one contract account to multiple contracts

[Former Member]

We have been running ISU/CCS for 8 years.

When we started we made a decision to have a one to one relationship between the contract account and the contract.

If a person owns 2 homes - they have 2 contract accounts, 2 contracts - and receive 2 bills.

We have been looking at changing this to go to a single contract account with multiple contracts.

I am wondering if anyone is doing this and can provide any pro's or con's doing it one contract account to many contracts.

Since we have been doing it one to one for so long - I am having a hard time thinking of pro's to doing it any other way.

I can see many problems with having multiple contracts to one contract account.

I am wondering if anyone has had experience doing this and what they have found works well and what doesn't work well.

Thanks for any information you can provide.

Scott Overmeyer

[Former Member]

Hi.

Check whether This heirarchy helps you in anyway.

On the top there will be a

1) contract account.

under that account there will be some

2) Connection Objects.

this connection object can be a vacant land,or a town house or a house.

Under this there will be

3) Premise

this premise can be an independent house,or a stand or a apartment

and this premise can have

4) Contracts.

this contracts can be one to many

Message was edited by:

Yadi Reddy Konappari

[Former Member]

Thanks for the information.

I understand how it is set up and what records are linked to what.

What I am curious about is - if you go to that model (multiple contracts per contract account) - are there any unique problems to that model as opposed to do it one contract per contract account.

Thanks.

Scott

[Former Member]

Hi

Some of the key business issues you need to address if you have one contract account to multiple contracts are:

1.Do i have seperate payment terms for these contract accounts.If yes, then you should have seperate CA, otherwise, i suggest you can have one CA for the multiple contracts.

2.From the invoicing perspective, does the seperate contracts have to be billed in seperate currencies.If yes, you need to have seperate CAs and maintain the transaction currency in each CA

I will forward you other scenarios if i come across.

Also, if you find these useful, please reward points.

Thanks

Amitav Otta

[gagan_agrawal · Accepted solution]

Hi Scott,

The contract account needs to be different for multiple contracts only in case the payment ,dunning data, payment currency or company code needs to be different for each contract.

Always it is preferred to have only one contract account for multiple contracts if payment/dunning data is same for both the contracts.

There is the best way to do it and there are no Cons in using the best practice as

suggested by SAP, but yes it further depends on the business requirement and complexities involved in it.

You can still send 2 different invoice with single contract account with multiple contracts.

What i still advice is that since the business partner is same with 2 different connection objects he should be sent only since invoice for both the contracts.

I have already used this scenario in one of my project and it has worked well.

regards

Gagan

[Former Member]

Thanks for your reply Gagan.

If I could ask you something more specific.

The problems we are having is with what is printed on the bill (i.e. what number the customer knows when they call us) - and how to post payments.

We are thinking to put the contract account on the bill.

And that is what SAP is saying is best practice to do.

If we do that - then when the customer calls to use our automatic voice system to report an outage - how can they easily tell us which premise or location is out?

We have heard of putting in a house number to distinguish it - but that is more work for the customer.

And then payments.

If the customer uses contract account to pay - how to we know which contract to post against? This doesn't become a big issue until it is time to cut a customer off for non-payment. If we have posted the money to a different contract than what the customer intended - then that will be a problem.

There are other issues as well - but that one confuses us the most - if the customer knows contract account - how do they tell us which contract they are talking about when they transact business with us?

Thanks for your reply.

Scott

[gagan_agrawal]

Hi Scott,

For your sepecific queries.

<b>What is to be printed on the bill</b>

Before Move-In - Payment can only be posted against Contract Account

After Move-In - Payments should be posted against Contract

The reason for this is that, since before move-in there is no Contract so amounts needs to be posted against Contract Account only <i>(BUT)</i> once move-in is done post the payments against Contract.

What i suggest is

If any bill is sent to customer after move-in print both the Contract Account(normal font) and Contract(in bold and bigger font) on the invoice and ask the customer to mention the Contracts while making payments.

Do remember to keep the number ranges for Contract Account and Contract different so that by seeing the number itself you are able to make out as to what number it is!!

This provides following benefits

1)Payments can be posted against the specific Contract it is intended for.

2)When customer calls to use automatic voice system , it should provide customer an option to make queries against respective contracts or against Contract Account.

Use Contract as a primary key and Contract Account as secondary.

Now , if you are sending a single invoice for two contracts to a customer than the customer needs to mention both the contracts against which he is making payments.

This will help in solving of the multiple contract related issues.

Please let me know in case of any queries.

regards

Gagan

[Former Member]

hi Scott Overmeyer,

i am dharani from ISU team. i am now in demo project and new to this. plz tell me where i have to create contract account and assign it to contract and through this i have to process other flows. i donot know total flow. i read utilities using sap.com, it is also useful but not clear idea.

i have doubts like what is different between isu contract and other contract using va41(SD).

plz send me any documents and scenarios related to isu. So that i can understand isu.

Thanks and Regards

Dharani