Service with Advanced Execution: Process Flow 5 – Late Billing Decision in Maintenance Order

[shraddha_karne]

Service with Advanced Execution is a new service business process in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition. This is based on the integration of Service with Maintenance Management.

The concept of Execution Status in Service with Advanced Execution is introduced in the following blog: 

Execution Status in Service with Advanced Execution

Within Service with Advanced Execution, there are various process flows depending on the business scenario. These process flows are distinguished based on two aspects:

• How the process starts, and which is the first transaction.
• What is the trigger for the creation of the maintenance order and eventually the start of planning.

Process Flow 5:

This blog showcases the process flow wherein the initial transaction is the maintenance order, and later it is decided to make it billable and thus charge the customer. This is when the service order is created along with an execution order item to bill the customer for the service.

For example, there is a manufacturing company who owns and operates multiple high-tech machines at a customer site under a long-term service contract. The routine maintenance of these machines is taken care by the manufacturing company at no cost to the customer. At a certain instance, the technician from the manufacturing company is performing a routine maintenance activity and created a maintenance order for this purpose. However, during the inspection of the machine, the technician identifies a malfunction caused by mishandling of the equipment. In this case, the technician takes the decision to bill the customer for the resolution of the malfunction.

In such scenarios, when a presumed maintenance needs to be billed, a service order can be created corresponding to an existing maintenance order. Using this service order, the billing document can be generated once the service is completed.

Creation of Billable Maintenance Order

A service order creation can be triggered from a maintenance order by selecting the ‘Billable’ checkbox in the Change Maintenance Order (IW32) screen.

When the ‘Billable’ checkbox is selected you can enter the sales data and service details which includes fields such as sold-to party, sales organization, distribution channel, service product, and quantity. On save, a corresponding service order with an execution order item is created. The lifecycle status of this item is ‘In Process’ and the execution status is ‘Execution Planning’.

The document flow in the service order can be viewed in Transaction History assignment block.

The details of the maintenance order connected to the execution order item can be viewed in the Maintenance Order assignment block in the item details page.

Further, the regular flow and options of the service order processing follows.

Status lifecycle in Service with Advanced Execution

                                                      Current state of an execution order item

The state diagram illustrates the status lifecycle of one execution order item along with its corresponding maintenance order in this process flow. Each block below represents a state displaying 3 different status values. The lifecycle and execution status of an execution order item along with the status of the corresponding maintenance order.

Release of Maintenance Order

Once the service order is created from the maintenance order, the maintenance order is in planning phase. After the planning is done, the maintenance order is set to ‘REL’ (Released) by the Maintenance Planner. This automatically triggers the release of the execution order item. With this status transition, the execution status on the execution order item is set to ‘In Execution’.

Technical Completion of Maintenance Order

After the execution of service is completed by the Maintenance Technician, the maintenance order status is set to ‘TECO’ (Technically Completed).  With this status transition, the lifecycle status of execution order item is set to ‘Completed’. The execution status on the execution order item is set to ‘Execution Done’.

Summary

The distinct feature in this process flow is the creation of service order from a maintenance order after making it billable for customer. As we proceed with the execution of the job, the lifecycle and execution status of execution order item are in continuous alignment with the status of maintenance order at every step.

Further references

To know more about the execution order item and its attributes, please refer following blog:

Deep Dive: Execution Order Item and Billable Maintenance Order