Division of Information
Systems and Communications (DISC)
IT Contract and Vendor Information
Strategic Sourcing Team
Computer Associates
Billing Practices
When you buy maintenance on any product from Computer Associates, you purchase it from the day they receive your purchase order to one year later. Let’s say that they receive your purchase order for maintenance on January 1, 2006. Your maintenance period would be:
01/01/2006 thru 12/31/2006
So far this is all very normal. Now let’s say that it is November 1, 2006, 60 days before your maintenance is to expire and you initiate a purchase order for another year’s maintenance that goes out and they receive it on December 1, 2006.
Computer Associates will start your second year’s maintenance on December 1, 2006. This means that you are paying for the month of December twice. Remember they start maintenance on the day they receive the order, regardless of the dates on the order. Always try to make your purchase order be received by Computer Associates as close to the day or on the day that your prior years’ maintenance expires. That way you are not paying for any of it twice.
On the other hand, Computer Associates will give you a 60 day grace period. On the above example, if you send your purchase order late for the second year’s maintenance and they receive it on January 30, 2007, they will cover you from January 1, 2007 thru January 29, 2007 and your new maintenance period will be:
01/30/2007 thru 01/29/2008
In this last scenario you received 13 months of maintenance for the price of 12 months.
The above information was received in an e-mail dated September 2006 from:
Kerri Dienhart
Computer Associates Intl.
BrightStor Product Specialist, CIC
Toll Free: 800.243.9462 x 63139
Tel: 813.627.3139
Kerri.Dienhart@ca.com
http://www.ca.com