Proposal Contracts Differ From Real Contracts

A proposal contract is just like any other contract in that it contains the pricing terms that are used to generate how much the customer owes for service. In fact, the contract maintenance transaction is used to maintain both types of contracts (however, you cannot use this transaction to create a proposal contract; proposal contracts can only be created using the order transaction).

However, there are differences between proposal contracts and real contracts:

• Billing ignores proposal contracts.
• Proposal contracts cannot have financial transactions.
• Proposal contracts are not subject to credit and collections.
• Proposal contracts do not appear on lists of "active" contracts in the system's various zones, grids and trees.
• A proposal contract's state transition is very different from a real contract. Refer to The Lifecycle Of A Contract for an illustration of a real contracts state transition. Refer to Proposal Contract State Transition for an illustration of a proposal contracts state transition.