Contract Summary

Enter a name for the entity. If you are going to associate the entity to multiple other entities, consider adding an identifier to the name.

EXAMPLE  If you copy the same contract to many organizations, make the organization name part of the contract name.

Attachments:

The name defaults to the file name, but can be edited. You can attach multiple files with the same name.

Contracts:

The contract name is fully customizable. We recommend using a descriptive name.

Charges:

The field defaults to the product name or the material code, but can be edited. Automatically created charges for block, retainer, or per ticket contracts will default to "[material code name] [purchase start date - purchase end date]."

Products:

The product name appears on quotes, the devices list, and the customer invoice. Names must be unique.

Depending on how you plan to use products, you can set up your products with generic names such as "printer" or "server," or use individual model names and numbers and track unit cost and price.

Quotes:

When you add the quote from an opportunity, the Opportunity Name will default as the Quote Name. On sales orders, the Quote Name is read-only.

Subscriptions:

The field defaults to the name of the product and device, but can be edited. We recommend that you keep the default product name so the billing line item on the invoice will match the product you are billing for.

Organization or Organization Name refers to the organization associated with the entity. This field is always required.

• In View mode, the name will appear as a hyperlink for users with permission to view the organization, and as plain text for all others.

• In New mode, enter the name of the organization. As you type, Autotask will suggest possible matches. Click an organization name to select it and populate the field. Alternatively, you can click the selector icon to choose the organization from a list. On some entities, such as ticket and opportunity, you can click the plus icon to the right of the selector icon to quickly create a new organization. Refer to Adding an organization.

• In Edit mode, this field cannot be modified for some entities (for example, projects and devices).

For this field, you can select a different local term. In your Autotask instance, it may be labeled Account, Business Unit, Client, Company, Customer, Organization, or Site. Refer to Selecting a currency and local terms and symbols.

The resource in your organization who will take overall responsibility for the account relationship. The field can be displayed on other entities but will be view-only.

Users who are selected as account managers must have security permissions to view the organization type and Mine or higher object permissions. Account managers have the same security permissions as account team members. Organizations where you are the account manager or a team member can be found under My > CRM >  Organizations. Refer to CRM security settings.

A contact is a person at an organization who is associated with the entity you are creating or editing.

This field appears on many entities that display the Organization field. You must select an organization before you can select a contact. All active contacts associated with the organization plus the current contact, even if it is inactive, are available. If the organization is a sub-organization of another organization, you can select a contact from the list of parent organization contacts that appears below a dashed line.

On some entities, such as ticket and opportunity, you can click the plus icon to create a new contact. Refer to Adding and editing contacts.

In Add or Edit mode, start typing the name of a person or click the selector icon to choose a person from an alphabetic list.

The Description field appears on many Autotask entities. On entities like ticket, task, note, and to-do, the Description field is a core part of the data record. Wherever it is available, it tracks essential information about the record. This field is often prefaced with the entity name. For example, Quote Description.

Enter a detailed description of the entity instance, the issue with which the customer needs help, or the service that they requested.

The point of an SLA is standardization. A service level is a performance standard that defines the time frame in which an issue will be resolved, based on its severity and impact. A service level agreement is a minimum set of service levels that your company defines to meet the service needs of one or more customers. For example, you promise your customers that critical tickets that impact multiple contacts will be resolved within 8 business hours 90% of the time. For more information on SLAs, refer to Introduction to service level management.

You should rarely have to manually select an SLA. If they are correctly set up, SLAs should be applied automatically.

If an entity is created from or associated with multiple entities that can default in a service level agreement, the more specific SLA is prioritized over a more general one:

1. Manual selection (or applying a form template, which counts as manual selection)
2. SLA on the device
3. SLA on the recurring contract service or service bundle
4. SLA on the contract

This applies also to tickets created in the Client Portal.

For more on this complex subject, refer to Applying service level agreements.

Every customer can have a designated default contract that will automatically applied to all tickets created for the organization within the contract date range.

• You can change the default contract when creating or editing a ticket. Users with the required permissions can change the default contract on time entries, as well.
• If the organization is a parent organization, this contract becomes the default contract for all sub-organizations without their own default contracts.
• If your administrator has enabled the Use default service desk contract for all Client Portal tickets system setting, this contract is also automatically applied to any incoming Client Portal tickets.

