The Maxwell Systems Management Suite (MSMS) Service Management Contract Analysis Report can be useful, but recently, in trying to reconcile service revenue and costs, I ran into a problem where the Contract Analysis Report was reporting actual costs twice, once as a current contract cost, and once as a historical contract cost.
The problem happens when you have current costs that are processed for a Work Order that is regarded as belonging to a historical contract. Here’s the particulars–first there’s a contract that expired December 31, 2008, and was renewed. Then Contract Closeout established the “current contract record” expiring December 31, 2009. And finally, a Work Order was created December 15, 2008, but the work was not completed and billed until January 2009. It is this Work Order that causes the confusion for the Contract Analysis Report.
In January 2009, the work on the December 15, 2008 Work Order was performed, and was billed. The Ticket Invoice Journal correctly updated the costs to the Historical Contract File, and also updated the Customer Contract Monthly Cost File for January 2009. But, the Contract Analysis Report adds those January 2009 costs into the Current Contact (the one dated January 1 to December 31, 2009) and it also reports those costs as part of the historical contract data. Thus the costs are overstated.
There is no real solution to this problem except to give each Contract a new number and that’s impractical in most cases.