How contracts work

A contract is the firm's agreement with a client: what the firm does, for how long and for how much. The Contracts app keeps it from the first draft to its end, and turns its amount into invoices.

The life of a contract

A contract starts in Drafting, where the firm prepares it alone. Mark Drafted makes it Draft: the client can read it and sign it on the portal. With both signatures, or with Set Valid, it becomes Valid. It then ends Closed when the work is done, Expired when its end date passes, or Cancelled with a reason. Set to Draft reopens a contract to change it.

The stages follow the way a quotation becomes an order: nothing reaches the client before the firm is ready, and nothing is signed after the text has moved on, since signatures are locked once given.

Templates

A template holds the text of an agreement the firm signs often and its default value. Choosing it on a contract copies the value and writes the text with the firm's name, the client's name and the value in place.

Instalments and invoices

The amount of a contract is split into instalments in Auto Invoicing, each with its trigger: a date, each linked consultation, or a level of project progress. Every hour the system drafts the invoices whose trigger is met, and the billing team confirms them. The instalments never add up to more than the contract.

Cases, consultations and projects

The Type of a contract says what work it covers. A case or a consultation names its contract, chosen among the client's valid contracts; a project contract names its project and follows its progress, which can drive its invoicing.

Reminders and notices

The contract settings decide whether the client and the followers receive a notice when a contract becomes valid, and whether the firm is reminded before a contract ends. The reminder goes out once for each end date, with a to-do for the person chosen.

Who sees what

Access to contracts has three levels in the Legal Rights section of a user: Read-only, User: Own Documents and Manager: All Documents, who also opens the Configuration menu with the templates, the cancel reasons and the settings. A client with portal access finds Contracts on the portal home, with the contracts that are past Drafting.