Contracts & Pricing Models: Five Ways to Get Paid

Contracts in ITAD are not standard. One client pays per device. Another pays per kilo, because they’re recycling. A third wants a share of what the equipment resells for. A fourth pays a fixed monthly fee for a framework agreement. The platform supports all of them as first-class pricing models on the contract, not as workarounds in a notes field — and the settlement engine reads the model, so the price you agreed is the price that gets calculated.

Five pricing models

Per unit: a rate per device type, multiplied by the count. Simple, and the model most ITAD service contracts start on. Per kilo: a rate per kilogram, for recycling and bulk material flows where the unit count does not reflect the value. Revenue share: a percentage of what each device actually sells for. Fixed fee: an amount with an interval — monthly, quarterly or yearly — for retainers and framework agreements. Hybrid: per-unit rates combined with a revenue-share percentage on the same contract, for the client who pays a processing fee and takes upside on resale. Each model has a currency, and the pricing block sits on the contract from the moment it is created.

Lease return is a contract type

Separate from the price is the contract type: ITAD service, Lease return, Remarketing, Recycling or Consulting. The type describes what kind of work the contract governs and picks the recommended processing workflow — a lease-return contract carries lease details (lessor, lease contract number, term) and walks the Lease Return workflow with its manifest check and charge-back stage. The price is a separate decision. A lease return can be per unit or fixed fee; a recycling contract can be per kilo or revenue share. Type says what happens; model says what it costs.

A contract without a tariff is a contract that settles at zero

The platform does not stop you from activating a per-unit contract with no rates yet — a framework agreement can legitimately be active before the price list is final — but it tells you. Creating a contract whose chosen model has no tariff shows a warning, and activating one asks for an explicit extra confirmation: settlements under this contract will come out at zero until a tariff is entered. The New settlement dialog is stricter: it shows per candidate order whether the contract has a tariff and refuses an order under a contract without one, linking back to the contract to fix it. A settlement of €0.00 is the kind of mistake that costs a client’s trust. The warning costs a click.

Revenue share pays on what actually sold

Under a revenue-share contract each settlement line uses the realised sale price of that device: the price from a direct sale, or its pro-rata share of a closed Market deal or a settled Auction lot. A device that was recycled or scrapped counts for zero. A device that has not sold yet uses its estimated value as a stand-in and wears an amber Estimate badge on the line, with a count in the overview so finance can see how much of the total is still provisional. The Finance article on revenue share goes into the mechanics; here it is enough to know that the number on the settlement is what the laptop fetched, not what it looked like at grading.

Settlements are generated, not conjured

A draft settlement is generated from a completed inbound order under a priced contract, once the assets on that order are in a terminal status or past the workflow stage that carries the settle action. It lands as a draft that a human reviews, calculates, approves and invoices. Nothing is settled the moment a truck is unloaded, because at that moment nobody knows what sold.

Services, SLAs and certifications

A contract also bundles the included services and their rates, the SLA terms, the required certifications, the data-destruction rules and the processing workflow — all managed on the contract detail by an admin, manager or commercial user; warehouse, operator, finance and viewer roles read. Required certifications are recorded on the contract and shown in the activation readiness check as warnings, alongside missing services, tariff, workflow or document. Only an end date on or before the start date, or already in the past, blocks activation. How a contract goes from draft to active to expired, renewed or superseded is the subject of the Contract Lifecycle article.