Warranty coverage affects processing in most major service functions including Call Maintenance, Call Activity Recording, and RMA Maintenance.

Warranty information is immediately available when you create a call referencing an item in the installed base. Call Maintenance displays the type of warranty and its duration so the service engineer and the customer know if the warranty is in effect. If the warranty is active, it determines the initial setting for the call’s response time and may determine priority, if other defaults do not.

Response time is the time within which you should take action on the call. This action could be to assign an engineer or change the call’s status and queue. The system uses the response time to calculate initial settings for the next status date and time fields if you are not using call escalation.

Priority is a rating used by the call queue and call escalation managers to select calls with identical Type, Problem, Severity, and Status settings.

Other settings can override the warranty’s initial call Response Time and Priority values. Priority can default from the end user if it is defined there. The response time can default from the initial setting in a call escalation sequence and be updated accordingly if you are using call escalation.

The coverage levels for a warranty type determine the coverage for labor, expenses, and items in Call Activity Recording. This, in turn, determines the billable totals on the call invoice. If you associate under-limit and over-limit charge codes with the warranty limits, the system uses them by default in CAR.

Like contract types, the warranty type supplies defaults for the RMA credit price list and restocking charge, and determines if you can process RMA issues before receipts. You can set up Service Management Control to have the system use warranty product lines.