Select the check box to make this contract the default. If the organization already has a default contract with an overlapping time frame, click OK to make the new contract the default, or click Cancel. The new contract will become the default for all new tickets.

NOTE  The check box is disabled for Recurring Contracts if another default contract for this organization already exists.

This field appears on entities that are part of the billing workflow, and is applied to labor and charges.

• If you assign a purchase order (PO) number to a quote (on the Terms tab), and then close the associated opportunity using the Won Opportunity Wizard, any charges created using the Won Opportunity Wizard will inherit the PO number.
• If you assign a PO number to a contract, the associated billing items inherit the contract's PO number.
• If you assign a PO number to projects, tickets, or tasks, that PO number will override the associated contract's purchase order number.
• The PO number appears on invoices. A separate invoice is created for each PO number. If an organization has multiple billing items that are assigned to different PO numbers, Autotask will generate multiple invoices for that organization.

Refer to Working with purchase order (PO) numbers.

This field determines whether you approve and post labor manually, on timesheet approval, or immediately on time entry.

NOTE  Only the Manually option will allow you to go through a separate billing approval stage for labor, correct mistakes, make adjustments, add missing information, correct spelling, etc. We therefore strongly recommend that customers use the Manually option.

This field cannot be edited for per ticket contracts. The Billing Setting for per ticket contract labor is always Manually. This billing setting allows all time entries to remain in Approve & Post until the ticket status is set to complete, ensuring that the ticket purchase remains available until all ticket work is completed.

Refer to Billing settings for approving labor.

If you would like to send the invoice for billing items generated by this contract to be sent to a third party other than the parent organization for this customer, select it here. Any organization in your Autotask instance can be selected. Revenue and costs are tracked against the organization the contract is set up for, but all approved and posted items for the contract will be invoiced to the billing organization. Refer to Using contracts to bill another organization.

This role-based notification recipient at the Billing Organization is an individual who can receive workflow rule notifications when automatic repurchase of blocks, retainers, and tickets is enabled.

The contract type is selected when the contract is created, and cannot be edited. On all entities it appears, it is view-only.

Contract types are used to support different billing needs. Options are Block Hour, Fixed Price, Per Ticket, Recurring Service, Retainer, and Time & Materials.

For examples of when to use each contract type, refer to Business cases and contract types.

Contract categories are completely customizable, and their use is optional. They are used for displaying, filtering, and grouping in LiveReports, and filtering on the Items to Invoice page. Refer to Contract categories.

Line of Business lets you classify finances and segment data. This field is displayed when Organizational Structure (Line of Business) is activated and enabled. It is available on the following entities: Contract, Opportunity, Sales Order, Project, and Ticket. Refer to Introduction to Line of Business.

If a contract is associated with a different line of business than the ticket or project, billing items always inherit the line of business from the contract, not the parent entity. Refer to Line of business inheritance rules for dependent entities.

Select a pairing of Business Division > Line of Business.

The contract status determines whether a contract is active. Contracts are created with the status set to Active. You inactivate them on the Edit Contract page. Inactive contracts cannot be associated with new tickets or projects, but billing events will continue until the contract End Date is reached.
To stop billing for future services, you must change the contract's end date to the date of the last billing event.

This field is optional and can be edited. It is available on multiple entities and can provide a cross-reference to an external numbering system.

Enter the first day of the date range when the entity is active or valid. It will default to today's date but can be modified.

Contracts

The start date of the contract becomes the billing date for all items billed under the contract.

EXAMPLE  If the Start Date is the 21st of the month, billing for all contract billing items will recur on the 21st. If you want your billing date to fall on the beginning or end of the month, but pro-rate services for the remainder of the current month, refer to Billing for a partial first month.

NOTE  If the Start Date is on a date not in the current period (for example, the start date is on the 31st and the next month only has 30 days), the last day of the month will be used for the billing event.

IMPORTANT  You cannot edit the Start Date for a recurring service contract once the service/bundle period has been added and the contract has been saved.

Opportunities

Start date is used to calculate the number of days the opportunity is in the pipeline.

Projects

The start date for all phases, tasks, and issues must be >= Start Date.

Billing Rules

The start date is the start of the first billing period and the first billing date. It also sets the schedule for all following billing dates. It must be greater than or equal to the contract start date.

EXAMPLE  If the start date is January 3, the next billing date will be February 3. If you enter a date of day #29, 30, or 31, and a month does not have that many days, the start date of that period will be the last day of the month. If you enter a day that is the last day of that month, we will use the last day of every month following that month.

