Contracts: Where the Money Gets Decided

A contract in ReVend OS defines the rules of engagement between your organization and a client. What services you provide, how you price them, what the SLAs are, which workflow the assets run through, and how the money flows when everything is done. It’s the document that settles arguments before they start — assuming someone filled it in.

Why contracts matter more than you think

In ITAD, every client is different. One pays per device. Another pays per kilo. A third insists on a revenue share model that took four meetings to negotiate and still confuses everyone in accounting. Without a contract in the system, every settlement becomes a debate.

Contracts attach to companies and flow through to inbound orders, collections, settlements and evidence. A contract has a type — ITAD service, lease return, remarketing, recycling or consulting — and a workflow template, chosen when the contract is created from your tenant default or derived from the type. That workflow is the source for every asset received under the contract; changing the tenant default later does not quietly reroute running contracts.

Five pricing models

Per unit is a rate per device, with separate rates per category — laptop, desktop, workstation, server, monitor, phone, tablet, other. Common for data destruction contracts where the client doesn’t care about residual value. Per kilogram prices by weight; common for recycling contracts and commodity-grade equipment nobody is going to test individually. Revenue share gives the client a percentage of what each device actually sold for. The settlement takes its basis per line: the sale price where there was a sale, an estimate where there wasn’t one yet, and zero for a device that went to recycling. Fixed fee is a recurring amount per month, quarter or year, for the client who wants one predictable invoice. Hybrid combines models under one contract.

Lease return is not a pricing model, it is a contract type. The lease details — leasing company, lease contract number, term, dates — live on the contract; the chargeback rules for damage live on the inbound order’s lease-return information.

The tariff is not optional in spirit

The pricing fields are on the create screen, with the same fields as the edit screen, so the rate can be entered the moment the deal is typed in. A contract can still be saved and activated without one — but the activation dialog says so in plain words and asks for an explicit acknowledgment that the contract settles at zero until a tariff is added. And when finance opens New settlement, a contract without a tariff carries a “No tariff” badge and is refused: the dialog explains the settlement would compute zero and sends them back to the contract.

The contract said €4.50. The system calculated €4.50. The system also refuses to calculate €0.00 without telling you why.

SLAs

Each contract can define processing days, a reporting frequency (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly), pickup response days and settlement days, plus the data destruction methods and whether a certificate is required. The platform shows the consequences where the work happens: Pipeline can filter on items that are over SLA, and an inbound order that has passed the contract’s settlement window says so on its detail page, in days.

Lifecycle

A contract is created as a draft and becomes the governing agreement only when someone with the right role activates it. From there it can be renewed, terminated, replaced by a successor, or expire on its end date. Those transitions, who may push each button, and what happens to running work are described in the Contract Lifecycle article.