Operate > WebSphere Commerce Accelerator > Business relationship management > Contracts
Manage contracts
Manage a contract involves tasks that take the contract from creation to the end of the contract's life cycle. The various tasks involved in managing a contract are performed by different roles.
- An account representative assigned to work with the buyer organization creates a new contract.
- When the contract is complete and the account representative has checked the contract by viewing a summary of the contract, the account representative submits the contract for approval. When the contract is submitted, an e-mail notice is sent to the sales manager.
- The sales manager checks the list of approval requests awaiting approval and approves or rejects the contract. The sales manager can add comments. If the contract is rejected, the account representative can:
- change the contract and resubmit the contract for approval
- cancel the contract
- deleting the contract
- duplicate the contract
- If the contract is approved, the contract is automatically deployed. The terms and conditions in the deployed contract take effect on the start date of the contract.
- If deployment of the contract fails, the sales manager or account representative can redeploy the contract.
- There is no specific order to the tasks required to manage a contract once it is deployed. The following tasks are used to manage a contract, once it has been deployed, using the Business Relationship Management tools available in the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator:
Before you begin
Before creating a new contract for a buyer organization, the buyer organization must have a business account with the store. For information about managing a business account, see Managing a business account.
- Approve or reject a draft contract
Draft contracts can be approved or rejected by approvers and administrators with appropriate access. The process for approving or rejecting a contract is the same process used for all approvals in WebSphere Commerce.
- Changing a contract
Use the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to change a contract.
- Changing the shipping charges for a contract
Use the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to change the shipping charges for an account or a contract.
- Cancel contracts
Canceling a contract permanently prevents a buyer organization from purchasing under that contract. The contract stays in the WebSphere Commerce database for reference and can be viewed or used to create a duplicate contract. A canceled contract cannot be resumed.
- Create an attachment for a contract
You can attach any additional information to the contract, which might include images, documents, spreadsheets, or other materials.
- Delete a contract
Deleting a contract marks the contract for deletion the next time the WebSphere Commerce database is cleared of all objects that have been marked for deletion. A contract that has been marked for deletion cannot be duplicated, resumed, or used to create a new version of a contract. Both account representatives and sales managers can delete contracts.
- Duplicate contracts
Duplicating a contract creates a new draft contract with the same information of the original contract except for the name of the contract. An account representative can make changes to the duplicate contract and then submit the contract for approval. When the duplicate contract is deployed, both the original contract and the duplicate contract can be active.
- Export contracts
Exporting a contract or service agreement removes a service agreement in XML format from the WebSphere Commerce Server.
- Import contracts
Importing a contract or service agreement uploads a service agreement in XML format from the local client to the WebSphere Commerce Server and deploys the service agreement in WebSphere Commerce.
- Redeploy contracts
Deployment of a contract normally occurs automatically after a contract is approved. If deployment of a contract fails, you can attempt to deploy the contract manually. Only contracts in the DeploymentFailed state can be redeployed.
- Resume suspended contracts
When the account representative wants to allow the buyer organization to purchase under the suspended contract again, they can resume the suspended contract.
- Submit contracts for approval
Use the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to submit a contract for approval.
- Suspend active contracts
Occasionally, there will be a need to prevent a buyer organization from purchasing under a contract for a brief period of time. An account representative can suspend a contract at any time.
- View contract summaries
An account representative or sales manager can review an existing contract at any time by looking at the contract summary.
- Unlock contracts
A Site Administrator, Sales Manager, or Seller can unlock a contract for a user. For example, if a user's system stops while the user is editing the contract, the contract may be locked on the system, and an administrator must unlock it. Also, if one user is editing a contract, this locks the contract and prevents other users from editing it.
- Find contracts
Use the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to find contracts or service agreements.
- Refresh the contracts list
If you change the status of items in the contracts list (such as adding or removing a contract), you may want to refresh the list.