Introduction to contracts
What are Autotask contracts?
Autotask contracts are optional billing arrangements that provide flexibility in setting labor rates, billing methods, and managing prepayments for services. They automate the billing process in all scenarios where billing for labor using your standard rates does not apply.
If there is no contract in place, Autotask uses the time tracked by your resources, the default labor rates set up by your Autotask Administrator in 
> Admin > Features & Settings > Finance, Accounting & Invoicing > Roles, and the multipliers configured for your work types.
Business cases and contract types
Autotask includes six contract types that offer different ways to generate revenue. You can use them to:
- bill a fixed monthly charge based on the number of customer contacts or devices Your Autotask instance may be configured to use one of the following terms instead: Asset, Configuration Item, Installed Asset, Installed Product. you support
- bill for the time you spend fixing an issue
- Bill for reaching an objective like closing a ticket or reaching a project milestone
- bill for predefined services and service bundles you have set up
You can set up multiple contracts for one customer, each with different business logic and different billing rates.
For more about business cases and contract types, refer to Business cases and contract types.
Determining who receives the bill
By default, the organization Your Autotask instance may be configured to use one of the following terms instead: Account, Business Unit, Client Company, Customer, Site. selected on the contract is invoiced for all billing items that fall under the contract. However, contracts can be used to direct billing for labor and charges to a third party:
- If the organization is the sub-organization Previously: Subsidiary. Your Autotask instance may be configured to use one of the following terms instead: Sub-Account, Sub-Business Unit, Sub-Client, Sub-Company, Sub-Customer, Sub-Site. of a parent organization Your Autotask instance may be configured to use one of the following terms instead: Headquarters, Parent Account, Parent Client, Parent Company, Parent Customer., the contracts set up for it can be applied to the sub-organization. This will direct all billing for the labor to the parent organization.
- If there is no relationship between two businesses, but you want to direct billing to a third party, you can use a contract to specify a Billing Organization. Use this feature if you need to bill one business (the Billing Organization) for work done for another business (the End Client organization).
Refer to Using contracts to bill another organization.
Determining how labor is approved and posted
Contracts control your financial approval process by allowing you to specify who reviews each time entry before it gets posted to the customer account. Refer to Billing settings for approving labor.
Applying contracts
Since contracts determine billing, understanding how contracts are selected and applied is crucial. Contracts can be selected manually, or applied automatically. In the end, it is the contract on the time entry that determines how an item will be billed.
- For projects, the contract that applies to all tasks and issues in the project is selected manually. But users with the required permissions can modify the contract on task and issue time entries.
- For tickets, contracts can also be selected manually, and users with the required permissions can modify the contract on ticket time entries.
Refer to How contracts are applied.
