The Contract Terms page is the page from which you perform most of the operations related to the contract terms, that is, the sections, clauses, and deliverables, in a business document.
Basically, the Contract Terms page is the page that displays a summary list of the contract terms for a business document.
You reach the Contract Terms page when you choose to author, edit or revise contract terms for your business document.
This section consists of the following topics:
The Contract Terms page contains the following:
Deliverables tab: For procurement contracts, the Contract Terms page also contains the Deliverables tab.
Actions: You can perform a variety of operations, by selecting from the Actions list of values and clicking Go. The available actions are based on the status of Contract Source field.
The general details include the following:
Authoring Party
Note: The Authoring Party field does not appear for all business document types; it appears in those business documents where the author of the contract terms can be an external party.
Contract Source
Contract Template
Operations that you can perform at the contract level are represented in the general contract details either as buttons, such as Use Contract Expert, or as explicit entries in the Actions list of values.
Authoring Party
This field indicates which party authored the contract terms. It has the following possible values:
Internal: Indicates that an internal party authored the contract terms.
Customer or Supplier: Indicates that an external party authored the contract terms.
Note: The external party for Buy-side documents, such as procurement and purchasing contracts, is Supplier; for Sell-side documents, such as sales contracts, the external party is Customer.
None: Indicates that nobody has authored the contract terms, that is, there are no contract terms on the business document.
Contract Source
This field indicates how the contract terms are represented in the system.
It has the following possible values:
No Terms: Indicates that no contract terms exist on the business document yet.
Structured Terms: Indicates that the structured clauses, as seen on the Clauses tab of the Contract Terms page, represent the clauses of the contract. With this option, you must also select a value for the Contract Template field.
Initially, you specify this by selecting a value in the Contract Template field and clicking Apply Template (see Applying Contract Templates). Subsequently, you can change the contract template through the Update Contract Details action.
Attached Document: Indicates that the clauses of the contract appear in an attached document, usually a Microsoft Word document.
Initially, you click Update Contract Details to attach (upload) the document. Subsequently, you can attach either another document or another version of the original document through the Update Contract Details action.
You must have the non-standard authoring privilege to use any Attached Document feature, that is, to update Contract Source to Attached Document and to attach primary contract documents. See Oracle Contracts Function Security.
Note: Your choice of Contract Source defines what is displayed only in the Clauses tab. For example, with procurement contracts, you will continue to see and use deliverables in the Deliverables tab, even if the Contract Source is Attached Document.
Contract Template
This field specifies the contract template that is associated with the business document.
If Contract Source=Structured Terms, you must select a contract template from the approved contract templates in the Contract Terms Library.
If Contract Source=Attached Document, you may have no value for the Contract Template field, meaning that no structured terms exist. If a value exists in the Contract Template field, this indicates that you had previously specified a Contract Source of Structured Terms for the business document, but subsequently switched to an attached document representation of the terms.
The layout of the Clauses tab depends on the value of the Contract Source field.
Clauses Tab (Contract Source=Attached Document)
Note: You must have the non-standard authoring privilege to use the Attached Document feature, that is, to update Contract Source to Attached Document and to attach primary contract documents. See Oracle Contracts Function Security.
When Contract Source=Attached Document, the Clauses tab contains a message indicating that the contract terms are supplied in an attached document, and a link to the attached document.
The number of actions you can perform is limited. In particular, the actions related to the editing of sections and clauses are not available, since you will be editing offline in Microsoft Word or some other application.
Clauses Tab (Contract Source=Structured Terms)
When Contract Source=Structured Terms, the main part of the Clauses tab displays the sections and clauses in the business document.
In the Clauses tab, you can perform the following general operations:
Expand or collapse the results to display full details or an outline of the sections and clauses.
Note: By default, the Clauses tab of the Contract Terms page will always display only the first level information, that is, the sections. If you wish to view clauses within sections, use the Expand All feature.
Focus on one section and the clauses in that section; you can click the Contract Terms link above the search results to return to the display of all sections.
Click the Show link for a clause to display clause and instruction text; click Hide to hide the text fields.
If the contract template for the business document is Contract Expert enabled, start Contract Expert to generate clauses in the business document.
The Clauses tab also displays the following columns:
Non-Standard: A check mark in this column indicates that the contract clause has been modified from the original version in the Library, or was added manually into the business document. For more information, please see: Create Non-Standard Clauses.
Mandatory: Clauses that are marked as Mandatory cannot be deleted, except with special privileges - see Oracle Contracts Function Security.
Contract Expert: Clauses that have been added as a result of using the Contract Expert feature.
Select Alternate: A plus (+) sign indicates that the clause has alternates. Click the plus sign, to view and select an alternate clause.
Update: Click the Update icon if you want to make any changes to a clause.
Delete: Click the Delete icon if you want to remove a clause. You cannot delete clauses that are marked as Mandatory, except with special privileges - see Oracle Contracts Function Security.
In the Clauses tab (Contract Source=Structured Terms), you perform all the operations dealing with sections and clauses in a business document. The main operations are:
The Deliverables tab displays the deliverables in the business document.
In the Deliverables tab, you perform all the operations dealing with deliverables that are related to a business document. The main operations are:
You can perform the following operations, by selecting from the Actions list of values and clicking Go:
Update Contract Details: Select this action to open the Update Contract Details page and update the information in Contract Administrator, and Legal Contact, Authoring Party, Contract Source, and Contract Template fields. For more information, see Updating Contract Details of a Business Document.
Upload Contract: Select this action to open the Upload Contract page and load offline documents. For more information, see Uploading Offline Documents.
Download Contract: Select this action to open the Download Contract page. For more information, see Generating Microsoft Word Documents of Structured Terms.
Lock Contract: You can lock the contract to prevent any changes to the contract. The option to lock the structured terms is only available if the contract was not already locked either for editing or for review.
Unlock Contract: If the contract is locked and you want to make it available for update, select the Unlock Contract action from the list of values.
Update Variable Values: You can update the variable values if the contract source of a business document is structured terms. For more information see, Updating Variable Values .
Validate: In general, validation of contract terms only applies to structured terms. For more information, see Validating Contract Terms in a Business Document.
Preview Contract: You can use the Preview option to generate a PDF file and download it to your desktop for printing. For more information, see Previewing Contracts.
Manage Contract Documents: You can use the Manage Contract Document page to view all the existing contract documents for a business document or add contract documents to a business document. For more information, see Managing Contract Documents.
Check for Clause Updates: Use the Check for Clause Updates function to view the list of clauses that have newer versions in the Library, and then select the applicable ones to apply to the contract terms. For more information, see Checking for Clause Updates.
Remove Terms: You can use the Remove Terms function to you can choose to remove all the clauses and sections that are in a business document. For more information, see Removing Terms.
Review Contract Deviations: Use the Review Contract Deviations function to generate the Deviations report manually. For more information, see the About Deviations Report section.
Contract Expert Summary: Use the Contract Expert Summary function to view the contract expert responses. For more information, see Viewing Contract Expert Summary.