How to Create a Rebate Agreement

Table of Contents

Introduction

Today you'll be exploring creating a new Rebate Agreement using the Pricefx Rebates module.

Let's begin on the Home Page and navigate to the menu.

Go to Rebates > Rebate Agreements.

Here you're presented with all the existing rebate agreements that you have read-only or edit access to.

Now you can either click the New Rebate Agreement button or you can duplicate an existing agreement if it's already got some of the information that you need and duplicate it. 

The draft document will autosave as you work through the creation process.

 For this example, open an existing agreement from the list to walk through all the settings.

At the very top of the page, you can edit the name of the Rebate Agreement using the pencil icon.

You'll update this one to Demo Rebate Agreement 2021.

Next to the Rebate Agreement's name, the current document ID and the workflow status are displayed.

Below that you can see that the document's details are split into several tabs.

The Header tab summarizes the Rebate Agreement header level attributes.

Navigate through the example here:

Start updating the Start and End Dates for the agreement and set them from 1st of January to 31st December.

About the Calculation Date, this is the date on which the system will run the calculation against the transaction data to determine whether or not the rebate conditions were met. Set this date to 31st of January of the following year. That will ensure that any outstanding transactions or queries from the rebate period have had time to be investigated and finalized before the calculation takes place.

About the Payout Date, this is the date on which the organization will process payouts to their customer if the conditions were met. Here you'll make it seven days after the calculation date, once again to ensure that there is ample time for someone to double-check the records and resolve any queries that might arise.

Moving on to the User Group (View Details) and User Group (Edit). These fields allow you to specify a group of colleagues who are able to view or edit this agreement. It's essential to understand that if you leave this blank it leaves your agreement open to edit and view for everyone. So it's definitely worth adding a level of control in here.

The Input Parameters allow you to specific company-specific information, such as the Customer Group, who to Pay to, and the Products that make up this agreement. This is then the default across the agreement, although you can make adjustments to individual parameters later. 

Select customer(s) and product(s) as required using the searching icon. These input parameters are configured by the different rebate types your organization has set up, and so will differ depending on the rebate type you have selected.

Finally, you have the description box, which is a free-format text box for you to provide additional information related to the agreement.

Click on the Items tab on the top of the window:

Moving onto the Items tab, you select the Condition Types (by clicking on Add Items) to be included in the Rebate Agreement.

The Condition Types are the basic building blocks of any Rebate Agreement and you can find out more specifics about them on their own dedicated tutorial.

Here you can see that three items or condition types have been added to this agreement and you can view the specifics of each one by selecting it and then opening the details and setting sidebar on the right-side.

The sidebar allows us to configure the items or view the details for the agreement.

If we select no items and open the sidebar, we can see details, input parameters and Calculations for the whole agreement.

However if we select the first item, Fixed Percent and then open the sidebar, we can now see the input parameters for this specific condition type. So in this case we've selected a specific customer and product with a rebate of 2%. That means that if this specific customer sells any of the product mentioned they will receive a fixed percentage payment.

The Pay To field has been left blank and so the payment will default to the main account specified under the header tab. Here we can see the information if we deselect the Fixed Percent Item and open the sidebar view again.

But if this were a new agreement you'd select Add Items and when we do that you can see all the different condition types that you may want to add. You can add as many as you need, changing the clients, the products and the conditions as much as you need.

And if your Rebate Agreement has many items and are beginning to get messy or confusing, you can organize them into folders and subfolders. So let's add a new folder and call it Demo 1.

And now if we wanted we can set input parameter the folder and item level.

If we select the Demo 1 Folder and open the side bar we can see the + symbol and that allows us to add and set the parameters that we need. So let's select a customer, rebate % and a few products.

And now we add a new item or condition to this folder. Let's select a Fixed Amount and then let's select it and see what happens.

The parameter values have now automatically been inherited from the parent folder are displayed as a placeholder text in the input field. We can still go in and amend it manually if needed.

At any time in the process you can hit the recalculate button. It appears at different point in the sidebar, but is also permanently available at the top of the page. This will help you to spot issues early on in case of errors, or track progress as you go.

The other options that you have on this page is to mass edit existing attributes, so if you needed to change the rebate percentage across all products, or wanted to change customer or products, this can be done via the mass edit option.

You can also copy all the items to the clipboard, or paste items from the clipboard. This is useful if you have items in another rebate agreement and you want to copy them across. You can simply copy them to clipboard and then paste from the clipboard where you'd like to place them.

Table layout changes can also be saved as a view preference. See Common Table Actions for information on how to customize the table (filter, sort, auto fit, etc.).

The Action buttons allow you to perform operations with the Rebate Agreement, such as: Recalculate, Save, Submit or Import items. You can also export and email an approved Rebate Agreement. You can send it to another user as an ordinary email attachment or via an electronic signature system for sign-off. For both options an export template will have been defined and the e-signature option must be configured by administrator. After sending via an e-signature system, you can check the Signature Status on the Details panel of the Items tab.

Attachments

On this tab you can add and view attached files. If you have the right permissions these attachments can also be included in an email.

Workflow

Shows all approval steps, their status and all possible approvers.

Messages

On this tab you can communicate with other users about matters regarding this Rebate Agreement.

Some additional information for after you've saved the agreement.

1. When the Rebate Agreement is saved, Rebate Records are generated as defined by the rebate calculation logic.
   You can monitor the progress of sales and forecasted rebate in the saved Rebate Records.

1. Once defined, click Submit to send the Rebate Agreement for approval (provided that an approval workflow is defined and there is no error or a critical alert on any line). If enabled, you can add a comment.

1. Once the Rebate Agreement period is over, recalculate the final result and click Submit to send it for approval and payout.

That concludes our tutorial on how to create a rebate agreement. If you'd like to find out more about other functionality mentioned in this tutorial, please visit our knowledgebase where you'll find tutorials covering a range of topics and Pricefx Functionality.