Contracts

Nexudus Spaces is notoriously member-centric. Most of the processes you can put through it start and end with a member; a person. This includes bookings, memberships, legal agreements and any purchases, from a locker to a ticket to go to an event. With the time, we have introduced features that let you leap away from the individual and form groups, which we call teams, and charge members in your space for services which may not just be used by themselves, as an individual.

In most instances this works well, each person pays for a single membership, for example a 3 days week hot-desk membership, and may top it up with some add-ons, for example, a secure locker, a parking space or a 24/7 access privilege; which we represent as recurrent products.

---

 

Recurrent products were introduced a while ago to allow for this combination of products and services being charged to a single person but they suffer from a well-known problem: they are not treated as a membership. This means that all the information you can get about members signing up, upgrading, downgrading and cancelling their memberships is available only for the membership a person is signed up to, but not for the different add-ons you may sell to them as a recurrent product.

To solve this, we are introducing a new concept: contracts.

Contracts represent agreements between you and a member. A contract is always based on a price plan, which is like a template to define the billing cycle, price and other properties of the contract. A member can have as many contracts as you want, they can each have different billing cycles and start and end at different times.

Each contract has a “status”, it can be inactive, active or cancelled.

Inactive contracts are those with a start date in the future. Contracts will be automatically activated when their “start date” is reached. People with an inactive contract are not regarded as a member until the contract is activated.

Active contracts are running contracts. Their start date is in the past and will invoice members automatically based on the price plan details the contract is for.

Cancelled contracts are those who have reached their cancellation date. A cancelled contract cannot be activated again or changed in any way.

 

The Main Contract

To make sure you can still use recurrent products, each member can have one (and only one) “main contract”. The main contract is different to other contracts in that it will be the only contract to include any recurrent products or charges set to be added to the main contract.

 

Adding a Contract

When creating a new member or contact profile from Space > Contacts or Space > Members, you will be asked if that new profile should be linked to a price plan. If you select a price plan, a contract will be created for that price plan and will be activated immediately.

For existing members or contacts, you can add new contracts using the contracts tab in their profile.

Cancelling a Contract

You can cancel a contract at any point by using the “Cancel Contract” item in the “More Actions” menu, the “cross” icon in the list of contracts or the “Cancel Contract” button at the top of the contract details page. 

Once a contract has been cancelled, it cannot be activated or changed in any way.

You can also schedule the cancellation of a contract by setting a “Cancellation Date” in the contract. When that date is reached, the contract will be automatically cancelled. If the member has any outstanding charges, an invoice will be created on the cancellation date.

 

Contract Dates

There are three important dates for each contract: start date, renewal date and cancellation date.

Start Date: The start date indicates when the contract should be activated. If this date is the current date or in the past, the contract will be activated immediately. Inactive contracts will automatically be activated on this date.

Renewal Date: Indicates when this contract should be renewed. Nexudus handles this date for you automatically so, in most cases, you will never need to change it. For new contracts, the renewal date is set to be the same as the Start Date. If this contract is set to change the price plan of the member, this change will happen on this date, when a new contract for the new price plan will be automatically created.

Cancellation Date: Set this date to automatically cancel the contract. If the member has any outstanding charges, an invoice will be created on the cancellation date. Without a cancellation date, contracts renew indefinitely.

 

Upgrades

The “next price plan” field in each contract lets you schedule a change of price plan ahead of time. The default value for the “next price plan” field is the current “price plan”. If you choose a different plan, the current contract will be cancelled on the date set as the “Renewal Date” and a new contract will automatically start and be invoiced on that date.

Price and Value

By default, the contract takes the price from the price plan it is for. In some occasions you may want to offer a specific price which differs from that of the price plan. To do this you can use the price field.

Keep in mind that, if you set a price for a contract, it will no longer follow the price of the price plan. Even if the price for the price plan is changed, the contract will still have its own price.

The value of the contract is reflected in your upgrades and downgrades reports. It has no financial effect but it will be used to compare relative values of the different price plans. If no value is provided, the value of the contract is assumed to be the price of the price plan.

 

Using the API?

if you are using the API, the listing of members and contacts will naturally no longer contain a price plan. Each member or contact will have one or more contracts. There is a dedicated enpoint for contacts available here.

The queries parameters for the coworkers endpoint (Coworker_Tariff=notnull) and for contacts (Coworker_Tariff=null) will still work as expected, assuming a member is somone with, at least, one active contract.

Main image source: Olu Eletu