Purchase contracts overview
You can maintain purchase contracts with outside vendors.
On the contract, you can specify items or services provided and their
costs, shipping and handling, expected delivery times, financial terms,
and vendor information.
Blanket contracts
A blanket (volume) contract is an agreement to spend a predetermined amount with a specified vendor over a period of time. This type of contract can also list items or services that the vendor will provide.
Release costs for blanket contracts
In the Purchase Contracts application, you can view the release costs associated with a blanket contract. The summary includes all planned and committed costs against a blanket contract.
Price contracts
A price contract is a type of purchase contract. You use a price contract to specify that items or services purchased from a vendor over a period time are provided at an agreed-upon price.
Associated purchase contracts
You can use an approved master contract to create associated purchase contracts for the same vendor. The master contract contains vendor information and defines terms and conditions for transactions with the vendor. The associated contract contains the identifier of the master contract and the current revision number, if applicable.
Release purchase orders
In the Purchase Contracts application, you can create a release purchase order that has all the properties, information, and terms and conditions of an existing contract. The cost of each release purchase order is tracked against the maximum release amount listed on the contract.
Terms and conditions for purchase contracts
You can associate terms and conditions with a purchase contract. These terms can contain information such as liability concerns, shipping and handling details, or delivery time expectations.
Contract statuses
Contract records have a status to indicate where the record is in a contract life cycle. Because contract records have statuses, you can create Workflow processes for contracts to manage approvals, expirations, renewals, and so forth. When you create a new contract, the Status field is set to DRAFT.