Audience: all users

The following diagram illustrates the core concepts relating to a contract.

Each contract is categorised by contract type. Common examples of contract types might be “Lease”, “Supply Agreement”, “Software Licence”, “Employment Contract”, "Statement of Work". The Power User is able to set up any number of contract types and give them any label they like.

All configuration options are defined per contract type and, as such, the contract type is always the first thing to be selected when a new contract is entered. The Power User defines what information must be entered for a given contract.
For more details, see Contract Types

Each Contract Type can support different Contract Statuses, determining the stage and lifecycle of a contract (e.g., Draft, Open, Closed, Cancelled).
Administrators can define custom statuses specific to each Contract Type to maintain consistent system behaviour (e.g., stopping reminders or closing milestones when the contract is closed).

A contract role defines the responsibility of a specific user towards the contract. Contract roles must be defined for email reminders to be sent.

There can be any number of contract roles defined for each contract type. Contract roles can be configured to be optional or mandatory.

A contract may belong to a single business unit or be shared across multiple business units. By default, a contract will be assigned to the same business unit as the contract type, although the user may change this value to any business unit that they have access to. Additional business units can also be assigned, allowing a contract to be shared without granting users access to all contracts in a single unit.

Every contract has fields for entering the title, counterparty, and summary of the contract. In addition to these common fields, there can be other fields, which are user-defined (by an administrator).

The user-defined fields that will be available for a contract depend on which type of contract is selected. The administrator may set up some of these user-defined fields to be mandatory or optional. Where the user-defined field is defined to be a drop-down list, the administrator is able to enter a list of options that is distinct for each user-defined field. Where the user-defined field is a text box, the administrator is also able to restrict the length of the value entered. Valid lengths are 1-100 characters and “unlimited”. A text field of unlimited length allows for multiple lines of text to be entered.

There is no limit to the number of user-defined fields that may be defined for each contract type.

When a new contract is entered into the system, a sequential-unique identification number will automatically be allocated by the system. This ID number is visible on all contract screens and can be used to search for a single contract.
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An unlimited number of document files may be loaded against a contract.
For more details, see Documents and Files

A contract must have a status defined, which means that it is either “Open”, “Closed” or “Cancelled”. The significance of the contract status is generally for information purposes only, but each of these statuses does have a special function:

It is possible for an administrator to define new statuses to be applied to contracts. Each user-defined status must have one of the standard statuses (ie. Open, Closed or Cancelled) to define its behaviour.
For more details, see Contract Statuses

There can be any number of dates defined for each contract type. Contract dates can be configured to be optional or mandatory. The contract dates allow the user to define the full sequence of events and milestones for a contract and define when, and to whom, reminders will be sent.

Each Contract Type may include multiple date fields, and each can be marked as optional or mandatory.

Dates can be defined to be “simple dates”, which means that the user merely enters a date and that there is no option to specify a recurring event or send out a reminder.

Dates which are not simple dates can be defined as either one-off events, or as a sequence of events occurring at regular intervals. The types of intervals available include:

Recurring milestones can be set to terminate with one of the following rules:

The configuration of the start date of a milestone is also very flexible, allowing one of the following rules:

For more details, see Milestone Dates and Reminders,
​Enter and Edit Contract Dates,
​Create and edit custom Dates,
​How to set up contract renewals: auto and manual options

A reminder can be defined for any milestone on a contract, except for a “simple date” (refer to “Contract Milestone Date” above). When a reminder is defined, an email is sent to the specified person, notifying them of the event. The email will contain details of the contract, a message specifying when the milestone is set up, and a link (ie. a URL) which the recipient may click on to acknowledge receipt of the reminder.

A task will be created for the user to track completion of the required work.

Note: It is possible to configure the Reminder Type so that a task will not be created along with the reminder email.

A reminder can be set to be sent to an individual user (via the contract role which they fulfil) or to “escalate through the roles”.

There are two different ways to define the escalation path of a reminder.

The counterparty is the entity, whom the contract is with, e.g. in an employment agreement the counterparty would be the employee. Contact details for individual people may be recorded against the counterparty.

Contracts normally have one or many counterparties. This is the default setting. It is also possible to change this setting to allow only one or zero for a given type of contract.

Counterparty Contact details can be recorded. Contract Eagle gives you the option of sending a reminder email to this contact.

In addition to standard details such as name, address, and contact information, administrators can create user-defined fields for counterparties to capture organisation-specific data.
These custom fields can be configured as text boxes, dropdown lists, or other field types, and can be mandatory or optional depending on business needs.
This flexibility allows users to record additional attributes about counterparties, such as industry, risk level, or account manager, ensuring more detailed reporting and search capabilities.

The BN Lookup (Business Number Lookup) allows users to automatically populate key counterparty information from external business registries.
When a business number or identifier is entered, Contract Eagle retrieves available public details - such as legal name - to ensure accuracy and save time during contract entry.
This feature helps maintain data consistency across all counterparty records.
For more details, see Business Number Lookups
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Approval Workflow is a review process triggered automatically when a contract is created or updated. The triggering of this workflow is conditional upon the definition of an approval rule. The workflow is initiated via an email sent to an approver, who will then review and approve or reject the contract.

Approval notifications may be configured differently for each business unit, contract type and contract status. They may be chained together to make a sequential workflow.
For more details, see Approvals

A task will be created for the contract by the system when an email reminder is sent. The task has its own status (Unclaimed, Claimed, Reassigned, Closed), which can be tracked to ensure that the work is complete.

A task is flagged as complete by setting its status to Closed.

The task due date is used to determine if a contract is categorised as “Overdue” on the dashboard.

The task owner indicates who is responsible for the task. Changes in ownership will be notified to affected users via email. They may then claim the task to confirm that they accept responsibility for it, or they can reassign it to pass the responsibility on to a colleague.
For more details, see Tasks

Every contract has a detailed audit trail recorded against it, which includes all comments recorded against that contract.

Access to contracts, contract types, and configuration options is controlled by a user’s assigned Access Privileges.
Privileges are managed through security groups and business unit permissions, determining what each user can view, edit, approve, or administer within the system.
This ensures that users only see contracts relevant to their business unit, while Power Users and Administrators can configure system-wide settings such as Contract Types and Workflows.

For more details, see Create and edit Users and permissions

Contract Eagle supports integration with a variety of external systems to enhance functionality and streamline processes.

Available integrations include:

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