# Contract Management
**URL:** https://discuss.tryton.org/t/contract-management/165
**Category:** Feature
**Tags:** purchasing, sales
**Created:** [July 18, 2016, 7:41am UTC](https://discuss.tryton.org/t/contract-management/165 "2016-07-18T07:41:55Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@pokoli](https://discuss.tryton.org/u/pokoli)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2016, 7:41am UTC](https://discuss.tryton.org/t/contract-management/165/1 "2016-07-18T07:41:55Z")
A [Contract](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract) is a document which represents the agreement between two (or more) parties. This agreements have different clauses that are represented as contract terms.
In order to represent a contract, we must know its related party, an internal code, a external reference, the agreement date and a list of clauses which will be a text and a sequence to order them.
The contract can be in one of the following states:
- Draft
- Proposal
- Accepted
- Running
- Finished
- Canceled
Implementation:
> **[RFC: Contract module (#5760) · Issues · Tryton / Tryton · GitLab](https://foss.heptapod.net/tryton/tryton/-/issues/5760)**
>
> As discussed in https://discuss.tryton.org/t/contract-management/165 here is review32381002 with the proposed implementation.
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### Author:  [@SISalp](https://discuss.tryton.org/u/SISalp)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2016, 9:12am UTC](https://discuss.tryton.org/t/contract-management/165/2 "2016-07-18T09:12:10Z")
I need such a function.
May I suggest also
A contract is made from a contract template
A contract has some particular conditions
A contract can be modified while already Running
A contract can be suspended and reactivated.
A contract can be automatically renewed or in deadline alert for renewal.
doe’s it make sens ?
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### Author:  [@pokoli](https://discuss.tryton.org/u/pokoli)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2016, 9:32am UTC](https://discuss.tryton.org/t/contract-management/165/3 "2016-07-18T09:32:02Z")
[quote="SISalp, post:2, topic:165]
I need such a function.
May I suggest also
A contract is made from a contract template
[/quote]
I also thought about it, as you normally have some types of contracts, but this can be achieved by using a draft contract as template and duplicating it. Also it can be implemented as a separate module if you have more complex templating requirements.
> [@SISalp](#):
>
> A contract has some particular conditions
IIUC particular conditions → some extra term lines.
[quote="SISalp, post:2, topic:165]
A contract can be modified while already Running
A contract can be suspended and reactivated.
[/quote]
Why not using a new contract? Which kinds of modifications do you need? For example, i don’t think we should allow terms modification while running.
[quote="SISalp, post:2, topic:165]
A contract can be automatically renewed or in deadline alert for renewal.
[/quote]
I thinks this can be implemented by a third party module, as we don’t talk about start/end dates of contract in base modules. BTW, normally contractas are autorenewed automatically, so I don’t know if it makes much sense to include start/end date fields
P.S: Thanks for your comments!
---
### Author:  [@SISalp](https://discuss.tryton.org/u/SISalp)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2016, 10:39am UTC](https://discuss.tryton.org/t/contract-management/165/4 "2016-07-18T10:39:17Z")
may be we have two options
- start with a subset of what contract management is in a simplified design then add features as custom
- start with universal contract management concepts in a standardized design and then add specific custom behaviors.
I favour the second because first one reminds me Odoo too much, but this is an open discussion and I will listen everybody and probably the right thing to do is in-between the two options.
On the different contracts I deal with (either because I’m vendor or customer) I see many concepts that Tryton would be good at.
Examples
in telephony, when I agree on new pricing it becomes effective but I keep my contract and options.
in my insurance, I can declare a new driver of my car, it is an amendment, not a new contract.
A service provider proposed to suspend the service during my holidays
when a customer complains, I can offer him to extend the duration of the contract for free as a compensation
If we choose option 1, then probably we will have several contract modules to cover different cases.
If we could find a generic, basic way to implement generic case, then many kinds of contract management could be built over it.
Any opinion ?
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### Author:  [@ced](https://discuss.tryton.org/u/ced)
#### Post date: [July 20, 2016, 10:17am UTC](https://discuss.tryton.org/t/contract-management/165/5 "2016-07-20T10:17:50Z")
For me, an important design feature is that contract lines often need to refer to other lines.
For this, I think a good design will be that the line will be just link to template line which contain the text with a simple template language that render the other line paragraph number.
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### Author:  [@pokoli](https://discuss.tryton.org/u/pokoli)
#### Post date: [July 20, 2016, 11:13am UTC](https://discuss.tryton.org/t/contract-management/165/6 "2016-07-20T11:13:05Z")
> [@ced](#):
>
> For me, an important design feature is that contract lines often need to refer to other lines.
> For this, I think a good design will be that the line will be just link to template line which contain the text with a simple template language that render the other line paragraph number.
Great so we can also use the customer/copmany variable to be rendered on the clauses.
Just to clarify:
- Are you suggesting to add Contract Templates or only Lines templates?
- The link between lines and template lines **is required**. Isn’t it?
- Do you suggest to automatically numerate the paragraph (clauses) or what do you understand by paragraph number?
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### Author:  [@ced](https://discuss.tryton.org/u/ced)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2016, 8:49am UTC](https://discuss.tryton.org/t/contract-management/165/7 "2016-07-21T08:49:31Z")
> [@pokoli](#):
>
> Great so we can also use the customer/copmany variable to be rendered on the clauses.
Yes. Indeed I think each template line should define a list of dict keys that it uses. And on the contract, we use the all list of keys to fill a Dict field. Of course some common field will be _real_ fields like `date`, `company` etc.
> [@pokoli](#):
>
> - Are you suggesting to add Contract Templates or only Lines templates?
The main addition is the line templates but adding a contract template is the natural next step.
> [@pokoli](#):
>
> - The link between lines and template lines is required. Isn’t it?
I think it should. I do not think it is a good practice to write contract clause per contract. Normally, they should be verified by lawyers.
> [@pokoli](#):
>
> - Do you suggest to automatically numerate the paragraph (clauses) or what do you understand by paragraph number?
Yes I think we could automatically enumerate paragraph. And probably it will be good to use a tree structure (with some line being titles).
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### Author:  [@guillemNaN](https://discuss.tryton.org/u/guillemNaN)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2016, 7:20am UTC](https://discuss.tryton.org/t/contract-management/165/8 "2016-07-25T07:20:26Z")
Provably you can take some ideas from NaN’s contract module: [https://bitbucket.org/nantic/trytond-contract](https://bitbucket.org/nantic/trytond-contract)
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### Author:  [@pokoli](https://discuss.tryton.org/u/pokoli)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2016, 7:14am UTC](https://discuss.tryton.org/t/contract-management/165/9 "2016-08-02T07:14:12Z")
Here is the proposed implementation:
[https://bugs.tryton.org/issue5760](https://bugs.tryton.org/issue5760)
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### Author:  [@2cadz](https://discuss.tryton.org/u/2cadz)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2020, 10:51am UTC](https://discuss.tryton.org/t/contract-management/165/10 "2020-07-10T10:51:24Z")
How do you see the interaction with sales? add a new type of product : ‘contract’?
how to materialize its delivery to the customer and therefore billing?
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### Author:  [@risto3](https://discuss.tryton.org/u/risto3)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2020, 3:18pm UTC](https://discuss.tryton.org/t/contract-management/165/11 "2020-07-11T15:18:26Z")
> [@pokoli](#):
>
> Why not using a new contract? Which kinds of modifications do you need? For example, i don’t think we should allow terms modification while running.
Amendments to current contracts are similar as to amendments to purchase/sales [contracts].
BTW: in any case, there needs to be means to create new lines as new clauses can be contracted in any amendment.