Defining Pricing Information for Services and Support Offerings

This chapter provides an overview of pricing records and discusses how to establish pricing records.

Establishing Pricing Records

This section provides an overview on pricing records and discusses how to establish pricing records.

Understanding Pricing Records

This section discusses:

Pricing records.
Types of pricing records.
Products, services, and service activities on pricing records.
Pricing records for each currency.
Purchase options.
Pricing structures on agreements.

Pricing Records

You use the Pricing Information component in PeopleSoft CRM to define pricing records for service and support offerings. The system uses the pricing structure that you define to calculate prices on agreements.

When you are creating service orders and cases, you can use the Pricing Information component to look up the price for work not covered by an agreement, such as on-demand service or support calls, or an additional service activity that is not included in the service on the customer's agreement. The system, however, automatically populates the price defined on the Pricing page for the transaction.

Note. With the pricing records that you define in the Pricing Information component, PeopleSoft CRM can calculate agreement prices. It can also price on-demand transactions for cases and service orders as well as service fees.

Types of Pricing Records

You can define pricing records for these types of transactions:

Agreements
Agreement services
Agreement cases
On-demand services
On demand cases

Agreement pricing records define the fee that the customer pays for an agreement that covers a specific service or support offering. The agreement price is paid when the agreement is issued to or signed by the customer. In addition, PeopleSoft CRM supports the ability to pay for the agreement on a recurring basis.

Agreement service or case pricing records define what the customer pays when the work that is associated with the service or support offering on the agreement is performed.

On-demand pricing records define the amount that a customer pays for services or support offerings that are not covered by an agreement. Typically, on-demand prices are higher than agreement services prices. By purchasing an agreement, the customer may receive a discount on the normal price of a service or support offering.

Products, Services, and Service Activities on Pricing Records

The prices that you define for agreements, agreement services, agreement cases, on demand case and on-demand service pricing records can define rates for a service, a product, or both a service and a product. Pricing records that only specify products are used by call centers to define rates for supporting specific products and are identified as an agreement case or an on-demand case. Field service organizations define pricing records for a service or for a combination of a service and a product and are identified as agreement service or on-demand service.

When calculating pricing on an agreement, the system checks first for a price for the service-product combination. If none is defined, the system uses the price that is defined for the service alone. For support-based agreements, the agreement price is based on prices defined for products only.

You can also define rates for service activities and combinations of products and service activities. These pricing records enable you to adjust a customer's invoice when he or she requests additional service activities that are not included in the service.

For example, at the time that a customer requests a service that is covered by an agreement, you might want to offer the ability to upgrade the service by adding additional service activities to the basic service that is covered by the agreement. You can define a fee for each service activity that the customer adds to the basic service. Note that you can define a pricing record for a service or a service activity, but not both.

Pricing Records for Each Currency

Every pricing record defines a rate in a specific currency. You must define a complete set of pricing records for each currency that is valid for agreement, agreement service, agreement case, on demand case and on-demand service transactions in your business. When you create an agreement, you can reference the pricing records for only one currency.

Purchase Options

You can define prices for these types of purchase options:

Flat
Prepaid
Time and material

A flat purchase option specifies a set price for a service or support offering on an agreement, an agreement service, or an on-demand service pricing record. A flat rate for an agreement is expressed in a time-based unit of measure, such as hours, days, weeks, months, or years.

For an agreement service, on-demand service, agreement case, or on-demand case, flat rates are expressed in units of work, such as per case or per service order. The flat rate is expressed as an amount to be paid for each installed product that is covered by that service. For example, if a flat rate is defined as 100 USD per year for a service, and the agreement line that references that service has two installed products, the line price would be calculated as 200 USD for one year.

With the prepaid purchase option, customers pay for a specified quantity of a service or support offering at the time that they purchase the agreement. The prepaid purchase option applies only to agreement pricing records. You define a price for a set quantity of cases or service orders, or a price for a certain number of hours worth of work.

You may define different prices for the same service or service-product combination for different prepaid quantities; for example, 100 USD per service order when prepaying 20 service orders, and 90 USD per service order when prepaying 50 service orders. The prepaid quantity of cases or service orders is saved on the agreement, and the value is decreased when a case or service order is created to account for the consumption.

If the case or service order is subsequently canceled, the quantity is added back to the agreement. If the prepaid quantity is in units of hours, the system decreases this quantity each time a technician or agent uses the Manage Time component to report time that is spent (total hours) on a service order or case that is covered by the agreement line.

The time and material purchase option defines a rate for the labor time that is required to perform the requested work. This rate is always expressed as a time-based unit of measure and applies only to agreement and on-demand service and case pricing records. Material is not directly accounted for by the time and material purchase option. However, you can track material usage for service orders and manually account for the material when creating the customer's invoice.

This table summarizes the valid data combinations on a pricing record and provides an example for each combination:

Applies To	Purchase Option	Unit	Prepaid Quantity	Example
Agreement	Flat	Time-based (hour, day, week, month, year).	Not allowed	200 USD per year.
Agreement	Prepaid	Case, service order, or hour.	Required	30 USD per service order for a prepaid quantity of 15.
Agreement service/case	Time and material	Time-based (hour, day, week, month, year).	Not allowed	40 USD per hour.
Agreement service/case	Flat	Case or service order.	Not allowed	45 USD per service order/case.
On-demand service/case	Flat	Case or Service order.	Not allowed	55 USD per service order/case.
On-demand service/case	Time and material	Time-based (hour, day, week, month, year). For cases it's only hour.	Not allowed	75 USD per hour.

