Contract Deliverables

Contract deliverables establish and track both contractual and noncontractual commitments that must be honored as part of negotiations and contractual agreements between businesses and suppliers or customers based on contract intent. These deliverables can be used in enterprise contracts, purchasing documents, and in negotiations.

This topic provides an overview of the following:

• How you can use contract deliverables

• Creating and managing contract deliverables

• One-time and repeating deliverables

• Where you can create and use contract deliverables

• The different deliverable types

• Fixed and relative due dates

• Deliverable notifications

Using Contract Deliverables

You can use contract deliverables:

• To communicate with the external party on the contract about commitments.

  To do this, the responsible party on the contract deliverable must update the contract deliverable such that this change is reflected in the Contracts application.

• To submit any required documents

  For an enterprise contract, the external contact that is the responsible party on the deliverable can sign in to the Contracts application to submit a report and change the deliverable status to Complete.

• As a repository of documents submitted in the negotiations

  All documents submitted as attachments are stored in the deliverable history and can be accessed from the deliverable itself.

• To track a contract deliverable from the initial stages of a negotiation to the signed contract

  The application can automatically copy the appropriate deliverables from the negotiation document to the final contract.

• To automatically calculate deliverable due dates

  You can set deliverable due dates relative to contract events, for example, a week before the contract is signed or comes into effect. The application automatically calculates the actual date the deliverable is due. You can also create multiple instances of a deliverable to track repeating deliverables, such as monthly reports.

• To automatically notify interested parties when the deliverable is due or overdue

  You can set up the deliverable to automatically notify parties of an upcoming deadline or when the deliverable is overdue.

Creating and Managing Contract Deliverables

You create and manage contract deliverables in two separate interfaces. You create the contract deliverables while the contract is in negotiations. You manage the deliverables while the contract is active and in the process of being executed except for internal deliverables with fixed due date that you can manually activate before the contract is active.

Here is how the two interfaces work:

1. You create the deliverable either in a contract terms template that can then be applied to the contract or directly in the contract. For the deliverable, you must enter the responsible party contact, the deliverable deadlines, and the notifications required.

2. If deliverables are present in a contract terms template you apply to a contract, then the deliverables get copied to the contract automatically. The type of deliverables that are applied automatically can vary based on the document type.

3. The application creates deliverable instances with the calculated deadlines based on your setups at the time the contract becomes active. For instance, if you created a deliverable that calls for the submission of a report every week after the contract is signed, then the application creates a separate instance of the deliverable for each week based on the date the contract was signed.

4. You and the responsible party contact use the Manage Deliverables page to access and update each deliverable instance. In the example, each week the deliverable instance that is due that week is updated and any collateral attached.

5. Based on your setups, the parties are automatically notified when the deliverable is due or overdue, or when one of the parties changes its status (dashed lines).

6. The contractual deliverables you set up are listed in the printed contract terms when you add the deliverable variable to a clause.

The following figure shows two different interfaces you use to create and manage contract deliverables.

One-Time and Repeating Deliverables

You can create both one-time and repeating deliverables. A one-time deliverable tracks the performance and deadlines for an individual required action that must be performed by one of the parties in the contract. A repeating deliverable tracks a deliverable that must be performed periodically, for instance a progress report that must be submitted every week after the agreement is signed.

The following diagram uses an example to illustrate the two variable types:A one-time deliverable (Report 1) that the responsible party contact must provide that is due one week after the agreement is signed.A repeating deliverable (Report 2) that the responsible party contact must provide weekly after the contract is signed.After the contract is signed and active, the application automatically creates instances of the two deliverables which can be viewed and updated by the responsible party contact using the Manage Deliverables page and the Deliverables bin. The due dates for each deliverable in this example are based on the date the contract was signed.Note that the name of each deliverable instance for a repeating deliverable is the same. The only difference is the due date.The internal contact, requester, or responsible external party contact attaches the report file to the appropriate instance of the deliverable and changes its status to Complete.The following figure illustrates the example of one-time and repeating deliverables.

