Sales Contract

Purpose

The sales contract is the central object for recurring services in Professional Services. It combines project, customer, contract duration, billing logic, and concrete contract lines in one document and forms the basis for recurring billing, contingents, and service-related add-ons.

Prerequisites

• The core Professional Services setup is maintained.
• Number series, contract types, billing types, SLA templates, and contingent templates exist.
• The related project and customer are already available.

Functional focus

Contract structure

A sales contract is structured in three layers:

• the contract header with project, customer, duration, and general control data
• the billing type that describes the business billing logic
• the billing assignments as concrete contract lines for services, items, or resources

This defines what is billed, which period applies, and how price, billing mode, and related conditions are calculated.

Create and maintain the contract

Sales contracts can be created manually or prepared from a sales quote or sales order. During creation, you typically maintain the description, contract type, project, customer, start date, and additional delivery, billing, and invoice details.

Further areas such as duration, print options, collective invoicing, and external document references control how the contract is later presented, prolonged, or transferred into invoices.

Billing assignments

Billing assignments are the billable contract lines. They determine which services are part of the contract and which prices, quantities, validity periods, discounts, or object, installation, and component references are used later in invoicing.

Assignments can:

• be entered manually in the contract
• be taken over automatically from templates on the customer, item, or resource
• be restructured, moved, or extended afterwards

Property-related contract lines

Contract lines can be assigned specifically to an object, an installation, or a component. This keeps it transparent which site or which technical element a recurring service relates to.

That is especially useful when service, rental, maintenance, or replacement services should not apply only to the customer in general, but to concrete elements of the installed environment.

Activation, extension, and contract lifecycle

Once a contract contains at least one billable assignment, it can be activated. Activation makes the contract available for recurring billing and can also trigger an initial contingent load if the setup is configured accordingly.

Existing contracts can be extended by resetting the status to setup or by creating a new sales quote that references the existing contract. In addition, positions can be copied from one contract to another to reuse recurring contract structures more efficiently.

Outcome

A well-maintained sales contract provides the binding framework for recurring revenue in Professional Services. It connects business service content, pricing logic, and billing control in one consistent contract model.