Leaving a Contract Open
If you leave a contract open upon renewal, the result is having a contract that is open multiple times. You can generate tasks for the renewed contract while holding the old contract open until all costs have been posted. Meanwhile, both the contract that was left open and the renewed contract use the same contract number.
To ensure that you can easily distinguish between the two, all contract lookup windows display the contract start and end dates. The lookup button next to any Contract Number field allows you to open the lookup window, for example, when creating a service call, posting MC service call costs, or opening a contract for viewing.
The lookup window also opens automatically when you manually enter a Contract Number, and the contract is open multiple times. This allows you to view both open contracts and select the correct contract based on the start and end dates. In addition, when a contract is open multiple times, the contract that is being held open is indicated with an "Expiring" marker. On the Maintenance Contract or Master Contract window, this marker is located next to the Expiration Date field. When viewing the expiring contract on the Maintenance Contract window, the Renew button is disabled.
When viewing the renewed contract on the Maintenance Contract window, the Close button is disabled if the old contract is still being held open. You cannot close a renewed contract until the previous contract is closed.
About Closing an Expired Contract That Has Been Renewed
Run the contract close process when you are finished with a contract that was left open when it was renewed. The contract should be entirely billed and recognized for revenue. The contract close process determines if the contract is open for multiple date ranges; if so, the previous year amounts and total-to-date amounts are updated to keep the contract amounts accurate.
When this expired contract is finally closed, the contract close process will look for the next future contract sequence number and will update the Contract Life-to-date on that contract, accordingly. Since the contract number can remain the same when the contract is renewed, the contract sequence number is incremented by 1. This allows us to uniquely identify each contract and allows us to calculate the next future contract sequence number to evaluate for update purposes.
