Helpful Hints > Group Codes

If you have agreements or contracts with groups of customer, or you wish to give a set of customers distinctive treatment when it comes to warranties and pricing, you can use Group Codes (see Group Code Maintenance ).

A customer can belong to one, and only one, group. Each group carries with it a set of default Warranty Codes (see Warranty Processing ), charge codes, and rates.

In addition to having these codes and rates assigned to the group as a whole, you can also create a list of specific items or product lines that have different Warranty Codes, charge codes, or rates.

For example, you could set up GROUP1 with three warranty codes. When you enter a Service Order for a customer that belongs to GROUP1, you might need to add a new Service Item for the piece of equipment you are receiving from the customer. When you do, the system will first look to see of that particular item number is set up as an exception for the group. If it is, the original and extended warranty codes you set up for the Group and item will automatically fill in for the Service Item. If no record exists for that item for that group, then the program will check the product line and use those warranty codes. Finally, if no product line exception exists, then the warranty codes from the main group code panel are used. In this way, you can assign warranties that are different, depending on the customer group plus the item or product line. This is especially useful for companies that do not sell items, but provide warranty service for other manufacturers.

You can also assign a default Group Code to be used if you have a customer that does not belong to any other group. The default Group Code to be assigned to all customers without a group assignment is on the Service Order Options Main tab (see Main Tab)

The Repair Warranty Code can also be quite useful. You assign the repair warranty to a Group Code, or to an item or product line under a Group Code. When a Service Order is completed and updated, the repair warranty code is automatically applied to the Service Item.

The Charge Codes are intended to allow you to use one or two labor charge codes, but have the price vary depending on the group the customer is in, and the item or product being repaired. If you have a different rate that you charge per hour for each product line, you do not have to set up a different Miscellaneous Item Code for each product line. Rather, you create one Miscellaneous Item Code, /REPAIRLABOR, and set up a default rate on the main panel, and rates specific to the product line in the Item/Product Line panel.

You can even use the Group Code to modify the way your warranties work. Without Group Code, your warranty either covers labor or it does not. But if you have an agreement in which the labor rate is reduced during the warranty period, you can enter an In Warranty rate and an Out of Warranty rate. In the Warranty Code Maintenance, you would not cover labor, but the Group Code will take care of charging the right rate for /REPAIRLABOR.

In the same way that you can vary the rate for the chosen labor code, you can also assign a different price level for in-warranty and out-of-warranty parts.

When you are on the lines tab of Service Order Data Entry, you can press the GROUP button (see Group Button) to display the charge codes to use for the given customer and Service Item Entry. A screen similar to the one shown below tells the user what the valid charge codes are, what the rates should be, and gives some brief information about the group the customer belongs to.