We have the Field Service Module and need to start using Warranties. I couldn’t find any words of wisdom with regards to at what level to set these up and when in the archives, the manual or the learning courses.
Our final product is a complex machine consisting of many assemblies and nested sub assemblies.
I assume the Warranty is assigned at the top level, on the part that gets shipped on the SO Line. Does the warranty take effect from the Ship Date on that line?
Another related question is if the Warranty can be added to a part after it has been shipped? I guess I can discover in testing, but if someone happens to know off hand…
Hi Paul,
The warranty is assigned at the top level part when the pack is created. I’m not sure when it changed but you can now change the effective date for the lines warranty in the pack before it is shipped. I think it was around 10.2.100 or .200 when they added this feature.
As for creating a warranty after a part is shipped I don’t know of any way to do that. What we have done is create a contract type called warranty and setup a contract to capture warranty costs.
I am also working on setting up the use of warranty and service contracts and from my testing you can add the warranty codes to product groups and override the date length if needed in customer shipment entry. There are no way to add the warranty after the order has shipped - unless you maybe do an updateable BAQ (haven’t tried that yet).
The warranty process works well when you track warranty on the part on your sales order. We track Serial Numbers on lower level components and ran into a few challenges that we need to work around to not have to customize the process too much.
@kfierce How did this work out? I am running into the same basic issue.
In my case, I am trying to do a service contract (but not a warranty) on a serialized component of the trucks we sell. We don’t “fully match” the serials which seems to be one wrinkle.
And then also, I want to do this in a different site from the original. We consider the contract to be aftermarket, not OEM. I’d even entertain setting up a third site just for this! I was hoping that might help, by blowing away all serial-tracking. But it still whines about:
Serial number ABC123 is not valid for this transaction because: This serial number doesn't have SerialMatch.
Even if I manually check the matching box in Serial Number Maint., I am still denied.
One of the things that I found when using Warranty/Service Contracts is that most people try to apply the warranty to lower level parts instead of using the top level. If the top level has the warranty and it applies to all components, then the top level should be “returned” and then you just swap out the part that was actually returned. If you use field service to return the part and put to a job, it works perfectly.
When trying to implement Field Service I also found out that NOBODY (even Epicor) knows how it works. Granted, this was 5-6 years ago. I had to spend 40+ hours just trying every option to figure out how the module works. When I got through it all, I was able to have a seamless process, it was just very frustrating to do.
Fair warning, but in our case, it’s a subscription service for a component and not the vehicle in total. But it does happen to be the only thing we sell a subscription for. So I predict that I will just cave in and pretend it’s tied to the vehicle anyway. It’s sort of true. Sort of.
Thankfully we don’t need 99% of it. It is very bloated, in my opinion.
@JasonMcD - so far we haven’t found a good solution. We moved on to a different project and hope we can get back to this again soon.
I have looked at service contracts as well and you are correct the same issue applies.
Here is a fictitious example of how we are looking to use warranty and service contracts.
You sell a fridge with an ice maker. The fridge is not a serialized part, the ice maker is serialized.
When the sales order is shipped we have a customization that captures the serial number of the ice maker when the fridge part number is entered in customer shipment entry and populates the serial number table.
You most likely won’t return the whole fridge for service just the ice maker and the ice maker.
Epicor doesn’t recognize the warranty of the ice maker in Field Service Call entry – it would only recognize it on the fridge part since it is the part on the sales order – unless we creatively comes up with a solution (something we are thinking of).
The service contract had the same issue when we I looked at it. We want to do extended warranty of the serialized component - the ice maker - but the fridge is what was sold.
Some of our products are put on large farm equipment and it isn’t feasible to return a full system to repairs, only components so it is imperative that this works smoothly for us. right now there is a lot of manual lookup to determine if a part in for repairs is under warranty or not.
Warranty and Service contracts could use some revamping from Epicor so more of us can use it with lower level serialization without extensive customizations in my opinion.
I didn’t come across the multiple site or Serial Match problem yet. what information are you capturing in the serial number table for the serialized part.
I don’t believe any system will do what you are asking unless you serialize the top level. If you serialize the top level, you can apply any warranty at any level. You can even have warranties of different lengths for different parts. I would look at serializing your final product and you could use the full functionality in Epicor without customizing.
This customization would go away if you just serialized the refridgerator.
By “serial number table,” I think you are getting at the lower-level thing as John said (which we failed to setup years ago). Or I misunderstand the question.
We are talking tens of thousands of serial numbers to have to associate to parent serials, since 2016. I have to think that a workaround is better in this case.
I got the chance to try this out - to turn on lower-level tracking and to match jobs from previous years.
Turns out it is not too bad!
Prep:
Adjust out all OH serials and qty for the site (meaning, if there is a mismatch in there, fix it!)
If site config is open, CLOSE IT and reopen. Refreshing does not work for some reason.
In site config, change the site to allow lower-level serial-tracking
Adjust qty back in
Serials:
Change only the parent serial numbers (of the jobs) from Shipped to WIP
In Serial Matching screen,
a. Enter the job number
b. CLICK the Serial Number button (you can’t just type it in)
c. Pick the serial of the job
When it asks if you want it to match everything automatically, SAY YES.
Adjust the job/parent serial to Shipped again.
For me it is “Shipped.” And in this context of service contracts, we are always talking about a shipped job, right? (And not a job made to stock.) I am in this predicament for that very reason. But if we are talking about matching old jobs that were made to stock, well, I haven’t tested that.
Now, it’s still 3,200 jobs, but realistically I don’t need to do them all, not right away. And if I really felt adventurous, maybe I could make a Function to help me.
and hope we can get back to this again soon.
Shipped to WIP