Specifying Ordered Infrastructure and Costs

In an order item the ordered infrastructure and expected costs can be defined in several ways, depending on what level of detail should the information be registered. There are 3 auxiliary object types which can help define the ordered infrastructure and costs for an order item:

• offer used – optional. By using a specific offer, the user specifies not only which product type offered by a specific vendor is requested, but also which offer package (e.g. a general contract) is suggested and what are the pricing and delivery details.
• requested item type – mandatory. If a specific offer for an item type from a vendor is not chosen, the user can choose an item type without dealing with offers. Use the action Search Item Types to select a requested item type without selecting a offer. Linking only an item type to an order item, the cost is defined on the basis of general price of the item type, which may not be a price associated with the vendor.
• Payment schedules (optional) define detail schedule of expected costs. While the price of an offer and the general price of a product type define the price that has been used as a basis for the order item, the payment schedules specify the real expected costs in much more detail. Real cost amounts can be changed compared to the original offer and they can be spread over the time e.g. as regular payments resulting from a leasing contract. For changing payment schedules by the Net unit price on an order item and other details see Specifying Order Item Costs – (Total price, Payment Schedules)

  For one order item there can be one or more payment schedules. They specify the detailed schedule of individual costs on some aggregated level – e.g. when a cost/payment of the same amount is expected each months for one or more years, there will only be one payment schedule. Note: to work with each payment individually, use payments generated out of payment schedules.

Each of these ways specifies similar information at different levels of detail and from a different point of view. It is up to the user to decide which one(s) to use. If all 3 kinds of information are used for an order item, they can be changed individually and the application makes sure the data is kept consistent.