CW Agreements and EA Contracts

Regardless of whether you are new to ConnectWise or have been using it for years, organizing your agreements/contracts into types that will sync between the two systems can be a little confusing. This post goes over some best practices for setup and has some sample contracts.

Jump to: Overview | Agreement Types | Sample Contracts 

Overview

When setting up Agreements in ConnectWise Manage (CW), we see dealers where there appears to be no standard as to what is or is not covered. We (and the IT industry) highly recommend that you have a standardized set of agreements that each cover specific services, for example, Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. 

The relationship between the agreements in ConnectWise and contracts in e-automate (EA) requires a bit of work to make sure that everything lines up between the two systems. Once this initial work is done, though, the contracts created by the sync will bill properly and not require continued maintenance.

Each agreement type in ConnectWise will tie to a contract type in e-automate. To get the most out of the automation, you want to ensure that you have all the proper agreement types set up in ConnectWise. You should have one agreement type for every "flavor" of agreement that you sell and should not have to make adjustments to rates or coverage at the agreement level. If you make any manual adjustments in ConnectWise to the agreement, you'll have to make those same manual adjustments to the contract in e-automate. 

For example, you have one agreement type called User Based, with unlimited hours that bill monthly, and all work types are covered except for After Hours, Hourly, and Weekend and Holiday:

When you use this agreement, most of the time you don't make changes at the agreement level...but there are clients where Onsite is not covered, and for those agreements, you make the adjustment at the agreement level and move the Onsite work type to the Not Covered list:

Agreements amended in this way will have to be manually touched in e-automate when the contract is created. The best practice in this scenario is to create a second agreement type where the Onsite work type is not covered as the default, then no adjustments would be needed at the agreement level.

Agreement Types and Contract Types

Similar to how e-automate uses contract types to set defaults to use when a new contract is created, ConnectWise has a similar setup for the agreement type used on an agreement. You do not need to have your agreement type names exactly match between e-automate and ConnectWise, but you do want one agreement type for each type of billing that you do, with a matching contract type in e-automate that bills in the same manner.

Follow these four steps to set up your agreement and contract types:

Step One: Review your IT billing and make a list of the different groups of services 

Step Two: For each type of billing, is there both a contract type in e-automate and an agreement type in ConnectWise?

Step Three: Review work types and activity codes in e-automate.

Step Four: Review bill codes in e-automate.

Step One: Review Agreements in ConnectWise or Contracts in e-automate, depending on where you currently do your IT billing.

What are all of the "flavors" of agreements/contracts that you are currently billing your customers?

• Block time or monthly services based?
• What are the services that you offer?
• What are the labor rates you charge for those services?
• What types of work are covered and which are not?

Make a list of all of the different types of agreements that you have set up in ConnectWise with the related billing rates.

For example:

Step Two: Review Agreement Types in ConnectWise

For each of the types you listed in step one, is there a matching agreement type? If not, create new agreement types in ConnectWise so that you have one agreement type for every type of agreement that you have for billing. This will ensure the least manual intervention needed from your staff for billing the contracts in e-automate. Any manual adjustment made at the agreement level in ConnectWise will need to be manually made in e-automate, and we want to avoid that!

For example: 

If there's a matching contract type and agreement type, those are good for the sync. If there are multiple different ConnectWise agreements and only one contract type in e-automate, then you'll need to create new contract types in e-automate. If there's no matching agreement type for your e-automate contract type, then you'll need to create the agreement type in ConnectWise.

Step Three: Determine what work types are needed in ConnectWise.

Work types are how ConnectWise determines what time entries on a service call are covered by the agreement and which are not. Work types map to activity codes in e-automate, which are used on bill codes to determine what is covered and what is not.

The labor rates you defined for your different agreement buckets, and what is covered and what is not, will drive what work types you need to create in ConnectWise. Each work type should have a matching activity code in e-automate.

The work types in ConnectWise are in Setup Tables > Work Types:

Activity codes in e-automate are in Tools > Lists and Codes > Activity Codes:

The codes will need to match in each system. ConnectWise allows for more characters in this field than e-automate does. If you have lengthy work types in ConnectWise, you'll need to make sure that the first 15 characters match one activity code in e-automate. Matching up the work types and activity codes is especially important when using ID965 to sync service tickets from ConnectWise into e-automate, as you want to be sure that work that is covered in ConnectWise is also covered in e-automate. 

Step Four: Review Bill Codes in e-automate

Check your current bill codes that are set up in e-automate to see if a bill code currently exists that has the proper coverage to match each agreement coverage. If there is no current bill code, you'll need to create the bill code in e-automate. 

For example, you have an agreement type in ConnectWise where all work types are included, but Onsite time is billed at $75.00 an hour. The bill code in e-automate would have a billing labor code that bills a regular hourly rate of $0.00, but the activity code of Onsite will bill at $75.00:

Service calls in e-automate that have this bill code will only bill for the activity code Onsite:

Labor recorded with the activity code Remote Support will not bill:

For further details on this, see this article on setting up advanced bill codes and this portion of the ID965 documentation on how bill codes work with the sync.

Sample Contracts

In general, there are three different ways that you can bill for services on ConnectWise agreements:

1. Base amount - One charge is billed to the customer monthly and covers all included services.

2. Additions - Line items are added to the agreement representing different services billed to the customer.

3. Block of hours - A flat amount is charged that covers a set number of hours to be used for service tickets.

You can use any combination of base amounts and additions, and you would not need to create a separate agreement type for each of those; a different agreement type is only needed when there is a difference in the services covered or the labor rate charged.

Block of hours agreements do need a different agreement type, as you will set the agreement type to include a set number of hours. You will need a separate agreement type for each rate charged for block hours.

Base Billing Only

You can set the agreement in ConnectWise to bill just a base amount each month:

• There are no additions billing on this agreement. (Number 1 in the above screenshot)
• The billing amount (Number 2 in the above screenshot) is the base amount that is charged to the customer each month.
• When added to the e-automate contract, the sync adds the template item for the agreement type. (Number 3 in the above screenshot)

This agreement will create the following contract in e-automate:

• The base charge will show as a line item on the Equipment/Item tab of the contract.
• The base rate charge will match the billing amount in ConnectWise.
• The line item added will be the base template item for the agreement type. In this example, the agreement type is User Based +, and so the item added to the contract is '**CWBase User Based +'.

For more details on the item templates used for contract base amounts, see this section of the ID964 documentation.

Billing Additions

Agreements in ConnectWise can also bill line items; these are added to the agreement as additions. Each addition ties back to a product ID in your ConnectWise product catalog. You can set the quantity and price for each addition added to the agreement. You can set up the various RMM integration tools to automatically update these items and quantities on the ConnectWise agreement.

Additions show on the Additions tab of the agreement in ConnectWise:

The addition line items will each show as a line item on the contract in e-automate:

Block of Hours

If you sell blocks of hours at different billing rates, you'll need a different agreement type for each rate used. Block of hours setup is covered in full in Time Block Contracts and the CW to EA Sync - click the link for instructions on block time contracts.