Where You Can Create and Use Contract Deliverables

You can create contract terms deliverables both in buy-intent and sell-intent contract terms templates, in the Deliverables tab of an enterprise contract, and in Oracle Fusion Purchasing and Oracle Fusion Sourcing documents.

For purchasing, you can create and use deliverables on documents which include:

• Blanket Purchase Agreement

• Contract Purchase Agreement

• Standard Purchase Order

For sourcing, deliverables are copied over from the negotiation document. Sourcing documents include:

• Auction

• Bid

• RFI

• RFI Response

• RFQ

• Sourcing Quote

Contract Deliverable Types

Deliverable types restrict where a deliverable is available and where it can be printed. There are three deliverable types, as mentioned in the following table:

Deliverable Type	Where Available	Description	Where It Prints
Contractual Deliverables	Purchasing and sourcing (except RFI documents) documents and enterprise contracts	Deliverables that must be completed as part of the contract.	Prints in all documents: As part of the Contract Terms Template preview Enterprise contracts Purchasing documents Sourcing documents
Negotiation Deliverables	Sourcing only	Deliverables that are a part of a negotiation document but are not part of the final contract.	Prints as part of: As part of the Contract Terms Template preview Sourcing documents
Internal Deliverables	Purchasing documents and enterprise contracts	Deliverables that are used to track internal schedules and commitments.	Not printed as part of the contract terms.

Note: If you create a deliverable as part of a contract terms template and that deliverable is of a type that is not compatible with the contract where the template is applied, then the deliverable does not get created in that contract. For instance, a negotiation deliverable in a template is dropped when that template is applied to a purchase order but added when that same template is used for an RFQ.

Fixed and Relative Due Dates

You can specify a deliverable to be due on a specific date, such as the first of the month, or relative to a contract event, such as one week after the contract is signed.

The available events include:

• The contract start and end dates

• The dates the negotiations are opened and closed

• The date the contract is signed

• On negotiation documents, the date you receive a response from the responsible external party contact

The available contract events differ depending on where you create the deliverable and the deliverable type. For instance, for contractual deliverables you create in a contract terms templates, you can base the due dates on: Contract Canceled, Contract Closed, Contract Signed, Contract Start Date, and Contract End Date. Negotiation deliverables can be based on: Negotiation Closed, Negotiation Opened, and Response Received.

Deliverable Notifications

You can notify interested parties using Oracle BPEL Process Manager by email, voice message, instant messaging (IM), or short message service (SMS).

Notifications can only be sent for the activated deliverable. Therefore, you must first activate a deliverable to send a notification associated with it. You can activate a deliverable:

• Manually by selecting a deliverable and clicking on Activate.

• Automatically when a contract is activated.

Even for a contractual deliverable, you can send a notification message when you activate a contract.

Note:

• You can send only one notification for a deliverable.

• You can't send a notification when the contract is in the pending approval state.

You can send automatic notifications:

• Prior to the due date

• When one of the parties changes the status of the deliverable

• When a deliverable is overdue

• When a deliverable must be escalated after the due date

Note: For these notifications to appear, the following processes must be running:

• Send Contract Terms Deliverable Due Date Notifications
• Send Contract Terms Deliverable Escalation Notifications
• Send Contract Terms Deliverable Overdue Notifications

Who receives the notification depends on a combination of the notification type and the party who is responsible for the deliverable as listed in the following table. The requester is an internal party. The external contact is a supplier or customer contact.

Notification Type	Responsible Party	Recipients
Prior to due date	Internal	Internal Contact
Prior to due date	External	External Contact
Overdue	Internal	Requester, Internal Contact
Overdue	External	Requester, Internal Contact, External Contact
Status Change	Internal	Requester, Internal Contact
Status Change	External	Requester, Internal Contact, External Contact
Escalation	Internal and External	Requester, Internal Contact, Escalation Contact