Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM 4 For Dummies®

Chapter 26. Working with Contracts

What are contracts? In Microsoft CRM contracts aren't legal documents, they're an indication that the person requesting support is under a support plan.

Essentially, a contract is defined in Microsoft CRM as an agreement or plan that depreciates with time or use. For instance, say a customer purchases an extended warranty. That warranty expires over time, perhaps over the next three years. That's a contract. Or say your customer purchases a support plan based on a number of incidents or cases. His contract will expire when he's used up the number of incidents. Microsoft CRM also allows you to combine the two options. This means that customers can purchase number-of-incident plans that expire either when they use all of the incidents or when the contract expires.

The best part about contracts is that you don't have to do anything after they're executed. Contracts are tracked by the system. Better yet, if you define some workflow rules, contract renewal can be handled in an automated function as well. (See Chapter 9 for more on workflow rules.)

When creating contracts in Microsoft CRM you first create a contract template. Templates are a great way to quickly execute contracts, as most organizations have a few standard contracts.

After you create them, you can associate contracts with cases. If per-incident contracts are associated with cases, they'll automatically decrement when you use them.

This chapter is all about creating and using contracts. Getting ...