Contract Lifecycle
Contract Lifecycle
Info
Any contract with the status PENDING will appear on the My Actions page.
# Creating an Agreement
To create a new agreement, simply go to the Customers > Agreement tab and select Create a new agreement.
By default, an agreement will be created with the ACTIVE or VALIDATED status, depending on the start date. It is also possible, at the time of creation, to assign it at status PENDING.
Warning
Any other status than ACTIVE or VALIDATED may result the disappearance of MRR and statistics in certain reports.
You can check whether an agreement has been created manually (UI), by Skalin (SYSTEM) or by an external source, clicking on the eye icon then checking "Source".
# Modifying an Agreement
You can modify an agreement in two ways: either via the details window, represented by an eye icon, or directly within the table.
If the contract was created through a system integrated with Skalin (Hubspot, Salesforce, Stripe, etc.), any changes you make may be overwritten during the next sync, since the external source controls the values. In this case, it’s better to update the contract directly in the external tool.
Note
Not all fields can be modified directly from the table.
# Upsell and Downsell
If a client makes an upsell before the end of their contract, it is recommended to create an additional contract line reflecting the extra amount, with a duration that runs until the end of the original contract. This approach is preferred over modifying the original contract amount, as doing so would lose the record of the MRR increase from a specific date. At the end of the contract, a new line reflecting the total MRR (initial amount + upsell) can be created.
For a downsell, the same principle applies: to retain the record of the exact downsell date, it is recommended to adjust the end date of the current contract and create a new contract with the updated amount.
# End of Agreement and Renewal
When an agreement reaches its end date and if its status was VALIDATED or ACTIVE then its status is automatically changed to FINISHED.
Contract renewals can be managed either in Skalin or in your billing tool or CRM. In the latter case, the parameter in General > Agreements settings > Auto-renewal creation is unchecked).
If Skalin manages contract renewals and the completed contract had automatic renewal enabled, the status of the new contract will be:
PENDING (to be validated in My Actions) if the contract setting in Settings > General is set to Manual
ACTIVE if the contract setting in Settings > General is set to Automatic
This setting is available under General > Agreement Settings
You can also choose to manually renew a contract by clicking the Renewal button (if the agreement was not in auto-renew mode and you agreed with the customer on renewing it), available either in the client’s Contracts tab or in the Renewals view. Skalin automatically pre-fills the new contract form with the same duration, plan, and amount as the previous contract.
This button is not available when a renewal contract already exists based on the contract you are viewing.
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If a contract is deleted in the CRM (or in the data source for contracts), it is not automatically deleted in Skalin: it must be deleted manually in Skalin.
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# Matching Rules When Changing Data Source
If the data source for contracts changes (for example, from contracts added manually or via CSV import to contracts imported from a CRM or Stripe) the following rules apply to match contracts and avoid duplicates (in particular, to determine whether a contract already exists and should be updated with data from the new source, rather than creating a new one):
- We retrieve the agreement with the same ID as the new data source (this assumes the contract ID was properly included in the initial contract data import).
- If not found, we look for the agreement with the same
refId(as defined by the connector configuration). - If not found, we look for an agreement of type RENEW whose start date matches.
- If not found, we look for an agreement with the same MRR or ARR whose start date matches.
If a match is made using options 2 through 4, the contract ID from the new data source is saved in Skalin to simplify future matching.