Contract are agreement that an organization makes with business partners. In CRM terminology this usually business partners are usually customers. There could be multiple types of contact. SugarCRM provides an option to maintain these custom ‘Contract types’. In this article, we will walk through the complete process of designing the contract types for a contract in SugarCRM.
To create a new contract type, the SugarCRM administrator can define contract type drop-down list with option to add respective contract type. Once created, contract record may then relate to other sugar records such as opportunities, documents and quotes.
Defining contract types in SugarCRM
The Contract Types module in Admin > Contract Types enables you to create and manage contract types for the Contracts module. This is shown in the screenshot below.
- Fields to create Contract type
- In the edit, form fill the following fields.
When a contract type is created, SugarCRM displays in the Type Name field in the Contracts module for users to select. Please note that when a contract record is created with a specific contract type, the related documents to the contract type will also appear in the module sub-panel of the contract record.
Only administrators or users with developer-level role access have the ability to modify the available contract types and the order in which they appear in the Type Name field.
Contract Type Fields
The Contract Types module contains two fields to create a contract with Sugar. Their relevance is explained in the table below.
| Field | Description |
| Name | The name of contract type |
| List order | A number to specify the order in which the contract type is displayed in the type of name field in the contracts module. |
Contract Types Detail view
- The Contract Types module shows the detail view of the contract module.
Module Tab
- The Contract Type module tab can be accessed by navigating to the Admin page and clicking the Contract Types link in the Contracts section.
- Once the Contract Type is created is shown in the list view, you can click the triangle in the Contract Type module tab to display the Actions and Recently Viewed menu.
Record view
The contract type shows the single record in full detail in detail view including sub-panels and records. To access a contract type record view click on various operations on the detail view.
| Menu item | Description |
| Edit | Edit this contract type |
| Share | Share a link to this contract type via email |
| Find duplicates | Locate duplicates of this contract type |
| Copy | Duplicate the contract type to create new contract type |
| Delete | Delete the contract type |
Ordering Contract Types:
- When creating contract types, you will define the order in which the contract type option is displayed in the Type Name field of the Contracts module. List Order field to determine the order it will display in the contract’s Type Name field.
- A contract type with a list order of “1” will be displayed at the top of the list followed by the next value (e.g. 2), and so forth. Please note that you can change the list order by editing the contract type via the list view or record view
Advantages of custom contract type in SugarCRM:
The advantages of custom contract type is explained below.
- Contract type-specific to business use
- Easily scale-able
- Maintain multiple contract type at one point
- Auto listing of documents under contracts for account-based upon contract type
- Showing contracts with selected contract types in SugarCRM.
- New contracts are rapidly generated with newly made updates in SugarCRM.
Contract types in CRM is an effective way to create and manage new contracts for business purposes held between your organization and your customers, along with the functionality to create/edit.
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