'Groups' are user-definable categories with user definable members by which assets can be defined for specific time-frames.

 

Examples of Groups and Group Members might be:

• Group: Brand
• Member: Brand 1
• Member: Brand 2
• Group: Department
• Member: Refuse
• Member: Social Services
• Group: Contract
• Member: Contract 1
• Member: Contract 2

 

With the above example an asset (vehicle 1234) might be defined as a member of:

        'Brand 1',

        'Refuse Department', and

        'Contract 2'.

 

Groups show history of asset:

The advantage of using Groups is that this asset may in time be moved from one group membership to another.  For example, the asset may be shifted from Refuse to Social Services.  Because Groups are date-specific Freeway is able to record the date on which the asset began as a Refuse vehicle and the date on which it shifted to Social Service ownership.

 

Groups enable correct billing:

By using Groups it is therefore possible to identify the costs of an asset in relation to its link at a particular date.  In the above example if the vehicle belonged to Refuse until the 31st March 2005 and began at Social Services on the 1st April 2006 then a vehicle refurbishment carried out on the 28th March 2005 could be billed to Refuse - while bills from the 1st April onwards could be linked back to Social Services.

 

Freeway allows for three types of Group:

• Undefined: of which there can be many,
• Customer: which is used for billing purposes in the contracts module. Depending on the type of organisation this might be used to record 'Brand' or 'Department' for internal billing or 'Customer' for external billing.  The time-defined group-membership benefits of classes therefore apply to this special type of group.
• Contract: which is used to define the contract in the contracts module.  The time-defined group-membership benefits of classes therefore apply to this special type of group.