Difficulty: novice
Content
Learning Objectives
After reading this article, you’ll be able to:
- Tell what a contract is.
- Create new contracts.
- View and change details of a contract.
- Add contract items to a contract.
What are Contracts?
A contract is an agreement between two parties that creates an obligation to perform (or not perform) a particular duty. Think of agreements regarding property, assets, or one with a cleaning company. Within Asset, you can record and manage the different contracts within a company. You can add contract items, for example, rental price/service costs. A nice feature is that it is possible to send reminders of upcoming renewal dates, create invoices, and auto-renew contracts.
Create a new contract
Create a new contract
1. To add a contract, open the contract menu and click on the first option: “Contracts.”
2. Click on “Create new contract.”
3. You will see a new screen with three steps: Contract Information > Duration > Reminder. This wizard will guide you through the process of creating a new contract.
4. In the “Contract information” step, we need to provide information in the following fields. The fields marked with an * are mandatory. After filling in the necessary information, press “Next step” to go to the next tab. If you hover over the field, a help text will appear.
Field name | Description |
|---|---|
Category | Choose the option fitting the contract. |
Name | Fill in the name of the other party. |
Payment | Define if the contract is: to pay, receive a payment, both ways, or there is no payment involved. |
External Reference | A reference of an external party |
Description | A description of the contract |
Party 1 | In most cases, your own company |
Party 2 | The party which is involved in this contract. Choose one of the already created contacts. |
Main document | Upload the contract document here. This can also be uploaded after finishing the wizard. |
5. The “Duration” step is about the duration of the contract. After entering the necessary details, press “Next step” to continue.
Field name | Description |
|---|---|
Original start date | This is the original start date of the contract before any renewals. |
Duration | The duration of the contract |
Term of notice | Used to determine when a contract is renewed and for creating a notification. |
Renewal after the end of the previous period | These options are supported:
|
6. The last step before finalizing the contract is the “Reminder” step. Once these fields are filled in, click “Registration done” to finish the contract.
Field name | Description |
|---|---|
Automatic end period reminder | Yes or No, if yes, there will be an automatic reminder sent based on your settings |
Send reminder X days before term of notice period | How many days before the notice term do you want a reminder sent? The period can be set in days. |
Contract reminder to | Choose to whom the reminder needs to be sent. |
Info
The status of the contract is set automatically.
- Draft: The contract start date has not occurred yet.
- Active: the start date has commenced, but the end date of the period or termination date has not occurred yet.
- Terminated: the termination date has been entered and has occurred.
- Expired: the period’s end date has occurred, and the contract has not been renewed.
An expired contract can still be renewed or will be canceled. If the contract is renewed, a new period will be generated, or the current period will be extended (depending on the period schedule).
How to open an (existing) contract?
How to open an (existing) contract?
To open a contract:
- Press “Contracts” in the Contracts menu
2. Enter your query in the search bar or leave it empty (for all results), and press “Search.” You will see the results in the include beneath the search bar. You can also use the advanced search
3. Click on the blue hyperlink of the contract reference to open it.
Contract view
Contract view
You will see a screen with six tabs when a contract is opened.
Tab name | Description |
|---|---|
General | General info about the contract. Parties, duration, contract description, payment info, documentation, and notification settings. |
Contract Items | Here, you can see the active period, historical, and future contract items. |
Period Schemes | This tab gives insights into the duration(s) of the contract. |
Invoicing | In this tab, you will find the settings regarding invoice runs. Also, the option to create new invoices |
Notifications | You can turn on and off automated notifications in this tab and change notification settings. |
Documents | An overview of the documents linked to the contract and the option to attach new documents. |
The tab "General"
The tab “General”
In the “General tab,” you will find general information about the contract.
- You can change/add/update information on this screen.
- At the bottom of the page, you will find the option to add sub-contracts. By clicking ‘new,’ the settings of the current contract are duplicated, and the new contract is set as a child of the contract you were in.
The tab "Contact items" (adding contract items)
The tab “Contract items”
In this tab, contract items are added. The sum of the contract items represents the total amount of the contract.
CONTRACTBefore adding a contract item, you can change some default settings. The pricing - and invoice period settings you make here will be used as a default for the contract items you will later on create.
| |
PERIODThe period start- and end date are set here based on your input when creating the contract using the wizard. |
What you should know about contractitems
Pricing and invoice period:
- After you have created the contractitems, the pricing and invoice period settings on the contract items are leading. You can view the setting by opening a contractitems (click on the magnifying glass).
- We don't recommend applying deviating invoice periods on your contract items as this will make managing the contract unnecessarily complex.
Start- and end date
- Contractitems also have a start- and end date, these can deviate from the period setting.
- The contractitem start- and end date must lie within the periode start- and end date.
- By default, the items' start and end dates are empty; in this case, the dates set on the period are applicable.
- The dates on the contract items are leading concerning invoicing and renewal.
Note
If an end date is set on a contract item, the item will not be renewed or, depending on the date, also not indexed.
