(Enterprise) Manage contracts
Managing a contract involves tasks that take the contract from creation to the end of the contract's lifecycle. The various tasks that are involved in managing a contract are performed by
different roles.
- An account representative who is assigned to work with the buyer organization creates a new contract.
- When the contract is complete and the account representative checked the contract by viewing a summary of the contract, the account representative submits the contract for approval. When the contract is submitted, an
email 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 perform any of the following tasks:
- 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. Once
a task is deployed, the following tasks are used to manage a contract using the Business
Relationship Management tools available in the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator:
Before starting
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 Manage a business account.
- Approving or rejecting 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 that is
used for all approvals in WebSphere Commerce.
- Changing a contract
Use WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to change a contract.
- Changing the shipping charges for a contract
Use WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to change the shipping charges for an account or a
contract.
- Canceling 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.
- Creating an attachment for a contract
We can attach any additional information to the contract,
which might include images, documents, spreadsheets, or other materials.
- Deleting a contract
Deleting a contract marks the contract for deletion the next time the WebSphere Commerce database is cleared of all objects that were marked for deletion. A contract that is
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.
- Duplicating 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 modify 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.
- Exporting contracts
Exporting a contract or service agreement removes a service
agreement in XML format from the WebSphere Commerce Server.
- Importing contracts
Importing a contract or service agreement uploads a service
agreement in XML format from your local client to the WebSphere Commerce
Server and deploys the service agreement in WebSphere Commerce.
- Redeploying contracts
Deployment of a contract normally occurs automatically after a contract is approved. If deployment of a contract fails, we can attempt to deploy the contract manually. Only contracts in
the DeploymentFailed state can be redeployed.
- Resuming 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.
- Submitting contracts for approval
Use WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to submit a contract for approval.
- Suspending active contracts
Occasionally, there is a need to prevent a buyer organization from purchasing under a
contract for a brief time. An account representative can suspend a contract at any time.
- Viewing contract summaries
An account representative or sales manager can review an
existing contract at any time by looking at the contract summary.
- Unlocking 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 might be
locked on the system. Also, if one user is editing a contract, this contract locks and prevents
other users from editing it.
- Finding contracts
Use WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to find contracts.
- Refreshing the contracts list
If you change the status of items in the contracts
list (such as
adding or removing a contract), we can refresh the list.