BMS supports two types of agents — Finance Agents and Service Agents — that represent the businesses or internal entities responsible for the financial and operational delivery of a contract. Both types can be either external (an independent third-party business) or internal (one of your own business entities).

A Finance Agent is linked to the finance component of a contract. They represent the party responsible for the financial arrangement — for example, a finance company that owns or co-funds an asset under a lease or managed print agreement.

When a Finance Agent is assigned to a contract, billing transactions related to the finance component are attributed to that agent. This allows BMS to track and reconcile payments and charges separately from the operational service billing.

A Service Agent is linked to the service component of a contract. They represent the business responsible for maintaining and servicing the assets covered by the contract. A single contract can have multiple Service Agents — for example, when different agents are responsible for assets at different geographic locations.

Service Agents are also configured in the Agents module (accessible from the main navigation), where their service rates, coverage areas, and linked assets are managed. When a service job is raised against an asset, BMS uses the Service Agent assignment to determine which agent is responsible and what rates apply.

Both Finance and Service Agents can be classified as:

Agents are assigned when creating or editing a contract in Billing → Contracts. The Finance Agent and Service Agent fields appear in the contract form. Select the appropriate agent from the list, or leave blank if the contract is serviced directly without a separate agent arrangement.

Navigate to Agents from the main navigation to manage agent records. The Agents module is where Service Agent details, rates, and asset assignments are maintained. Changes to an agent's rate or coverage in the Agents module flow through to billing calculations for all contracts where that agent is assigned.

For Finance Agents, the primary configuration is on the agent record itself — including any margin or fee structure that applies to contracts they are linked to.Within each class (Service or Finance), there is also two types of agent - ‘external’ agents (independent businesses) or ‘internal’ agents (one of your internal business entities).

A Finance Agent is linked to the Finance component of a contract.

A Service Agent is linked to the Service component of a contract. You can have multiple Service Agents linked to a single contract, as different agents might be responsible for Assets at different geographic locations.

They are also utilised in the Service application, where we specify their rates and link them to engineers who can complete service jobs.

External Agents can be configured to either:

Internal Agents don’t require this configuration as we will always do the billing for an internal agent.