A Block Hours contract can be used to bill a customer for a block of working hours, with a specified price per hour. During the billing period, the number of hours consumed is deducted from the purchased 'block'. There are options to both rollover hours not used or charge an overage rate (hours worked in excess of the defined block hours) for excess consumption.
Create a Block Hours contract
1. From Admin on the sidebar, go to Business administration > Contracts.
The Contracts page appears.
2. Click New contract.
3. Fill in the contract header details:
- Select the customer.
- Give your contract a name.
- Select the start and end dates.
Note: Atera will automatically calculate today's date + three years ahead. - Set the contract as Active if you'd like to enable the contract (optional).
- Set the contract as Default if you'd like this contract to be your default for this customer (optional).
- Set the contract as Taxable if you'd like a tax to automatically be added to the contract (optional). Select the tax from the dropdown menu (or create a new one).
4. Under Contract Type, select Block Hours.
5. Select the Contract Amount (the amount of block hours).
7. Enable Roll over remaining balance if you'd like any hours not used within the defined billing period to be rolled over to the next billing period.
Note: Not enabling this option means all unused hours within a billing period will be lost. The next billing period will start without adding them to the opening balance.
8. Select the Hourly Rate.
9. Select the Overage Rate.
10. Select the SLA Plan.
11. Enter any Notes as required.
12. Click Save.
Nice! A New Block Hours contract was created.
View block hours consumption
Within any ticket associated with a Block hours contract, the Remaining hours of the contract are displayed under Contact info.
When you've used 80% and 95% of your contract's block hours, you'll get an automatic notification in the Atera console under the Notification Center.
Once the contract hours are exceeded, a notification banner will be displayed on all associated tickets, and the additional Overage hours worked are displayed under Contact info.
Note: Overage hours are billed using the overage rate defined in the contract. If no rate is defined, the overage hours are not billable and a new contract needs to be created to continue billing for work.