Using Contracts

A Contract in Commit defines the service agreement with your customer, which helps you manage the way you charge your customer for services and track the status of the agreement. Each Contract is always related to an Account.

Commit Contracts are categorized according to their type:

The contract type is set when you create a new Contract, and the system automatically tracks the status of a Contract according to the type selected. You can read more about contract types and their statuses in Tracking the Contract Status.

Each Account can have one or more Contracts at a time for different purposes. For example, you can have a Block of Time service agreement for on-site support at the customer site, and also a Global Contract for phone support.
 
Each Contract also has a Start date and End date which determines when the Contract is valid or expired (i.e. out of date). Commit automatically selects the most valid Contract – see How does the system choose the Contract to be used. To view Contracts which are about to expire, go to the Reports window, select the Contracts category and generate the 'Contract List by Type and Expiration' report.

Note that using Contracts is optional, and should only be used if needed – see the next section, When to use Contracts

If you don't have special contract terms with your customers and you bill according to ad-hoc charges per activity, you can simply use the Global System Contract which allows you to skip the Contract definition step and go straight to Using Charges. This System Contract is a global Contract which is automatically created for each Account so you can avoid having to create and manage contracts yourself.