Customer service
Manage customer contracts, renewals and service coverage
Record a contract with its dates, value and billing, approve it, renew or terminate it, and turn it into a service contract that covers sites and equipment and sets the SLA.
3 min readLast updated
In this article
The contracts screen keeps every agreement you have with a customer: its term, value, billing frequency and renewal terms. A contract can also be a service contract: then it states which of the customer's sites and equipment are covered, which SLA applies to their service requests, and it can carry maintenance plans.
Create a contract
Open CRM › Service › Contracts and select New contract.
Type the Title and choose the Customer.
Set the Start date and End date. The end date must be after the start date.
Enter the Value, the Currency and the Billing frequency: Monthly, Quarterly, Annually or One-time.
Turn on Auto-renew if the contract renews itself, and set the Renewal notice (days).
Add the Terms and conditions, any Special terms and a description, then select Save.
The new contract starts as Draft.
Approve, renew, terminate
All from the contract's Actions menu in the list:
Approve makes a Draft or Pending approval contract Active.
Renew creates the follow-on contract. Enter its dates, value, Term (months), billing frequency and Renewal notes. The old contract becomes Renewed, and the renewal appears on the Renewals tab with the Original value and Renewed value.
Terminate ends a contract early. The Termination date and Termination reason are required; add Termination notes if useful.
Set status changes the status directly, for example to Cancelled.
Documents lets you Upload document files such as the signed copy.
Delete removes a contract that is not active. An active contract cannot be deleted; terminate it instead.
What happens automatically
Renewal reminder: the contract's owner is notified once per cycle when the end date comes within the Renewal notice (days), or 30 days when no notice is set.
Auto-renew: an active contract with Auto-renew on is renewed when its end date passes. The new contract starts the next day, runs for the same term at the same value and keeps its service terms, SLA and covered sites and equipment.
Expiry: any other active contract past its end date becomes Expired. Renewed, terminated and cancelled contracts are left as they are.
Renewal opportunity: when an active contract comes within 90 days of its end (the number of days is set in CRM settings), a renewal sales opportunity is opened for it, so the sales team follows the renewal like any other deal.
Make it a service contract
Select View to open the contract, then the Service tab.
Under Service terms, choose the customer's Account, the Coverage type, the Visits per year, and whether it Includes parts, Includes labour and Includes emergency call-outs. Choose the SLA policy that applies to this customer's requests.
Select Make it a service contract (or Save when editing).
Under Coverage, tick the Covered sites and use Add an asset of this account for individual Covered assets, then select Save coverage. If nothing is listed, the contract covers every site of the account.
From then on, a service request about a covered site or device shows Covered by contract, is not billable by default, and gets the contract's SLA policy. The Service tab also lists the contract's maintenance plans.
Common questions
Why can't I approve a contract? Only Draft and Pending approval contracts can be approved.
A contract expired although the customer renewed. Renew it with Renew, or turn on Auto-renew before the end date so it renews itself.