Generate contracts from plans

A plan is the general structure on which a contract is based. It can be understood like a template that consists of two parts:

The terms and billing conditions (frame parameters) and
the so called options (what products will be billed).

Make sure you have created the plan(s) you need to generate the contract from. If you haven't created a plan yet, learn how to do it and how to add a customer as well.

To create a new contract, navigate to: Billing > Contracts > Contract Overview

Click the „+ Add“ button in the top left corner of the contract overview page to start the creation process. An overlay opens.

Step 1: Select the plan

The overlay leads you through the contract creation process. In the first step, select the plan from which you want to generate the contract from. The plan overview lists all your existing plans. Depending on how many plans you have stored in your Nitrobox account, use the filter function to find the required plan more quickly. Click on the "Select" button at the end of the respective plan entry to select the plan you want to use.

Step 2: Select the customer

Next, select the customer for whom you want to create the contract from the customer overview. Again, the filter function can help you to assign the correct customer more quickly. Click on the "Select" button at the end of the respective customer entry to assign the correct customer.

The correct customer is not listed? Learn how to create a customer.

Step 3: Add contract details

Now, you are on the summary page, where you can see the contract details and options in the upper section of the page.

Further down you can add more contract details:

Contract number
Assign a contract number which is a unique reference that will help you find the contract more easily.

Country
Select the country from the drop-down menu. It serves as the service country for recurring and one-time options. Note: The drop-down list contains only the countries you have defined in the plan option, because the selected country will determine which price will be used for the contract.

Start date
Enter the start date of the contract. This date specifies when you start providing the contractual service to your customer. The invoicing also starts on this date.

End date
Enter the end date of the contract, if you already know when the contract will end. For automatic renewals, this field should be left blank.

Step 4: Add payment details

Now, select how payments should be handled for all transactions that are related to this contract.

You can enable the "Automatic payment collection" option and select a customer payment account to specify from which account Nitrobox should collect payments incurred for invoices created for this contract.

If the toggle switch is left off, no automatic payment collection will take place through Nitrobox. In this case, you can still select which channel to expect the payment through (e.g. so it can be printed on the invoice PDFs).

You can also add additional properties to the contract that will carry over to the invoice, reports, etc.

Click the "Save" button to add the contract or "Discard" to cancel the action. If you saved the contract, it will be listed in the contract overview.

Addition: Add a contract via the customer overview

It is also possible to create a new contract via the customer overview. If you prefer this generation method, go to: Billing > Customers > Customer Overview

Select the respective customer entry for which you want to generate the contract. Depending on how many customers you have stored in your Nitrobox account, use the filter function to find the required customer entry more quickly.

Click on the "Actions" button at the end of the required entry and select "Add contract". Then follow the description of Step 1, Step 3 and Step 4.