A "Service Contract" is a formal agreement between you and the customer to provide on-site and remote product maintenance services according to the service coverage outlined in the service agreement or monitoring agreement they accepted in the proposal.
Cloud automatically creates service contract(s) when the customer accepts the Service or Project proposal with one or more plans in it, and you mark the opportunity as "Won." The contract includes all the relevant details of the plan that the customer accepts. These details are available as a reference for service coverage when your back-office logs service calls for the customer.
Setting the start date in the quote
When adding the plans to the quote, you have the option to set the start date under the "Estimated Start Date" column. You can set the start date in one of the following ways:
A specific date, for example, 12/02/23.
0 (zero) days after project completion, which means the day the project is completed.
'X' days after project completion, for example, 7 days after project completion.
If you want time to estimate the start date, you have the option to set it later in the contract.
Setting the start date in the contract
Once a contract is created for the service opportunity or the project under "Service > Contracts" in the left navigation, the contract will show the estimated start date if it was set in the quote or the proposal.
You have the option to set the actual start date in the "Start Date" text box. Cloud will populate the end date of the contract based on the plan length.
"Estimated Start Date" email notification
On the estimated start date of the contract, Cloud will send an email notification to all resources assigned to the service opportunity or the project. This notification will have the link to view the contract and set a different start date for the contract.
If you do not change the start date of the contract on the day of the estimated start date, the contract will start automatically.