Each period's charge is created using the most recent unit count, which is established by the date entered into the Determine Units/Create Charges on: field. The count date can be the same date as the billing date, or an earlier date.

If there is no unit count on the start date of the first billing period (because the day number selected to determine the unit count is greater than the day number of the start date), Autotask will do a unit count when the rule gets created to use for that first billing period.

Enter the last day of the date range the entity is active or valid.

Contracts

If the end date is not the planned last day of a billing period (you have a partial last month), the charge for the last billing period will be prorated.

Opportunities

Enter a projected end date for the work associated with the opportunity. The field does not affect revenue or profit forecasts.

Phases

When you add tasks to the phase, the phase end date adjusts to the end date of the latest task.

Billing Rules

No charges will be created for periods that would have started after the end date. If left blank, charge creation stops on the contract end date.

If you enter a date that is later than the contract end date, a message that includes the contract end date will appear.

The length of the contract or project in days. This field is linked to the Start Date and End Date.

• In a project, you can enter the number of days in the Duration field after you enter a date in the Start Date field, or you can enter an End Date and Autotask will calculate the Duration. Selections made in the Schedule Settings section will determine whether the project duration is calculated using calendar days, or include non-business days and holidays.

• In a contract, Duration is calculated as calendar days between the Start Date and End Date.

In View mode, the duration is displayed as a progress bar.

A visual representation that shows the duration, status, or lifecycle of an entity.

On Block Hours contracts, this hourly rate will be used when all available block hours have been consumed. If enabled, this field is required and will always create a contract charge of 0.00, or the amount entered.

NOTE  If you would like to cap charges for a block period, enter an overage rate of 0.00 . Once the block hours are consumed, labor will be performed at the 0.00 overage rate.

On Per Ticket contracts, this rate will be used as the flat fee contract charge once all ticket purchases have been consumed. This field is required and will always create a contract charge of 0.00, or the amount entered.

NOTE  If you do not add any purchases to the contract, you can use the overage rate to create one-off tickets to bill the customer.

This field appears on entities where you can set the time increment between payments. It determines the billing frequency.

Contracts:

On recurring services only, select from: Monthly (default), Quarterly, Semi-Annual, and Yearly.

IMPORTANT  You will not be able to change the Contract Period Type after you save the contract.

Products:

For products, the period type is typically One-Time.

Services:

On a quote item, the period type is inherited from the service or bundle and cannot be edited.

The choices are Monthly, Quarterly, Semi-Annual, and Yearly.

When the service/bundle is assigned to a contract, the period type will be used in conjunction with the contract period type to determine the time interval at which the service will be billed.

NOTE  Once a service/bundle is saved, the Period Type can no longer be edited.

• If the service/bundle has a longer billing period type than the contract, the service/bundle will be billed in its entirety. If the service/bundle period type is quarterly and the contract period type is monthly, the service/bundle will be billed for the entire quarter on the next contract billing date.

• If the contract billing period is longer, the service/bundle will be billed for the number of times that would have occurred since the last billing. For example, if the service/bundle period type is quarterly and the contract period type is semi-annual, service will be billed twice on the next contract billing date. The table below illustrates the combinations of monthly and quarterly periods for services/bundles and contracts.

Subscriptions:

It is possible to use a One-Time subscription period for a straight product sale, but the recommended method is to bill products as a ticket charge, contract charge, or project charge. Refer to Adding or editing a ticket charge.

NOTE  If the contract has a one time Setup Fee, it will appear in the total revenue for the Current Period or Previous Period if those periods include the first period of the contract. The Setup Fee will always be included in the revenue for Contract to Date.

Extended Costs for all Contract Charges that have been created for this contract, excluding charges associated with block, retainer or ticket purchases.

NOTE  If you do not have permission to view internal cost data, this field is not visible.

Internal cost of any project and ticket charges associated with this contract.

NOTE  If you do not have permission to view internal cost data, this field is not visible.

Internal cost of labor associated with this contract.

NOTE  If you do not have permission to view internal cost data, this field is not visible.

The amount of the initial Setup Fee charged under this contract.

NOTE  If you do not have permission to view internal cost data, this field is not visible.

NOTE  A ticket will be consumed regardless of billable or non-billable work type associated to the ticket or time entries.