What is a Maintenance Schedule?

A maintenance schedule defines the amount of product maintenance purchased by a customer, and the time frame over which the customer is billed and revenue is recognized for this maintenance. Maintenance schedules are associated with a contract, and are used to bill customers and amortize revenue over the term of the maintenance agreement. You can also set up the posting activities for a product on the maintenance schedule, as well as override defaults for such things as price amounts and general ledger accounts.

Maintenance schedule headers are defined on New Maintenance Schedule (BR52.2), and then product information is added to the schedule on Maintenance Schedule (BR52.1).

Automatic Creation of Maintenance Schedules

While you can manually create a maintenance schedule on New Maintenance Schedule (BR52.2), maintenance schedules can also automatically be created during the product billing cycle. If free maintenance is included with a customer's product purchase, the Product Contract (BR51.1) program automatically creates a maintenance schedule for that customer for the included free maintenance. The schedule is created with a schedule header status of 1 (Free Maintenance), and only products with a status of 4 (Free Maintenance) can be subsequently added to the schedule.