Active, historical, and future contract item
At the bottom of the page is an overview of the active, historical, and future contract items. Below the row of tabs, you can see a list of active contract items and buttons to add different kinds; generic items, assets, areas, and properties.
Add a generic item to the contract
- Click “Add generic item” in the “Active contract items.” include.
- An empty contract item is now added to the list.
- Fill in the details of the generic item directly in the include. You can add a description, the quantity, the price, the period, etc. These values are going to be a part of the total contract. In this example, we added a rental fee for a printer.
- Click the save button on the top right or ‘Save and return’ if you’re done adding items.
Add an asset to the contract
- Press “Add asset” in the include on the bottom under “Active contract items.”
- Select the asset(s) you want to add to the contract.
- Now click ‘Ok’ to add the selected asset.
- You can fill in the details of the asset. You can change the description, the price, the period, etc.
- Click the save button on the top right or ‘Save and return’ if you’re done adding items.
Add an area to the contract
- Press “Add area” in the include on the bottom under “Active contract items.”
- Fill in the filter fields and click ‘Search.’
- Select the area(s) and click ‘Ok’
- Choose the object use types you want to add for the area(s)
Areas are not added in the same way as assets and properties. Instead, Object use types (services) are added. Examples are rent, cleaning costs, and internet service.
- Note: if you now end up in an empty screen, object use types have not yet been created. The info panel below explains more about adding new object use types.
- Now you can fill in the details of the area. You can add a description, the price, the period, etc.
- Click the save button on the top right or ‘Save and return’ if you’re done adding items.
Adding new ‘Object use types’
Object use types can only be created and managed by an administrator. The object use types are found via the startBoard button ‘Module settings’ > "Masterdata” tab > now click the function "Use types.”
In an object use type, you can define: the default price, vat rate, unit, price period, etc. For each area that is added to a contract (via the period as a contract item), all the object use types will be shown and can be selected to add as a contract item.
Add a property to the contract
- Press “Property asset” in the include on the bottom under “Active contract items.”
- Select the property you want to add to the contract.
- Now you can fill in the details of the property. You can add a description, the price, the period, etc.
- Click the save button on the top right or ‘Save and return’ if you’re done adding items.
The tab "Period Schemes"
The tab “Period Schemes”
You can create additional period schemes on this tab. The first period scheme is created automatically based on the contract wizard used to generate the contract.
Why use multiple period schemes?
- There is no reason to create more period schemes if a contract is periodically extended by the same period (e.g., 1 or 2 years).
- Multiple period schemes are used for more complex renewal arrangements. An example is a contract that first runs for five years, and is then renewed every two years. For this, two-period schemes are needed. See the screenshot below.
Period scheme 01 is automatically created by the contract wizard. A duration of 5 years was set here.
- Period scheme 02 is added later by clicking ’New' in the ‘Periode scheme’ include. Since period 02 is the last period scheme, the contract will be renewed according to the settings of this period scheme (so every two years) until the contract is terminated.
The tab "Invoicing"
The tab “Invoicing”
This tab shows invoicing information and settings. Moreover, the include “Invoices“ shows the related invoices for this contract. You can toggle between all and open invoices using the ‘Show open/ Show all’ button in the “Invoices” include.
Please hover over the settings to see what they do. A couple of settings are highlighted:
- Exclude from invoice run: if the contract does not need to be invoices via an invoice run, you can enable this setting.
- Invoicing from: Contract items before this date are ignored when invoicing a contract. When to use this setting? Suppose you started using Asset on 2023/01/01, and you have added a contract that begins on 2020/01/01. In that case, you don’t want Asset to invoice the contractitems in the period before 2023/01/01 because these items have most likely already been invoiced via another system. You can set “Invoicing from = 2023/01/01”.
- Start date payment cycle:
No date filled in: by default, contract items will be invoices for a whole month, with the start date being the first of the month and the last day of the month as the end date of the invoice item (e.g., 2023/03/01 to 2023/03/31).
- Date filled in: this date is used as the start date of the contract item. Please take a look at the example screenshots below.
Previewing to be invoiced contract items
After creating a contract, you might want to preview what items are made on the next invoice.
- Click ‘'Period invoice” on the “Invoice” tab
- Set an end date
- Click ‘Ok’ for a preview.
- Click ‘Back’ > and click ”Back' a second time to navigate back to the Invoicing tab of the contract.
The tab "Notifications"
The tab “Notifications
On this tab, you can disable/ enable the automatic notifications and:
- Change the default contact that receives the contract reminders.
- View the automatically generated notifications. These notifications are generated and updated automatically based on the contract settings. Don’t change these.
- Add additional recipients for the notifications:
1. Navigate to the “Send additional notification to” include (bottom of the page)
2. Click ‘Add.’
3. Search and select a contact
4. Click ‘Add.’
5. The contact who is added to the include will now also receive the notifications
The tab "Documents"
The tab “Documents”
Here you can find all the relevant documents for this contract, and you can add new ones.
Summary
- A wizard is used to create a new contract.
- After the contract is created, remember to add contract items.
- Use the tab to find the information you need.