Terms records in the Contracts app

A term record in the Contracts app is one block of terms-and-conditions text that you keep on file for your service agreements, such as a payment clause, a warranty exclusion or a renewal condition. You classify each block by terms type, line of business and contract duration, and give it a sequence number so that the blocks read in a fixed order. The library sits next to your contracts, contract lines, SLAs and planned maintenance visits.

Overview

Each term record holds a name, a terms type, a sequence number, a line of business (LOB), a contract duration, the terms text in Description, and three switches: Show item Breakup, Show Scope and Is Template. You find the records under Contracts → Terms, and in the terms list on the Terms & SLAs tab of every contract.

A term record is reference text. It is not attached to any contract and nothing in xMatix reads it. No contract, contract line, quotation or invoice pulls a term in, and no printed document uses the switches as shipped. You keep the wording here so that everyone drafting an agreement copies the same agreed text.

When to use it

• Your agreements reuse a set of standard clauses, and you want one approved version of each that staff can look up.
• The wording differs by line of business or by contract length, for example a 12-month and a 24-month version of the renewal clause.
• You want to see in one list which clauses exist, which are your standard boilerplate, and in what order they belong in an agreement.

If you need the terms of one specific agreement on the contract itself, use the contract's Special Terms field on its Signature tab instead. See Managing contract records.

How xMatix handles it

• A plain register. A term record is saved exactly as you enter it. There is no automatic numbering, no status, no approval step and no validation beyond the required Name. No background job reads term records.
• Not linked to contracts. A term has no Contract field, and a contract has no Term field. The terms list on a contract's Terms & SLAs tab shows the whole terms library, the same rows on every contract, not the terms of the open agreement.
• Is Template is a label for people. Ticking Is Template marks a block as standard boilerplate so you can filter and sort on it. xMatix does not copy template terms into new contracts.
• The switches do nothing by themselves. Show item Breakup and Show Scope are stored with the record. No shipped form, print or document reads them; they only take effect if your organization builds a document that uses them.
• Choices, not numbers. Contract Duration is a picklist (6 months, 12 months, 24 months as shipped). It describes the agreements a block is meant for; xMatix does not compare it with any contract's dates.
• Delete goes to the Recycle Bin. A deleted term leaves lists and reports and can be restored from the Recycle Bin until its purge date. See Delete, recycle bin, archive and restore.

Prerequisites

• Access to the Contracts app. As shipped, the Standard User, Sales Executive, Sales Manager and System Administrator profiles open it.
• Access to term records in your security profile. See Permissions.

Procedure

Step 1 — Open the terms list

Open the Contracts app and select Terms in the app's menu. The All terms list shows each record's Name, Terms Type, LOB, Sequence number, Created By, Created Date, Modified By and Modified Date. Sort by Sequence number to read the blocks in their intended order, and use the list filters to narrow by terms type or line of business.

You can also reach the library from any contract: open the contract and select the Terms & SLAs tab. The terms list there shows every term record in your organization, not only those of that contract.

Step 2 — Create a term record

1. Select New on the list (or New above the terms list on a contract's Terms & SLAs tab).
2. Enter a Name that says what the clause is, for example Payment within 30 days. Name is required.
3. Choose the Terms Type (as shipped, Contract Terms).
4. Enter a Sequence number: the position of this block among your terms, for example 10, 20, 30. Leaving gaps lets you slot a new clause in later without renumbering.
5. Choose the LOB and the Contract Duration the wording is meant for. Leave them empty if the block applies to every line of business or every term length.
6. Type or paste the terms text into Description.
7. Under Display Options, tick Is Template if this is a standard block you reuse. Tick Show item Breakup or Show Scope only if your organization's documents use them.
8. Save.

The record opens on its own page. It has no status; it is in use as soon as it is saved.

Step 3 — Read a term record

The record page shows three sections:

• Key Information — Name, Terms Type, Sequence number, LOB, Contract Duration and Description.
• System Information — the switches Show item Breakup, Show Scope and Is Template.
• System Information (second section) — Created By, Created Date, Modified By and Modified Date.

The record page header offers Edit and Delete.

