Table of Contents
Purpose
Managing contracts is essential for smooth operations and financial stability. Whether you're setting up a 12-month Fixed Payment plan or identifying how to recognize revenue, every decision affects your finances and how smoothly your business runs.
This article covers important things like how to manage contracts that mix fixed payments with Per-Service or T&M options for your Snow services.
Understanding these details helps you streamline your work and make the most of your financial planning!
Revenue Recognition Type
Earned Revenue
With Earned Revenue, you only earn revenue for Snow when services are used.
Invoiced Revenue
When Snow services are added to an opportunity, they will earn revenue to the Snow Division in all months of the year. The system cannot separate invoiced revenue to only Snow months.
📌Note: If you want your Snow revenue to only be in Snow months, you will need to create a separate Snow and separate Maintenance opportunity. Each opportunity will only have the value of its season and you will need to set up invoicing in the months you would like that revenue to be earned. This will require invoice amounts to be different between the Maintenance season and the Snow season.
Contract Start and End Dates
If your 12 month Contract Opportunities Start and End Dates are at the beginning, middle or end of snow season, you may want to consider having separate snow opportunities, even with earned revenue.
If contracts start Jan 1 and end Dec 31, your snow season will be split into 2 opportunities.
If you want to see the snow revenue for the season together, this option would not be for you.
If contracts start April 1 and end March 31, the same scenario happens for late season snow events.
They would not be included in the numbers for the rest of the snow season.
For these reasons, you can set up a snow specific opportunity, separate from your maintenance opportunities and set your production dates to capture the entire snow season.
Setting Up 12 Month Fixed Payment Contracts During Implementation
While in Implementation, your system will not be fully set up for snow. However, you are able to set up your contracts with a snow service so that you can invoice your customers the correct amounts.
Later on, during Aspire’s Snow training classes, you will learn how to set up your snow services and you can do a contract change to correct your legacy contracts that were created during Implementation.
Create a Snow Service that will not be used for actual snow removal services. Create a service called Fixed Payment Snow Removal.
🧠 Make sure this Service reports to your Snow division.
Service Name should be: SN - Fixed Payment Snow Removal
Display Name should be: Fixed Payment Snow Removal
Abbreviation for the service should be: FPSR
Service Type should be listed as: Snow/Snow
Contract Service checkbox should be selected to Yes
The Multi Visit checkbox should be selected to Yes
Taxable Items; If your snow is taxable, make sure these are selected.
Add the service to your contract opportunity.
Do not enter any items under the service. This will not be used!
Enter the dollar amount of all your fixed payment snow services on your legacy contract on the service line. This will add the revenue from snow to the contract.
That is all you will do with this service. Later on, when you learn how to estimate for Snow, you will do a contract change to add actual snow removal services and remove this temporary service.
Using Fixed Payment Contracts With Per Service and T&M Snow
When you have a maintenance contract with snow removal that is entirely Per Service or T&M invoicing, you will always create a separate opportunity for snow removal.
You can still invoice with the maintenance fixed monthly payments. Having a separate snow opportunity will allow you to use any dates you like to capture your snow season.