Pricing Structures on Agreements

On agreements, you can set up pricing structures that use various combinations of pricing records.

For example, your business might offer a five-year preventive maintenance (PM) service agreement for air conditioners. For an agreement price of 500 USD, a service technician will perform preventive maintenance tasks on a customer's air conditioner for five years.

For customers who buy this agreement, you also offer repair services for 75 USD per service call—a 50 percent discount off your on-demand rate. To support this agreement scenario, you define an agreement pricing record with a flat purchase option for preventive maintenance service of 100 USD per year. You also define an agreement service pricing record for your air conditioner repair service for a flat rate of 75 USD per service order. Your on-demand pricing record for the same service would be 150 USD.

After defining your pricing records, you create an agreement with a five-year duration that references the agreement and the agreement service pricing records. The customer who buys the agreement pays 500 USD and receives preventive maintenance service for five years. If the customer's air conditioner requires repair services, the customer pays 75 USD per repair service order for the duration of the five-year agreement.

Note. Prepaid quantity is a fixed amount per contract, not per year. In this case, if someone were to prepay for 10 PM visits (regardless of agreement duration), you can define a prepaid price of 50 USD per service order for a quantity of 10 service orders. An alternate arrangement would be to define a flat rate of 100 USD per year for unlimited PM service. For a five-year agreement, this would cost 500 USD for unlimited PM service.

Page Used to Establish Pricing Records

Page Name	Object Name	Navigation	Usage
Service Pricing	RF_SVC_PRICE	Pricing Configuration, Service Pricing, Service Pricing	Establish pricing records for service and support offerings.

Establishing Pricing Records

To establish pricing records, use the Service Pricing (RF_SVC_PRICE) component.

Access the Service Pricing page.

Note. To establish pricing for products that you sell, use the Price page under Products CRM. Also, material costs for items are stored in the inventory system.

Search Filter

Select pricing information that meets a specific set of criteria. Enter the criteria and click the Search button. If you click the Search button without specifying any criteria, the system returns all pricing records that are defined for the setID.

Service	Select a service to limit the search to pricing records that are defined for a specific service. You define services by using the Services component. Click the Transfer to Service button to access the Services component. Services are not relevant to pricing for support agreements.
Activity	Select a value to limit the search to pricing information that is defined for a specific service activity. You use the Service Activity Code page to define activities. Click the Transfer to Activity button to access the Service Activity Code page. Note. Search criteria can include a service or an activity, but not both. These fields are mutually exclusive on the pricing record.
Purchase Option	Select a value to limit the search to pricing records for the specific purchase option:Flat, Prepaid, or T&M (time and material).
Product ID	Select a value to limit the search to pricing records for specific product. You establish products in PeopleSoft CRM by using the Product EIP or the Product Definition component.
Applies To	Select a value to limit the search to pricing records for the specific applies to option: Agreement, Agreement Case, Agreement Service,On Demand Case, or On Demand Service.
Currency Code	Select a value to limit the search to pricing records for a specific currency. You establish currencies on the Currency Code page.

Prices

The system displays the pricing information records that meet the search criteria.

Applies to Information

Applies To	Select the transaction that the pricing record applies to: Agreement, Agreement Case, Agreement Service,On Demand Case, or On Demand Service.
Purchase Option	Select the purchase method for the service or support offering: Flat, Prepaid, or T&M (time and material). The Prepaid option applies only to pricing records for agreement transactions. The T&M option applies only to pricing records for agreement service, agreement case, on demand case and on demand service transactions.
Service	Select the service that the pricing applies to, if applicable. You use the Services component to define services. Click the Transfer to Service button to access the Services component. Services are not relevant to pricing for support agreements.
Product ID	Select the product that the pricing record applies to, if applicable. Click the Transfer to Product button to access the Products component. If you specify both a product and a service on a pricing record, the price applies only to that particular service-product combination. Pricing records that only specify products are used only by call centers to define rates for supporting specific products.
Activity Code	Select the service activity that the purchase option applies to. You can define pricing records for service activities or combinations of service activities and products. You can define a pricing record for a service or an activity, but not both. You can use service activity price information to adjust a customer's invoice when activities are added to a service that is covered by an agreement. The system displays the information on the Billing page for the service order or case.

Rate Information

Currency Code	Select the currency of the rate amount. You must define a complete set of pricing records for service and support offerings for each currency that you use.
Rate Amount	Enter the amount that is charged per the specified unit in the specified currency.
Unit	Select the unit of work that is associated with the rate amount. Depending on your Applies To and Purchase Option field selections, you can specify a rate for the following work units: Day, Hour, Month, S.O. (service order), Case, Week, or Year.
Prepaid Quantity	Enter the number of work units of a service or support offering that a customer pays for in advance. This value applies only to the Prepaid purchase option.