service is performed.

In Field Service, price lists play an important part in charging and invoicing. The price list provides information to the Charge Engine on the price of parts and materials used in the activity associated with a service request. The price may be adjusted based on a service package.

Most companies have product cost information in their financial systems. Incorporating this information into Field Service has the following advantages:

• Costs can be associated with service requests and activities at the time they are performed.
• Costs can be associated with orders for analysis of profitability.
• Cost lists can have time limits, so that they provide an accurate record of costs at the time they occurred.
• Service inventory can be created at any time.

Price Lists

Price lists link cost lists to service requests, orders, and activities. For example, one cost list, North American Costs, describes the costs of products and resources in North America. When a field engineer chooses a price list for a service request, the associated cost list is automatically linked to the service request.

Rate Lists

Rate lists show the billable rate for a company's employees. When creating a rate list, there are two main tasks that must be performed:

1. Create and release a new product with the resource name you require, for example, Field Engineer. Make sure the Project Resource flag is selected. Then, add the resource to your rate list with the corresponding rate.
2. Create a new position for the resource product you created and associate the position with the billing product. You can then enter the users to be billed at the newly created rate.

   TIP:   The service calendar is used to calculate regular, overtime, and extended overtime charges. To set up schedule hours for employees, use the Administration - Service screen > Schedules > Schedule Hours view. You can then associate the appropriate service calendar with an entitlement using the Agreements > List > Entitlements > Entitlement Details view. See Defining Schedule Hours and To associate a service calendar with an entitlement for more information.

NOTE:  The entitlement schedule will take precedence over the schedule set at the employee level.