Contracts are used in UniPhi as a way of recognising the deliverable items and work that forms the basis of all project engagements. Contracts can be revenue based where your client will pay you a fee, or cost based where you will make payments to your suppliers.
UniPhi also uses documents as contracts. Using a contract document template allows you to import the details that you have selected when defining the type of contract you are establishing, and the deliverables items that are included. A contract and its associated financials are only classed as “committed” once the contract document has been signed off. Prior to sign off the financials will be classes as pending values.
Creating a New Contract
1. Filter for the project you wish to work on from the Projects filter
2. Go to the Contracts module and click on the contract button and select the type as a cost contract
The following items are compulsory on the contract form to enable the contract to be created:
Type used to select if the contract is a Cost or Revenue contract.
Contract Name – the name or description of your contract.
Supplier – this is the contact person at the organisation who is providing the products or services.
· If the contract is a cost contract then the supplier list comes from all available external resources in UniPhi. It is a searchable field.
3. Select Save once you have added in the compulsory fields above and this take you into the body of the form for deliverable creation.
The following are optional fields for the contract creation stage:
Status – The status reflects on the stage a contract is at.
· Pre-award or pre-sign-off a contract status can be set to Pending.
· If the client accepts the contract, it is moved to an Active contract status.
· Once the work is complete it becomes Expired.
· If the contract isn’t awarded then it is Cancelled.
Cost codes – Chart of Account codes that each deliverable is applied against for cost reporting purposes.
· This is how the contracts module integrates with the Costs module.
· The Costs module displays consolidated figures for all contracts on a project as well as for all projects in a program or portfolio. These figures are derived from the codes allocated to deliverables and variations in the Contracts module.
Principal – The principal is the organisation that will be liable for payment of the resulting contract services.
Care of – used if someone else is responsible for approving invoices for payment and hence need to be addressed to this person/company.
Awarded – Date the contract is won / approved and moved to Active. This can be a forecast date which will be useful for forecasting purpose.
Commencement Date – the date the contract will start (if known) or started as per the contract document. This can be used to drive the deliverables schedule. Changing the commencement date changes all the deliverables by the same difference in the change. For example, push out the commencement date by one week and all start and end dates in the contract are pushed out by one week.
Practical Completion - Expected date when project will enter defects liability. (As lawyers can’t decide what this term means we leave it to you to decide). If not a construction job then this is the date that all deliverables will be completed.
Standard – The contract standard drop down displays standard Australian contracts. The selected value allows you to nominate the Australian Standard or General Condition contract that will be used to administer the project. This is purely for communication purposes so that others will know what type of contract you are administering. Your administrators can add in additional contracts if they are not displayed in the list.
Unit – This box allows for a default unit for time and material type deliverables. If the contract deliverables list is long but the units are the same (e.g. days or hours) then typing in a default value here will result in each new line will have “days” or “hours”
Currency - this represents the currency the contract will be quoted and awarded in. UniPhi will convert the currency if it is different to the project currency when displaying the values in the costs Module.
Tax – defaults to GST but can be set to None if appropriate.
Payment Terms – defaults to 30 Days but can be set to a range of payment terms to reflect the contract terms.
Once the contract is saved it will now appear with additional details.
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