When a contract has been added or reviewed, it's sent to someone to approve. In the Approve stage you review and approve the work that's been done or delegate further action.
Quick steps to approve an contract:
- Go to the Task management component
- Select from the Task options provided
- Complete the required fields
- Click Submit
Form components
| Action history | A chronological list of the instructions and actions recorded to date within each stage of the workflow. |
| Task management | Your options for approving the contract. |
| Related risks | Where you can view or add related risks to the contract from the Risk register. |
| View contract | Where you can view and download the contract. |
| Attach records | Where you can attached related records to the contract. |
| System event history | A chronological list maintained by the system of all entries and linkages in the system relating to this contract. |
Workflow
There are two reasons why you will receive a task to approve a contract:
Scenario 1: A new contract has been sent to you to approve
Scenario 2: An existing contract has been managed or reviewed and sent to you to approve
Action history
This component displays the commentary by the assigned officers at each stage of the workflow.
Hover over the date to display who recorded the note.
Task management
This contract has been managed and sent to you to approve
When a new or existing contract has been sent to you to approve
.
Task options
Delegate further review
Choose this option to define and delegate the tasks relating to the contract.
- Task instructions - provide instructions for the review. Prior to approving the contract, you can use the workflow to delegate a task. For example, if you wanted to ensure that all compliances required by the contract have been scheduled in the QMS, you might assign a task with the following instruction: 'Ensure all compliances as required by the contract have been scheduled in the QMS '.
- Assign - select the user responsible for carrying out the task. Select Assign to me to assign the task to yourself.
- Task due date - select the date the task is to be completed by.
Approve the contract - choose this option to approve the contract to be added to the Contracts register.
- Next review date - this is the proposed date the contract will be reviewed again in the future, which can be changed.
- Additional Comment (optional) - use this field to add any additional comments relating to the contract. These comments will appear in the Action history and will therefore be visible when the contract is next reviewed.
- Contract expiry date - this is the specified expiry date of the contract. If there is no specified expiry date, select 'No expiry date'.
Related risks (optional)
This component enables you to add an assessment of the risks to the organisation associated with entering (or not entering) into the contract. If the Risk register is activated in your platform, you can also link the contract to known risks. This component also displays any previous comments and links.
Attach records
This component enables you to upload or link related records.
- Record name - When naming the record ensure the description is meaningful and easily found when searching. For instance, 'Correspondence re. signed contract - March 2022'.
- File/Link - click on Choose file and navigate to the record on your computer. If you have links enabled, toggle to change the control to add a URL to the record. The URL must be a in a web (http://) or Microsoft Sharepoint format (https://<company>.sharepoint.com/...).
Submit/save the form
The green Submit button will save the form and in most cases progress the item to the next stage of the workflow. The button label, however, will change depending on certain conditions to make it quicker to complete tasks. For example, The green button will change to Approve if you choose Approve the contract. If you have assigned a task to someone other than yourself it will change to Submit, and if you have assigned a task to yourself it will change to Next.
Select the purple Archive button when the contract is to be archived and the Contracts details form will be moved to the 'Archive contracts' tab on the register.
Select Create a related item if you want to create a separate linked item on another register when you save the form. A link between the two items will be displayed in each item's System event history. For example, if you need to schedule a compliance task for the contract, you could select the Compliance option to create a new item in that register. The platform will display a link between the two items in the System event history.