Route Contracts: General Information

With MYOB Acumatica's integrated route management and service management capabilities, you can easily handle appointments associated with routes. The routes can be generated through contracts or can be created manually for a specific day.

Learning Objectives

In this chapter, you will learn how to do the following:

  • Create route service contracts
  • Create route contract schedule
  • Specify route order
  • Generate route appointments
  • Review generated appointments

Applicable Scenarios

You create and process route service contract when you and your partner have agreed to the terms of delivery of some inventory items on a regular basis.

Process Diagram

In general, when processing a route service contract, your employees perform the following steps:

  1. Creating the route service contract: The service manager enters the route service contract into the system.
  2. Creating at least one schedule: The scheduler creates the schedule (or schedules) for route service delivery for the contract.
  3. Activating the service contract: The scheduler activates the route service contract in the system so appointments can be generated for the contract schedules.
  4. Checking and editing (if necessary) the order in which appointments for a contract will be generated in the route execution: This step is described in Routes: Sequence Definition.
  5. Generating the appointments: The scheduler generates appointments.
  6. Creating the appointments on the fly: If a related schedule has not been created or additional appointments are needed, the scheduler creates appointments.
  7. Generating and processing billing documents for the service orders or appointments: An accountant approves service orders or appointments for generation billing documents. An accountant then generates billing documents for the service orders and appointments and processes them in the system.
  8. Modify the next billing period (optional): If any changes are necessary, the scheduler modifies the next billing period. The scheduler can add or delete services and non-stock items for the next billing period. He or she can also modify the quantity and prices of the existing items.
  9. Activate the next billing period (optional): If the Automatically Activate Upcoming Period check box is not selected on the Route Management Preferences (FS100400) form, the schedulers activates the next billing period for the contract.
  10. Suspending the contract (optional): If it is necessary to hold the contract for a while, the scheduler can suspend the contract.
  11. Canceling the contact (optional): If the scheduler has activated the contract but the services for the contract are not going to be provided for some reason, the scheduler can cancel the contract. This step can be performed after your company started to provide services according to the contract.

The general process related to route service contracts billed at the time of service is shown in the diagram below.

Figure 1. Processing of a route service contract billed at the time of service


Route Management Capabilities

You can assign a driver and a vehicle based on the required skills for the route. You can reorganize the scheduled appointments for a route by adding them, deleting them, moving them, and changing their order. For each generated route, MYOB Acumatica provides useful statistics, such as driving time and distance, to help you make better decisions to optimize your route management.

By using the route management capabilities of MYOB Acumatica, you can do the following:

  • Manage staff members (drivers): You can define drivers in the system so you can track them and assign them to routes. A driver is a staff member who can perform services related to routes. You can quickly and easily select the most appropriate available person to deliver your services.
  • Manage vehicles: You can enter and store information about each vehicle your company uses to execute routes. Each vehicle can be tracked, and you can quickly select a vehicle from all available vehicles to execute a route
  • Manage and process routes: You can create and process routes quickly and optimize them to minimize fuel consumption and travel time. With Bing Maps integrated with MYOB Acumatica, the system calculates the distances and times of the executed route. If you rearrange the order of the appointments in the route to be executed, Bing Maps plots and calculates the route again. By using Bing Maps, you can easily track executed routes and their appointments for particular days and staff members that execute routes.
  • Process route service contracts: You can ease the processing of repeat customers’ appointments that require route planning. You can create schedules when the services need to be performed, and based on these schedules, the system can generate the routes to be executed, with appointments automatically assigned to the routes. This reduces time and errors when users are entering the necessary routes into the system.