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Defining Bids, Budgets, and Deal Memos Best Practices

Similarities

Bids, Budgets and Deal Memos all establish rates for a customer that differ from Rate Card rates. They share many characteristics:

All three types of records are meant to either define rates that are different than Rate Card or provide a list of Billing Codes – possible read: “services” – to be provided for a job/project or to a customer for a specific period.
All three records use BidVersion as a base document.
They define rates for a customer, usually for a defined period. Often – but not always – for a particular project.
They compare the estimated or quoted rates to what was actually done on orders – “loading actuals”.

The BidVersion document consists mainly of a header and detail, and functions similar to Orders and Order Transactions.

The Bid header contains various fields to identify the record as a whole: Customer, Rate Card, dates, etc. Various totals are also available.
The detail are separated into 2 types: detail and detail headers.

A single detail header can contain multiple detail.
Detail headers can be nested.
Detail are assigned Billing Codes primarily, to hold rates and units. These would be considered the quoted amounts.
Detail can optionally be assigned Groups and Resources if these are known at the time.
To relate bid detail to an Order, the detail header is the order header and the detail are transactions.

The general concept is the user will create a bid, budget or deal memo with a list of Billing Codes, units and rates.

Rates could be directly from a rate card but are more often altered. This can be a client-facing quote or an internal list of rates that will apply for a certain period or Job. When orders are created and a Billing Code is assigned to a transaction, any of these records could define the rate as these are checked for a match before any rate card.

Bids and budgets are checked before Deal Memos.
Bids and budgets only apply for Orders on their Job.
Deal Memos apply for a single Customer.

Differences

Bids

Bids are a set of rates for a Job, and function as quotes that can be sent to a customer.

While a Bid can initially be created without a Job, one is required to approve the Bid and have the Rates apply to Orders.
Multiple bids can be created for a Job, but only the approved one will affect Orders.
There can be one primarily approved bid on any Job. Subsequent approved bids are automatically marked as “Change Memos”.

Change memos are created to change or add rates without unapproving the original bid.
When Orders check for rates, the most recent Change Memos are checked before the primary approved bid.

When a Bid is approved, the user is given the option to create one order from the entire bid or one order per detail header.

Budgets

Budgets are a set of rates for a Job that allow for rate changes across intervals of time.

“Intervals” are typically monthly, quarterly or yearly. If a budget’s interval is monthly, rates for a particular Billing Code in January may differ in June or September. It is assumed that adjustments will be made in later intervals based on what happened in earlier ones.
Job is required.
One Job will typically have multiple budgets with different purposes:

There will be one Working Budget per Job. This is the main budget that will be changed over the life of the Job.
Multiple Snapshot Budgets can be created from the Working Budget. These are intended to record the state of a Budget at a specific point in time.
For example, a snapshot might be created at the end of each month to record the state of the Working Budget at that time.

A Snapshot Budget may be approved to become the Approved Budget. Only one of these may exist at a time on any Job. This budget is used for comparison totals to the Working Budget in special fields and reports in the module.
If a new Approved Budget is needed, the current one can be archived so a new one can be approved.

Deal Memos

Deal Memos define rates for a specific Customer for Orders regardless of Job.

Often considered 'Customer Rate Cards'.
Deal Memos can overlap. If any Billing Code exists in both, the more recent will apply.

Bid linking

Bid Linking is used for sites that rely on 'Loading Actuals' to compare what was Bid/Budgeted vs. actual cost, there is optional bid linking functionality to help hone the relationship between Order transactions and bid/budget detail.

Linking is automatic based on the Billing Code, but if the feature is enabled the user has some options to change which detail is linked to a transaction.
Actuals can still be loaded if the bid linking feature is disabled, but the user has no control over it.

Loading Actuals

'Loading Actuals' is a process where amounts from Orders are loaded into a Bid or Budget for the same Job.

This can only happen in a Job. Actuals cannot be loaded into Deal Memos.
You can choose to load transactions from all Orders, by Order Phase or from a selected list.

Order transactions are matched to Bid Detail first by Bid Linking (optional) or by Billing Code (if a specific link is missing).

Comparison fields are available for totals and units.
Actuals can be loaded then loaded again to refresh data.
Transactions that don’t link to detail are loaded into a specially created bid detail header so that the user can see what has been done outside of what was listed in the bid/budget.
If a Billing Code has been assigned a Roll Up code, it will load its amounts to that Billing Code in a bid/budget.