RevenueUpdated
Contracts and retainers
Set up a retainer contract with a monthly or quarterly fee, included hours and an overage rate, and choose how its invoices are drafted and sent.
A contract records what a client agreed to pay you over time: a fee each period, the hours that fee includes, and the rate for hours over that. Spodus bills from it, so you don't retype the fee every month.
Before you start
- Contracts belong to the Contracts & retainers module. An admin turns it on in Settings > Data model. See Turn modules on and off.
Create a contract
- Go to Revenue > Contracts and click New contract.
- Fill in the Name and the client's Company.
- Set the Starts and Ends dates. With no end date, it runs until cancelled.
- Set the Billing period: Monthly, Quarterly or Whole term.
- Set the Fee per period, the Included hours per period and the Overage rate for each extra hour.
- Set the Status to Active when the contract is in force.
Accepting a quote with monthly, quarterly or yearly lines makes an active contract on its own. If an accepted quote with recurring lines has no contract yet, click Create contract on it. Choose how often it Bills, the fee, the included hours and the overage rate, then click Create contract.
Things to know
- A contract's statuses are Draft, Awaiting signature, Active, Expired and Cancelled. Only Active contracts are billed.
- Type can be Hours, Deliverables or Fixed. Rollover decides what happens to unused hours: None, Capped or Full.
- Billable hours logged on the contract's project count against the included hours. Hours over the allowance are billed at the overage rate after the period ends.
- With no fee, the contract is time and materials: every billable hour is invoiced at its rate.
How a contract is billed
- With a billing day: once an admin picks one in Revenue settings, every Active contract's fee goes on the client's draft invoice that day, with last period's overage. Drafts wait for review. A company with Auto-send invoices ticked gets its draft emailed.
- Without a billing day: tick Auto-invoice on the contract to have a draft fee invoice made each period. Tick Auto-send to email it on its own.
- By hand: on the contract's page, under Billing, click Invoice the fee.
Auto-invoice contracts depend on your plan: none on Free, up to 25 on Starter and up to 250 on Growth.
Track the contract
The contract's page shows its terms under Billing, and This period with the fee, overage billed, cost and margin. Its tabs include Periods, Invoices and Change quotes.