Like invoice sorts, service categories have several uses in the Service/Support module:

Service categories manage the financial impact of service activity in CAR. You can define service limits in terms of invoice sort codes or work code and service category combinations. When you take a call, CAR monitors the limits from the call contract or service type. The system suggests either an under-limit or over-limit charge code based on limit consumption.

You base pricing for labor and expenses in CAR on service category and other selection criteria. You also base expense cost lists on the service category. This means you need enough service categories to reflect both the pricing levels you use for labor and the range of expense costs and prices.

When you define service items in Service Item Maintenance, you can associate a default item service category with them. Similarly, you can associate a labor and expense service category with standard operations and service routing steps. These service categories provide default values for CAR, streamline data entry, and ensure consistent input.

If you use service category in a search key for charge and revenue product lines, you can break out accounts based on the service categories in CAR. You can also set up default charge codes with service category as part of the search key.

You can use Item Master Maintenance to assign a taxable status and tax code to items. These provide defaults when the item is entered on various orders, including calls and RMAs. Use Service Category Maintenance to associate tax status and tax codes with labor and expense service categories. Call Invoice Recording uses the taxable status and tax class associated with the service category as the default for labor and expense usage records for taxable call lines.

See Taxes in SSM for details about tax implementation.