Contract, Rate card, Expense lines mean in general

[sanvi]

Hello experts,

I am new to servicenow project and i have to learn about the contract management.. Can please anyone tell me what Contract, Rate card, Expense lines mean in general??I have already used the servicenow wiki for this and i have a little bit of understanding but the thing is i dono how these things are related to each other........ Please do the needful.

Thank you,

Nivedita

[kellykaufmann]

Hi

You may want to reach out to these groups for help Group: ServiceNow User Group - SIG - PPM | ServiceNow or Space: Project Portfolio Management | ServiceNow.

I haven't used contract mgmt or rate cards yet...but we do have expense lines set up for estimating/tracking hard costs/purchases. Here's our internal instructions on creating cost estimates & using Expense lines to capture actuals for a project, if this helps. Pardon the formatting.

Project Costs (for purchases or contractors)

Actual costs (purchases or contractor charges) are captured by creating Expense Lines for that project.

• How to enter cost estimates (for a purchase or contractor) related to a project task:
  1. In a Project, navigate to the 'Project Tasks' tab.
  2. Click on the 'New' button to create a new task.
  3. Populate info for this task, including an amount in the 'Estimated Cost' field (remember what $ amount you entered).   Click 'Submit' to save the task.
• Note: In the 'Costs' tab, the $ amount will be incorporated into the 'Estimated cost' field.
• How to enter cost estimates (for a purchase or contractor) related to a requirement:
  1. In a Project, navigate to the 'Requirements' tab.
  2. Click the 'New' button to create a new requirement.
  3. Populate info for this requirement, including an amount in the 'Estimated Cost' field (remember what $ amount you entered). Click 'Submit' to save the requirement.
• Note: In the 'Costs' tab, the $ amount will be incorporated into the 'Estimated cost' field.
• How to enter cost estimates (for a purchase or contractor) for a task related to a requirement:
  1. Once in a Requirement for a Project, navigate to the 'Project Tasks' tab.
  2. Click the 'New' button.
  3. Fill out the form including entering a value into the 'Estimated cost' field. Click on the 'Submit' button.
• Note: This will override the value in the 'Estimated cost' field for that requirement, and will also be incorporated into the 'Estimated cost' field in the 'Costs' tab of the main project form.
• How to enter cost actuals / enter expense lines for purchases or contractors:
  1. In a Project, navigate to the 'Expense Lines' tab.
  2. Click the 'New' button to create a new expense line.
  3. Fill out the fields including the 'Amount' field (remember what $ amount you entered). Click the 'Submit' button to save.
• Note: In the 'Costs' tab, the $ amount will be incorporated into the 'Actual cost' field.

[amullendarby]

A contract rate card is basically a scheduled application of costs associated with a contract. The result of the rate card being triggered is an expense line that is most commonly associated with an asset or a user. The expense line is what you use for your financial reporting. An example would be...

• You have 4 routers and you just purchased a maintenance contract that is charged monthly. You would record the total amount of the contract on the actual contract form for the year, let's say 1200.00.
• Then you would create a contract rate card that would be triggered monthly (by a scheduled job) across the 4 routers at 100.00 every month.
• The contract rate card would then create an expense line on each router asset of 25.00 each month, giving you a total of $100 each month for four expense lines. The expense lines would also be reflected on the contract so you could report off the assets and the contract.

There are other options for splitting the costs and then you can associate the contract and its rate cards with users if you want to. Here is a wiki on the specifics.

Also, this video may be worth while for a good intro into contract management.