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.

5. The “Duration” step is about the duration of the contract. After entering the necessary details, press “Next step” to continue.

 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.

How to open an (existing) contract?

To open a contract:

1. 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

You will see a screen with eight tabs when a contract is opened.

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 “Contract items”

In this tab, contract items are added. The sum of the contract items represents the total amount of the contract.

CONTRACT Before 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. Pricing period Invoice period
PERIOD The 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.

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

1. Click “Add generic item” in the “Active contract items.” include.

2. An empty contract item is now added to the list.

3. 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.

4. Click the save button on the top right or ‘Save and return’ if you’re done adding items.

Add an asset to the contract

1. Press “Add asset” in the include on the bottom under “Active contract items.”

2. Select the asset(s) you want to add to the contract.

3. Now click ‘Ok’ to add the selected asset.

4. You can fill in the details of the asset. You can change the description, the price, the period, etc.

5. Click the save button on the top right or ‘Save and return’ if you’re done adding items.

Add an area to the contract

1. Press “Add area” in the include on the bottom under “Active contract items.”

2. Fill in the filter fields and click ‘Search.’

3. Select the area(s) and click ‘Ok’

4. Choose the object use types you want to add for the area(s)

   1. 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.

   2. 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.

5. Now you can fill in the details of the area. You can add a description, the price, the period, etc.

6. Click the save button on the top right or ‘Save and return’ if you’re done adding items.

Add a property to the contract

1. Press “Property asset” in the include on the bottom under “Active contract items.”

2. Select the property you want to add to the contract.

3. Now you can fill in the details of the property. You can add a description, the price, the period, etc.

4. Click the save button on the top right or ‘Save and return’ if you’re done adding items.

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 01 is automatically created by the contract wizard. A duration of 5 years was set here.

  • Period 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”

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 Workplace on 2023/01/01, and you have added a contract that begins on 2020/01/01. In that case, you don’t want Workplace 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.

1. Click ‘'Period invoice” on the “Invoice” tab

2. Set an end date

3. Click ‘Ok’ for a preview.

4. Click ‘Back’ > and click ”Back' a second time to navigate back to the Invoicing tab of the contract.

The tab “Indexing”

This tab shows all the info needed to index contract items. How contract items can be indexed is explained in a separate article.

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”

Here you can find all the relevant documents for this contract, and you can add new ones.

The tab “Details”

Here you can find a summary of the different contract details.

• As you can see in the screenshot, there are many options here. You don't need to change these for the basic use of the contract module.

• In the future, we want to optimize the contract module, especially this page, for an optimal user experience.