What are the Top 3 value propositions in the new Manage Contracts feature in fluid?
The Manage Contracts feature provides the contract administrator, billing professional, and revenue analyst a complete view of their contracts. We found these 3 capabilities most compelling:
- Related actions to process current billing and revenue recognition
- Related information to view voucher and expense report detail
- Filtered list of contracts configurable to each user individually
1. Related actions to process current billing and revenue recognition
Information is categorized into one of these sections:
- Contract Information
- Customer
- Fixed Amount Products
- Rate-Based Products
- Rate-Based Limits
- Prepaids
- Exceptions
- Award Information
Select a contract on the left-hand panel to get started. Quickly distinguish current billing and revenue from prior and future billing and revenue recognition for both Fixed Amount and Rate-Based Products.
Select the Related Action icon to process overdue amount billing or revenue.
Select a bill plan, enter the appropriate dates and then the Process button. No run control required. Similar capabilities exist for processing revenue plans and rate based contract lines used to bill project costs.
If you know the contract number that needs to be processed, simply enter it or use any of sixteen search fields that are available. Each user configures which search fields to display as an individual preference. For exception based processing, use ‘Additional Criteria’ to identify all of your contracts with overdue billing or revenue events or filter on ‘Favorites’ for a subset of contracts worked throughout the month.
2. Related information to view voucher and expense report detail
How often do project managers ask their support team to investigate a large or unusual cost during the month and need an answer right now, before the meeting with the customer? Business operations staff field requests like this on a regular basis and the questions relate to a specific contract and project – possibly one of your ‘Favorites’.
Leverage Related Information for insight into recent cost from vendors and employees, recent billing and revenue recognition. Replace your custom project costing queries with Recent Vouchers and Recent Expenses related information. Quickly investigate and respond to questions from the customer, sponsor, project manager and corporate office.
Before finalizing a customer invoice, do you compare it to prior billings for reasonableness? Use the Recent Billing and Recent Revenue related information windows to compare the current invoice to prior months without leaving the page.
How is ‘Recent’ defined? You decide – this is a user preference. This could be as little as the last week of activity, month or longer.
3. Filtered list of contracts configurable to each user individually
Does your organization assign work based on line of business, geographical area, customer or contract status? It is important that contract administrators and billing professionals know the contracts they are responsible for processing. New ‘My Contracts’ functionality provides each user a unique list of contracts using attributes already in place saving time not having to sort through contracts outside their area.
Assign contracts based on any combination of attributes stored on the contract header, project, or award. Use parenthesis and ‘OR’ functionality or keep it simple. Options allow power-users to copy and configure criteria for others. An automated refresh maintains a tailored list of ‘My Contracts’ current for each user, without intervention.
Other Available Features Include:
- Optional charting to compare revenue and billing by product type
- User preferences to hide entire sections
- Award attributes for Grants
- Related actions to process amendments, clear exceptions, or open other components in classic plus
- Setting ‘Favorites’ within the My Contracts list
Whether you have thousands of contracts or a smaller organization, consider exploring the new Manage Contract functionality to support contract administration, billing and revenue recognition. Make use of the latest PeopleTools capabilities in the areas of Related Actions and Related Information in the context of a modern fluid interface.
For more information
You can view a video demonstrating use of the functionality in the six-minute video below
Additional documentation is available in the PeopleSoft Contracts Online Help topic “Using the Fluid User Interface for Contracts.”
This blog post has been authored by Joe Willever, Product Management Director at Oracle.