Contracts on invoices and orders
Once a contract carries pricing rows or thresholds, Zudello checks your documents against it while they are being processed. This guide covers what that looks like on an invoice, a requisition or an order, and what happens when something is outside the agreement.
Contract information only appears on document types where your administrator has turned it on. See Setting up contracts.
On the lines
Two read-only columns are added to the line grid.
Contract Pricing shows Within contract, On contract, Over contract or N/A. A line you have edited but not yet saved shows Save changes, because the comparison uses a price that is worked out on save.
Contract Thresholds shows Under threshold, On threshold, Over threshold or N/A.
Where a line is covered by more than one contract, the cell shows the most serious status of the set.
Click a status to open Contract Impact Details, which lists each contract affecting that line with its date range, its status and the contracted price. Where nothing applies, it reads No contracts affect this line.
(Screenshot: the Contract Pricing and Contract Thresholds columns on an invoice)
In the Contract panel
The Contracts panel on the right of the document holds two sections.
Thresholds groups the thresholds this document touches by contract. Each card shows the threshold description with an Amount or Quantity badge, the contract's date range, the contract owners, and the Threshold, Allocated and Remaining figures. Remaining turns red once the cap has been passed. The bar breaks spend into its five buckets, with a This transaction row showing what this document alone contributes.
Pricing lists each line with its contracted price and status, or shows the same information as a grid with one row per contract.
(Screenshot: the Contracts panel showing a threshold card)
Where your administrator has turned on Only show contract information to contract owners, threshold figures are only shown to contract owners, threshold owners and Zudello staff. Pricing information is not restricted by that setting.
When a document breaches a contract
A banner appears at the top of the document reading Contract exceptions detected, and a red dot appears on the Contracts panel icon. Opening the banner lists each affected contract and what is wrong with it, such as "Acme Supply Agreement - Over contract threshold".
Which statuses count as an exception, and how serious each one is, is configured per document type. Out of the box, spend over or under a threshold and a price over contract each raise a warning.
Where a contract exception carries an error level, the document is held in review and cannot progress until it is resolved. Warnings and information do not block.
Giving a reason
When you click Save and submit on a document with an unresolved exception, the Contract exceptions modal opens. It lists the contracts that have been violated, along with each threshold description and each pricing violation.
- Select a Reason from the drop-down.
- Enter Comments. Some reasons require a comment, and the box is labelled accordingly.
- Click Submit for approval.
(Screenshot: the Contract exceptions modal)
The reason is recorded against the document. The banner then shows who submitted it and the reason they gave, and the approval emails that follow include the same line, together with a Threshold Impact table showing each threshold, its status, the amount, what is allocated and what remains.
Your administrator can choose not to ask for a reason on submit, and can restrict which reasons apply to which modules. See Setting up contracts.
Routing breaches to the contract owner
The point of catching a breach is getting it in front of whoever owns the agreement. Approval flows can add a step that sends the document to the contract's owners, and you choose which impacts trigger it, from On contract, Under contract and Over contract.
One approval step is created per breached contract, named after that contract, with its owners as the approvers. A contract with no owners cannot route, so give every contract an owner.
Automations can also test contract impact in their conditions, targeting specific contracts, contract groups or contract categories, which is how you send a breach of a strategic supplier agreement somewhere different to everything else.
See Approval management and Configure approval milestones and steps for how to build these.
Need help?
Contact your organisation administrator or Zudello support for assistance with contract impacts on your documents.