Prerequisite
You must have budget assigned to a CBS/Cost Code in the project's cost sheet prior to creating a Contracts record line item. Use the Initial Budget (Owner Template), or the Budget Items (Contractor Template) business process record to allocate budget to the code.
Purpose
The Contracts business process is used in procurement workflows. You can use a Contracts record to gather key contractual information, such as vendor and type of contract. You can use a Contracts business process record to approve or deny approval for a commitment.
Business process characteristics
The Contracts business process is a cost-type business process that includes a workflow and requires you to select a Vendor. In turn, Change Orders and Payment Applications require you to select a Contract. You can create more than one Contracts record in a project. The item logs section of the Contracts record displays four query tabs, Summary Items, Approved Change Orders, Pending Change Orders, Payment Application logs, and Submittals. If the Contracts record is auto created by the Requests for Bid business process, then the upper form and tabs are auto populated with the vendor and award details from the winning bid. An individual help file is available for this business process.
Record Statuses
- Pending, a non-terminal status
- Approved, a terminal status Rejected, a terminal status
- Canceled, a terminal status
Groups associated with this business process
- Creation: Project Coordinators.
- Review: Project Managers. All Project Users can be copied.
- Revision: Project Coordinators. All Project Users can be copied.
Relationships associated with this business process
The record creator must select a vendor.
Additional Information
- The Contracts business process uses the Contracts-SOV, which becomes available on the End step.
- Enabled for smart phones and other hand held devices.
- Enabled for integration.
- Enabled for publish path.
Files attached to business process forms or to line items will be automatically published to pre-defined folders in Unifier's Document Manager. Attachments in company-level business processes will be published to specified folders in Company Documents and those in project-level business processes will be published to folders in a project's Documents log.
Benefits
In Unifier, files that are attached to a business process form or to its line items from your computer or local system are uploaded, by default, to the Unpublished Documents folder in Document Manager when sent to the next workflow step or by clicking Submit in non-workflow business processes. It requires administrators to publish them from there to the Documents folder. By establishing a publish path, file attachments are directly published to pre-designated folders in the Document Manager for team members to view, comment and collaborate.
Location
To view the published file attachments of a project-level business process record: In a project's Navigator, click Document Manager and select Documents. In the Folder panel, locate the pre-defined folder with the same name and view the published documents.
To view the published file attachments of a company-level business process record: In the Company Workspace Navigator, click Document Manager and select Company Documents. In the Folder panel, locate the pre-defined folder with the same name and view the published documents.
- Enabled for custom print.
Print using a custom layout
Custom printing can be used with templates created in Microsoft Word and PDF format. Depending on the template used for custom print, you can print the upper form, the current workflow step, comments and attachments of the record. The template may also allow printing of specific line items in their tabs. The printed output will list the name of the table with the line items following on separate lines.
Note: In Unifier 9.14 release, a specific Custom Print template has been added to the Contracts Business Process.
To print a business process form with a custom print layout, do the following:
- Open the business record that you want to print.
- From the File menu, select Print Preview > Custom.
- Click Save.
Note: When opening a business process form that includes fields that are auto-populated, or automatically updated, the system considers these automatic updates as changes and requires that you Save the work.