Preassigning contracts in Sales

After a subscription has been shipped, the subscription lines must be assigned to a Customer subscription contract so that they can then be invoiced. This handling from the Business Central Standard is somewhat cumbersome, as this assignment can only be made after the shipment has been posted.

To simplify this, DYCE Feature Suite for Subscription Billing offers the option of making this assignment in advance during the sales process. Specifically, the customer subscription contract is selected in the sales line in the new field Add to Customer Subscription Contract. In addition to the creation of the subscription, the associated subscription lines in the specified customer subscription contract are retrieved during shipment.

Assigning bundles

A bundle is always assigned to a customer subscription contract as a whole. Selecting, changing or clearing Add to Customer Subscription Contract on the bundle line or on any of its components applies the same value to all lines of the bundle. If the bundle is set up to adjust quantities by usage data, this setting is carried over to the bundle in the customer subscription contract.

Contracts in a different currency

A customer subscription contract can also be assigned if its currency differs from the currency of the sales document. When the contract is assigned, the currency factor is determined automatically for the work date and stored, together with its date, on the subscription lines of the sales line. A notification informs about this and offers the action Select exchange rate.

The exchange rate can also be set manually with the action Exchange Rate Subscription Lines (in action group Functions in the Lines menu of sales orders and sales quotes). The action is available if the currency of the assigned contract differs, nothing has been shipped for the line yet and the line has subscription lines. It opens the exchange rate selection, in which the date and the exchange rate can be specified. An exchange rate of 0 is not allowed. Values set this way are marked as Target Currency Factor Manually Adjusted and are no longer updated automatically.

When the shipment is posted, the currency factor is determined again for the posting date, unless it was adjusted manually. The subscription lines receive the currency of the contract together with the currency factor and its date. If the contract has no currency code (local currency), the amounts are converted to local currency.

If the sales line is assigned to a different contract or the assignment is cleared, the stored values are cleared. For bundles, the values apply to all lines of the bundle.

The stored values are shown in the read-only fields Target Currency Factor, Target Currency Factor Date and Target Currency Factor Manually Adjusted of the subscription lines of the sales line.

Restrictions

It is generally not possible to select an inactive customer subscription contract. Nevertheless, it can happen that a contract is changed to inactive after selection (e.g. by another user). In this case, the shipment is posted, but the subscription lines are not assigned to the contract. The user also receives a corresponding message.

The system behaves in a similar way if the Sell-to Customer differs in the customer subscription contract. In this case, too, the shipment is posted, but the subscription lines are not assigned to the contract. The user also receives a corresponding message here. A differing currency, on the other hand, does not prevent the assignment (see Contracts in a different currency).