Relating Cases to Contracts in Dynamics CRM 2011

Simon Phillips, 08 April 2011

Service Contracts can be related to cases so that allotment amounts can be tracked against cases. This is both very useful and very powerful, this is because you can now closely track the time you spend on your customers issues, making it easier to correctly invoice them for only the time taken to find a resolution and fix it. What this will also do over time is eat away at the contract time that they purchased until there is none left and you can offer them another or let them know that they can no longer receive support.

Note the following factors when relating cases to contracts:

• Appropriate Contract association for existing Contracts
• Contract Line association for assigned Contract 

If there is an existing Contract for the customer, the Contract and Contract Line can be associated with the case from the General section of the Case form.

As soon as a Contract is assigned to the case, a Contract Line from the Contract must be related to the case.

BEST PRACTICE: When associating a Contract to a case, a good method is to find the appropriate Contract for the customer, and from the Contract Line form, add the related case. The related customer, Contract, and Contract Line populates in the new Case form.

BEST PRACTICE: Contracts can be related to either Accounts or Contacts. If there are multiple contacts within an Organisation, relate the Contract to the Account. Contracts that are assigned to an individual contact cannot be used for a case that is assigned to another contact from the same Account.