Onboarding existing clients

When Advanced Automation is activated for your account (see Activating Advanced Automation), you need to onboard your existing clients in order to bill and process their service requests.

To ensure you have Advanced Automation configured correctly for your existing clients, do the following:

• Provide billing information for existing clients.
• Create contracts in order to start billing existing clients for your services and products.
• Ensure you can receive and process service desk tickets for existing clients.
• Ensure you can create sales items for existing clients.
• Ensure you can run the billing process and issue invoices for existing clients.

Provide billing information

If Advanced Automation is activated, when you access the Clients section you will be prompted to submit billing information for your existing clients. Billing information ensures you can use Advanced Automation to bill and process service requests for your clients.

To add billing information for existing clients

1. In the management portal, go to Organization > Clients.

2. Click the ellipsis icon (...) next to the relevant client name. In the displayed menu, select Add billing information.

   Or

   Click on a client row from the displayed list. In the displayed sidebar, click the Configure tab. Then click on the Billing and Address sections to add the relevant billing information.

3. Complete the fields shown in the displayed form. For more information about these fields, see Defining billing information for a tenant.

4. Click Add to complete the billing information setup.

   If you want to manage and have access to user phone numbers in the service desk, in the same Configure tab, click the General settings section and enable the Enable self-managed customer profile switch. When enabled, this option displays to both administrators and client users the relevant contact related fields, including phone numbers (and company contact and job title). For more information, see Configuring self-managed customer profile.

Create contracts to start billing existing clients for services and products

Contracts ensure you can use Advanced Automation to bill your clients on a regular basis.

If Advanced Automation is activated, when you access the Sales and billing module you are prompted to create contracts for your existing clients. This prompt is displayed only if one or more clients have Acronis services or products assigned.

To create contracts for existing clients

1. In the management portal, go to Sales and billing > Sales.

2. If the displayed banner informs you that a specified number of clients do not have contracts assigned, click Create.

   Alternatively, if you previously closed this banner, click the Create contracts for existing customers link, located in the top right of the screen.

3. In the Create new contract wizard, do the following:
   1. Select the relevant client, and click Next.
   2. Add contract information, including payment details and the contract period. For more information, see Working with contracts. When done, click Next.
   3. Add billing information, and click Next. Note that if you have already defined billing information, as described in Provide billing information, this step is not displayed.
   4. Add contract parts, as required. For more information, see Creating a new contract. By default contract parts based on Acronis services already assigned to the client are added to the contract template. These contract parts can be edited or deleted, as required. Ensure you set the correct prices for the contract parts.
4. Click Done. The contract is added to the list of existing contracts in the Contracts tab.

Ensure you can receive and process service desk tickets for existing clients

If Advanced Automation is activated, you can receive and process tickets for an existing client even if billing information is not defined for that client. This ensures you can create, respond to, resolve and close tickets as required. For more information about working with the service desk features, see Service desk.

However, you cannot approve a client's reported ticket time if billing information is not provided for that client. When you attempt to approve ticket time registrations, you are prompted to add billing information for the relevant clients; for more information, see Provide billing information.

Ensure you can create sales items for existing clients

If Advanced Automation is activated, you can create sales items for an existing client even if billing information is not defined for that client.

However, when creating a sales item (see Managing sales items), if you select a client without billing information specified, you are prompted to provide the billing information before proceeding with the creation of the sales item.

In addition, when editing an existing sales item, you cannot change the existing client assigned to the sales item to a client without billing information specified. You are prompted to provide the billing information before proceeding with the editing of the sales item.

Ensure you can run the billing process and issue invoices for existing clients

On the first billing run you are prompted to verify the default invoice numbering settings before generating invoices; created invoices must have numbers aligned with your accounting software. This step ensures that you have correctly setup your billing and invoicing information. For more information, see Invoices.