Billing Contracts

What is a Contract?

In Billing Central, a contract is an agreement between your organization and a customer to provide them with a product or a service. Contracts contain the sales information agreed with the customer such as terms, product and service details, price, billing schedule and usage information.

When you create a Billing Central contract, it is created with a status of "Draft". You can activate draft contracts when ready to do so.

If analysis items have been created in Foundations, they can be populated on billing contract headers and lines and automatically copied to billing document headers and lines. For more information, see Using Analysis Items in Billing Central.

When you activate a contract, billing schedules are created. Billing schedules enable you to automatically generate billing documents from contracts. See Billing Schedules. You can analyze the contract revenue based on related billing documents that are marked "Complete". See Billing Documents.

The actions that you can carry out on a contract are determined by its type and status, as detailed in the following tables.

Contract Types

Contract Type	Description
Contract	A contract that is not a change request for an active contract.
Change Request	A copy of an active contract on which you can propose changes to that contract. When you apply a change request, the changes on that change request are applied to the active contract. The change request then becomes a superseded contract and contains the contract as it was before the change request was applied. In addition: Billing schedules that have not been billed are deleted. Draft billing documents for the contract are deleted or discarded depending on the Allow Deletion of Draft Billing Document setting in the Billing Central Settings custom setting. See Allow Deletion of Draft Billing Document. Billing schedules are created automatically for the next 12 months. The contract's status is set to "Expired" if the change request includes an edit to move the contract's end date to before today, or if the contract's end date was already before today but its status was still "Active". This happens immediately, not next time the background job to expire contracts runs. You can disable this by selecting Change Requests Do Not Expire Contracts in the Billing Central Settings custom setting. Complete billing documents are not deleted. Note: If the Allow End Contract Line Before Billed To field is enabled, billing schedules that have been billed are deleted if you move a contract line item's end date to before its Billed To date. Billing Central creates a draft credit note automatically if the customer is entitled to a refund (unless automatic credit note creation is disabled in your org). For more information, see Early Termination of Contracts and Contract Line Items and Automatic Creation of Draft Credit Notes When Applying Change Requests. For more information, see Change Requests.

Statuses

Status	Description
Active	When you activate a contract, billing schedules are automatically created for its contract line items. You can create billing documents based on billing schedules that are due to be billed. When a contract is active, you might need to create a change request to edit the contract depending on the options your administrator has chosen. See Billing Central Settings and Billing Contract Field Sets. You can renew the contract. You cannot change the status. You cannot delete the contract.
Draft	The initial status of contracts and renewals. Contracts are created with this status. In "Draft" status, you can: Edit, delete and add lines. Edit and delete the contract.
Expired	Indicates that the end date of the contract has been reached. The status of a contract is also set to "Expired" if it is ended early and the new expiry date has been reached. On an "Expired" contract, you can: Renew the contract. Generate billing schedules. Create billing documents. Calculate the total contract value. On an "Expired" contract, you cannot: Activate it. Add plans or products. Apply a change request. Change its status. Create a change request. Delete it. Edit it. Your administrator can schedule a job to expire contracts where the end date has been reached. See Setting up a Job to Expire Contracts. Note: You might be able to edit custom fields on expired contracts if the Updating Expired Contracts feature is enabled.
Superseded	This is a contract that has been replaced by another contract. You cannot edit a contract with this status or calculate its total value.

Contract Lines

Contract line items contain the detail of a contract. Each product, service or plan that forms part of the contract is contained within a contract line item. You can create contracts with contract line items based on products and plans available in your Salesforce org Salesforce organization.

Related Contracts

When you apply a change request, the changes on that change request are applied to the active contract. The change request then becomes a superseded contract and contains the contract as it was before the change request was applied. The Related Contracts related list on the Salesforce Billing Contract Detail page shows related superseded contracts.

Related Billing Schedules

The Related Billing Schedules related list on the Salesforce Billing Contract Detail page shows related billing schedules associated with the contract.

Related Opportunities

If the Opportunity to Contract integration feature is enabled in Feature Console, contracts created from opportunities include a link to Related Opportunities. You can only view related opportunities from contracts if you have permission to view opportunities.

Next Contract

If the contract has been superseded or renewed, the Next Contract related list on the Salesforce Billing Contract Detail page contains the next related contract.