Step 4 — Use a term in an agreement

Because terms are not linked to contracts, you use them by copying:

1. Open Contracts → Terms, or the Terms & SLAs tab of the contract you are drafting.
2. Find the blocks for the agreement: filter by LOB and Terms Type, and sort by Sequence number.
3. Open each block and copy its Description into your agreement document. For a clause that differs for this customer only, write it in the contract's Special Terms field instead of changing the library.

Step 5 — Change a term record

On the record page, select Edit in the header. The fields become editable in place; change them and save. From a list, use the row's Edit action instead.

A change affects only this term record. Contracts already drafted keep the wording that was copied into them, because nothing refers to the record.

Step 6 — Retire or delete a term record

There is no Active switch on a term record. To stop using a clause, either delete it, or keep it for history: untick Is Template and mark it in Name, for example by adding (withdrawn).

To delete, select Delete in the record header, or the row's Delete action in a list, and confirm. The record goes to the Recycle Bin.

Fields

The New and Edit form shows the fields in this order, with the three switches in a Display Options section.

The term entity also has a Show Summary field. It is not on any shipped form or list, and nothing reads it.

All the picklists above can be changed by your administrator, so the values in your organization may differ from the shipped ones.

Business rules

• Name is the only required field. Every other field may be left empty.
• No numbering setting, status, validation, business rule or automation ships for term records.
• Saving, changing or deleting a term record changes nothing else: no contract, contract line, SLA, PM task, quotation or invoice reads it.
• Is Template, Show item Breakup and Show Scope have no built-in effect.

Example

A service company that maintains laboratory instruments keeps its standard clauses as term records, all with Terms Type Contract Terms, LOB Scientific Services and Is Template ticked:

1. Scope of service — Sequence number 10: "Preventive maintenance visits as listed in the contract schedule, including calibration of the covered instruments."
2. Exclusions — Sequence number 20: "Consumables, accessories and damage caused by misuse are not covered."
3. Payment — Sequence number 30: "Contract value is payable in advance within 30 days of the invoice date."
4. Renewal (12 months) — Sequence number 40, Contract Duration 12 months: "The contract may be renewed for a further 12 months at the rates then in force."
5. Renewal (24 months) — Sequence number 40, Contract Duration 24 months: "The contract may be renewed for a further 24 months; rates are reviewed after the first year."

When a contract coordinator drafts a two-year agreement for a research institute, they open the contract's Terms & SLAs tab, sort the terms list by Sequence number, and copy blocks 10, 20, 30 and the 24-month renewal clause into the agreement. The institute asks for 45-day payment, so the coordinator writes "Payment within 45 days of invoice" in the contract's Special Terms and leaves the library unchanged.

Training

Practice exercise

In a sandbox organization:

1. Open Contracts → Terms and create a term named Training — Warranty exclusion with Terms Type Contract Terms, Sequence number 90, LOB Automobile Services, Contract Duration 12 months, a sentence of your own in Description, and Is Template ticked.
2. Open any two contracts and select the Terms & SLAs tab on each.
3. Edit the term and change Sequence number to 15.
4. Delete the term.

Expected result: after step 1 the term appears in the All terms list. In step 2 it appears in the terms list of both contracts, not just one. After step 3 the list sorted by Sequence number shows it near the top. After step 4 it no longer appears in the list and can be found in the Recycle Bin.

Quick reference

• Contracts → Terms holds the library of standard terms text.
• Name is required; nothing is numbered automatically.
• The wording goes in Description; Sequence number sets the reading order.
• Terms are not linked to contracts — copy them into the agreement.
• The Terms & SLAs tab on a contract shows every term, not the contract's own.
• Is Template, Show item Breakup and Show Scope do nothing on their own.
• Customer-specific wording goes in the contract's Special Terms.
• Edit and Delete are in the record header; Delete sends the record to the Recycle Bin.

Permissions

Access is set per security profile. In the shipped profiles:

Other shipped profiles have no access to term records. The New, Edit and Delete buttons follow the profile's create, edit and delete access to the term entity, so a user without that access does not see the button. To change any of this, edit the profile under Setup → Access Control → Profiles (the Entity Permissions tab); see Security profiles.

