Customer contracts are established for two typical scenarios:
You would like to discount certain products for specific customers who set up special contracts with you. These contracts normally state that a specific customer will receive a special price when they buy a particular product.
You would like to offer multiple customers a standard set of contract prices (specific price per product).
The Customer Contracts maintenance on the Pricing Configuration screen of the Pricing tab is where you set up terms for new customer contracts.
Note: To access the Customer Contracts maintenance, you must have the proper security privileges. The Contracts Maintenance job function needs to be assigned to one of your roles. Roles are assigned to users in the User Maintenance on the Security Maintenance screen of the Vision Configuration tab. For more information, refer to About roles and job functions.
On the Pricing tab, click the Pricing Configuration button. The Pricing Configuration screen appears. This screen is split into two panes. The left pane contains the list of folders, subfolders, and items. The right pane shows details for the item selected in the left pane.
Click the Contracts folder in the left pane to expand its contents.
Click the Customer Contracts subfolder to expand its contents and view details about it in the right pane.
Click the New button.
Set up the terms of the contract:
In the Number field, type the contract number or code that you would like to assign to this contract.
In the Name field, type the name of the contract.
In the Description field, type a description for the contract.
In the Global Dates area, type the date that the contract becomes effective and the date that the contract expires (or click the arrows to select the dates from the calendars).
The global effective and expiration dates are used with the effective and expiration dates from Contract Pricing to determine if this contract can be used when prices are calculated during order entry on the Customer Service tab.
If the contract encompasses a full catalog of products, you may want to select the Full Catalog check box. This option is sometimes selected for a few large contracts. An example is a 20,000-item contract from a wholesaler. Contracts of this size do not contain the list of products in the Customer Contract.
In the Account Rep drop-down list, select the account rep associated with this contract.
Your selection does not need to be the account rep for each of the customers to which this contract is assigned. (If there is more than one account rep for the list of active customers, the field is not accurate.) You can select the most logical account rep to associate with this contract. The purpose of this field is to group contracts by account rep in reports.
In the Pricing Whse drop-down list, select the warehouse associated with the contract. When pricing calculations are done, the system uses the cost from this warehouse's Product Master file.
In the Pricing drop-down list, select the contract's pricing type. Valid options are:
Fixed Regular Contract (F)
Flexible Regular Contract (L)
Sale Contract (S)
A typical business application of a fixed regular contract is a standard catalog. One catalog is typically broken out into several contracts. The purpose of this grouping is to categorize the products by gross profit (GP) percentage. One contract might contain the high GP products in the catalog, a second might contain the low GP products, and a third might contain the rest. A product should not overlap into two contracts for one catalog.
During pricing, fixed contracts take precedence over flexible. If a fixed contract exists for the product, then that price is used over any flexible contract that contains that product. Typically, each product appears on only one fixed contract for a customer ship to location. A customer ship to may have several fixed contracts, but individual products usually appear on only one of the fixed contracts. If a product is on more than one fixed contract, then the first contract is the one for pricing calculations.
In a typical business example of a flexible regular contract, a department of a customer negotiates special pricing on certain products in a specific catalog. During pricing, if a fixed regular contract does not exist for a product, then flexible contracts are checked. All of the flexible contracts are checked for the product, and the lowest price is used.
In the Contract drop-down list, select the type of contract. This field is used only as a reference for reports and inquiries. It does not affect pricing. Valid options are:
Custom Contract (C): A custom contract contains specific negotiated pricing for a customer or group of customers.
Matrix Contract (M): A matrix contract encompasses an entire full-line catalog, with varying discounts per item. Pricing Managers may choose to set up matrix contracts.
Shared Contract (S): A shared contract is one that can be used by multiple customers; the prices are not specific to certain customers. An example is a contract for a Hot Buy List.
Universal Contract (U): A universal contract contains pricing that applies to all customers, without regard to the contract being on a customer's list of contracts. An example is a contract for products included in a sales flyer from headquarters. The product numbers in the sale flyer start with a special prefix; when a customer orders that product, he or she must include the prefix to be considered for the universal contract pricing. The Allow Universal (Flyer) Contracts check box on the Pricing screen and on the Ship To Pricing screen on the Customer Maintenance tab determine whether a customer and ship to location are eligible for universal contract pricing.
Click the Accept button to save your contract terms.