This chapter covers the following topics:
Oracle Project Contracts supports the contract management needs of project driven organizations, including commercial and government contractors, agencies, and subcontractors. These organizations operate in a project centric environment characterized by:
Changing contract specifications.
Volatile demand and long lead-times.
High percentage of procure-to-contract components and services.
Contractual requirements for billing.
Incremental funding in multiple currencies.
Compliance of government regulations.
Oracle Project Contracts addresses budgetary constraints, contract margins, flowdown of contract information to subcontractors, and prioritization of deliverables. The Contract Organizer window provides a single entry point to access and define contract documents. Through the Contract Organizer window, you can access different functional regions including authoring, deliverable tracking, funding, hold management, contract revisions, and other contract related activities.
Oracle Project Contracts is part of the Oracle e-Business Suite, an integrated set of e-business solutions for the enterprise. It provides comprehensive use of workflows, flexible attributes, API framework, and Internet development tools.
Features of Oracle Project Contracts include:
Authoring of all types of contract documents.
Workflow-based contract administration, including status control, hold and change management.
Comprehensive contract funding.
Deliverable tracking, integrated with ERP functions such as planning, production, and procurement.
Contract costing, billing, and revenue recognition.
Role-based access security.
Contract flowdown.
Contract Authoring provides support throughout the entire contracting life cycle; from solicitations, bids and proposals in the acquisition phase to awarded contracts. You can define contract document types for different industries that use different terminology such as Construction, Aerospace, Defense, Professional Services, Telecommunications, and Public Sector. You are able to manage contracts from the perspective of a seller or a buyer.
Authoring Wizard: The Authoring Wizard guides you through the process of creating a new contract document. A new contract document can be created in one of the following ways:
As a new document.
From another contract document such as an existing proposal, contract, subcontract or solicitation.
Using templates where you select a subset of contract information to copy.
Articles, Terms and Conditions, and Standard Notes.
You set up repositories of clauses or regulations, terms and conditions (such as shipping method, payment terms, freight terms) that can be assigned to any contract document. You can enter statement of work and standard notes for any contract document, or for a particular line.
Oracle Project Contracts uses the Articles Library functionality developed by Oracle Contracts. Oracle Project Contracts uses the enhanced common Articles Library that is shared across all contracts applications. Benefits include:
Enhancing the articles authoring process by streamlining article approvals and placement within the Standard Articles Library.
Storing articles by article number.
Provides a road map to future articles enhancements made by Oracle Contracts.
Oracle Project Contracts provides a variety of tools to enable contracting personnel to administer contracts during their life cycle, including:
Approval and Status Management: Approval hierarchies and cycles for different document types can be defined. Appropriate escalation routines and notifications are created to alert administrators about deadlines for proposal submittals and solicitation response receipts.
Changes and Versioning: You can manage amendments and modifications to contract documents, an audit trail of contractual requirements is provided. Change management is workflow-based to implement approval and review of changes throughout the organization.
Contract Printing: Any version of a contract document authored in Oracle Project Contracts can be printed as a draft document for internal review and recordkeeping purposes. You can print the document in whole or in part using your unique style format.
This capability enables printing of a contract document from the Authoring Workbench for internal review and approvals, and for recordkeeping purposes. Contract Printing requires XML gateway and XML Publisher (XDO) installation.
Contract Holds: Oracle Project Contracts enables you to define holds or stop work orders at different levels (header, line, or deliverable) with different hold reasons.
Deliverable Tracking System (DTS): The DTS is used to track all contract activities such as planned receipts and shipments, mailing of an initial engineering drawing, or progress report submissions. It is integrated with Oracle Projects, Advanced Planning and Scheduling, Oracle Internet Procurement, and Oracle Shipping Execution. Also, contract related information from other products can be viewed and tracked.
You can also associate workflow processes within the DTS that can be tailored to meet your business requirements. Using this association, you can automate business events normally associated with the execution phase of a contract such as shipping, billing, procurement and planning.
Oracle Project Contracts provides a comprehensive model to define and keep track of contract funding and accounting.
Funding: You can use incremental funding, funding pools, multiple funding parties, hard and soft limits, and multiple currencies.
Billing: You can define different billing methods (such as firm fixed price, cost plus incentive, and time and materials) that can be used by the Projects Billing engine to drive the billing process. Oracle Project Billing, or any external billing system, is used to calculate periodic billings.
Invoicing and Revenue: Draft invoices can be generated and sent to Oracle Receivables, or your own receivables system, for final invoice processing and for collection of payments. Inquiries are used to compare contract revenue with contract funding.
Contract Flowdown: Oracle Project Contracts enables users to configure flowdown of attributes, articles, terms and conditions, and standard notes to different business areas such as Receiving, Shop Floor, and Billing.