Clone is granted to the System Administrator, Standard User and Sales Executive profiles, but it is not on the shipped term record page, so no one sees it until an administrator adds it to the page header.

Configuration

Term records need no setup to use. An administrator can tailor them:

• Picklist values. Terms Type, LOB and Contract Duration are picklists. Add, rename or switch off values under Setup → Design Studio → Entities: open the Terms entity, then the field's Manage PickList Values. See The data model. Changing a value's label does not change records already saved with the old value. Add a Terms Type value for each family of clauses you keep (for example warranty, payment, renewal) so the list can be filtered by it.
• Forms and list. The shipped forms are Create Terms, View Terms and Preview Terms, and the list view is All terms. Add fields (such as Is Template or Contract Duration as list columns) or a Clone button in the layout designer and view settings. See Customizing xMatix.
• Linking terms to contracts. To tie blocks to an agreement, add a lookup field (for example a Contract lookup on Terms) and then filter the terms list on the contract page by it. Without such a field the list stays unfiltered.
• Using the switches. Show item Breakup, Show Scope and Show Summary only take effect in a document or print template that your organization builds to read them. No shipped template does.
• Numbering. No document numbering setting ships for term records. An administrator can add one if names should follow a series. See Document numbering.
• App placement. As shipped, Terms is the third item in the Contracts app's menu, after Contracts and Contract Lines. See Apps, entities and records.
• Mobile. The Terms entity has a mobile create form, but the Contracts app is not part of any shipped field app, so field users don't see term records until an administrator adds them to a mobile app.

Common problems

The terms list on a contract shows terms that have nothing to do with it

The Terms & SLAs tab lists the whole terms library, because term records have no link to a contract. Filter by LOB, Terms Type or Contract Duration to find the blocks that fit the agreement. To show only a contract's own terms, an administrator adds a lookup between the two and filters the list by it (see Configuration).

I ticked Is Template, but new contracts don't get the term

That is expected. Is Template only marks a block as standard; xMatix never copies terms into a contract. Copy the Description into the agreement yourself.

I changed a term, but an existing agreement still shows the old wording

Nothing refers to a term record, so a change does not reach contracts or documents that already carry the copied text. Update the wording in those agreements, or in the contract's Special Terms, by hand.

Show Scope or Show item Breakup has no effect on my printout

No shipped document reads these switches. They only work in a document template your organization builds to use them. Ask your administrator.

I can't find Terms in the Contracts app, or there is no New button

Your security profile does not give access to term records or to the Contracts app (as shipped, only the System Administrator, Standard User, Sales Manager and Sales Executive profiles have it). Ask your administrator to add it.

I can't find a Clone button

Clone is not on the shipped term record page. Create a new record and paste the text, or ask your administrator to add Clone to the page header.

Common questions

Where do I write terms that apply to only one contract?

Use the contract's Special Terms field on its Signature tab. The terms library is for wording you reuse across agreements; a term record cannot be tied to one contract without an administrator adding a link field first. Keeping one-off wording on the contract also means the library stays clean: when someone filters the terms list by line of business or contract duration, they see only standard clauses. If a one-off clause turns out to be needed again, create a term record for it and tick Is Template.

Does the sequence number print the terms in order?

Not by itself. Sequence number is a whole number you set so that the list can be sorted into reading order; no shipped document prints term records. Sort the All terms list (or the terms list on a contract) by Sequence number and copy the blocks in that order. Leave gaps of ten between numbers so you can insert a new clause later without editing the others. xMatix does not check for duplicate numbers, so two blocks with the same number, such as two renewal clauses for different durations, are allowed.

What is the difference between a term record and the contract's Contract Terms (Months) field?

They are unrelated. A term record is a block of terms text in the library. Contract Terms (Months) on the contract form is meant for the length of the agreement, but its value is not saved; record the length through the contract's start and end dates. A term record's Contract Duration only says which agreement length a block of wording is meant for. See Managing contract records.

Related topics

• Contract records in xMatix
• Managing contract records
• SLA records
• Contract lines
• Terms entity reference
• Security profiles
• Contract — entity reference