Contract Creation

VIDEO | Contract Creation

The InEight Contract application is used to house your contracts after they have been awarded, negotiated and executed. Within the tool you can manage all your supporting documents (e.g., vendor insurance, bonding documents, workers compensation, and all executed change orders). By having all your contracts in one spot, the Reports application within the InEight cloud platform will allow you to run reports to see what your total project is spending on buyout.

Within the InEight Contract module, you can create a contract in two different ways:

  • Convert a bid package to a contract
  • Create a contract from scratch using the Contracts page

Create a contract from bid package

The following steps walk you through how to convert a bid package to a contract when it is ready to be awarded. When the bid package is converted, it will initially be empty, ready for you to add pertinent information.

Creating a contract from a bid package does not create a live connection between the contract and the bid package. After a contract is created from a bid package, updates to one do not produce updates in the other.

Create a contract from bid package

Summary: Convert a bid package into a contract after the bid package is awarded, so you can use the information that already exists for the new contract without having to enter it again.

Considerations: You can convert a bid package that has not gone through the approval workflow; however, you cannot publish the purchase order for the contract until the bid package workflow is approved. Bid packages that require approval are not available in a contract for association from the Associate a bid package icon until they are fully approved.

  1. From the Contract > Bid packages page, select a bid package.

  2. Click the Convert to contract button located on the top-right portion of the bid package record. The Add contract or master agreement dialog box opens.

  3. Select a contract type from the Type drop-down list, and then enter or select values for all required fields. You can optionally enter values for nonrequired fields as needed.

  4. Click Add to add the contract. A new contract is created with an automatically assigned contract number. This number ultimately becomes the purchase order number when the PO is created. This PO or agreement number remains the same during the life span of the agreement

What's next: Sometimes your vendors might ask for a PO number to get material ordered or to start the process of supplying material.

Create a contract from scratch

During your project, you might identify a specific scope of work that you will need a contract for, however, due to the nature of the work you will not need to produce a bid package. For example, you may have rental or service agreements that are simple enough to set up the contract without a bid package, or perhaps your project is a small infrastructure project that doesn’t require any long-lead items that have a long buyout process. For instances like this, you will want to create a contract from scratch.

The following steps walk you through creating a contract from scratch.

Create a contract from scratch

Summary: Create a contract from scratch to start a contract from new information.

Considerations: When you create a contract from scratch it is not associated with a bid package.

  1. From the Contracts page, click the Add Contract icon. The Add contract dialog box opens.

  2. Complete the following fields:

    • Description
    • Type
    • Subtype (optional)
    • Effective Date
    • Vendor (optional)
    • Storage location
    • Scope (optional)

  3. Click Add. The Contract Header tab opens.

Contract tabs

Contract has the following Tabs which contain all the pertinent information for the contract. These tabs are located along the top of the Contract record page and from left to right as follows:

  • Header
  • Line Items
  • Schedule of values
  • Vendor Change Order Log
  • Back Charges
  • Payment Forms
  • Payment Progress
  • Supporting Documents
  • Workflow Assignments
  • Sync Log
  • Contract Closeout

You will need to use the arrows to scroll over to the next header.

If technical field assistant lines are added to the contract, an additional header tab will be created to house them.

The tabs are ordered based on how often are used; they do not reflect the order of a typical contract management workflow.

You might need to use the arrows to scroll through all the tabs.

The Contracts window also has the Download purchase order, Contract Totals, and Notes icons available on every tab.

Download purchase order

Click the Download purchase order icon to quickly download the default purchase order template for the contract type when you are in a contract. If you want to use a purchase order other than the default, you can use the Contract writer.

You can also download a purchase order directly from the Contract register. When you select a contract in the register, the Download purchase order icon is enabled.

The organization-level default purchase order is attached in contract approval emails.

Contract totals

Clicking the Contract Totals icon will display a slide out panel that has a breakdown of your contract’s totals.

Total tax

The total tax is estimated when you click Estimate Tax in the Vendor or Delivery address field on the header tab. Click the Information icon to see a break-down of the taxes. Taxes are calculated based on the tax types and their default percent listed in project settings. When the contract is published, tax information is updated from the purchase order response.

Manual adjustments

The Manual adjustments line lets you quickly see the total amount of updates to the contract that were made outside of a vendor change order.

Contract Invoices

The Contract invoices section shows the state of all contract invoices in the system to gain visibility into the processing of invoices. The section shows the amount and percentage of invoices in the contract that have been assigned or submitted and what is remaining. The section is color-coded as follows to give you a visual status of the contract invoices:

  • Orange = Invoices assigned to the contract but not assigned to a payment form
  • Yellow = Invoices assigned to a payment form in any status other than submitted
  • Green = Invoices that have been submitted
  • White = The contract total minus the submitted invoices

Click the Contract invoices link to go directly to the Payment Forms tab if your organization uses payment forms or the Payment Progress tab if your organization does not use payment forms.

Retained to date calculation

In the Contract summary push panel, the Retained to date field calculation is Actual retained + Remaining new retention value. This calculation considers what is already paid and new amounts even if the retention rate is changed. If you make any changes on any retention line item It will calculate only what is left on the line item.

Notes

You can click the Notes icon to view the Notes slide out panel, which displays the contract’s notes and supporting document notes. You can add notes in the bottom section, which will be stamped with the author, time and date. It is important to remember that these notes, once entered, become a part of the legal document and cannot be deleted.

Save and Start Approval

To submit a contract for approval, click Save and start approval. If you have set up group workflows, select the appropriate group for the contract. For example, if you are starting the approval process for Segment 1 of the project, select the Segment 1 group.