Contracts: the life cycle

A contract goes through four states. The state shows as a badge in the header and as dated steps in the side panel.

What triggers each change

• Release (Draft → Pending Approval): requires a freighter and at least one line. If the company requires an approval workflow, the default one is assigned. Approvers are emailed.
• Approve (Pending → Approved): done by an approver with the Approve button, or by the workflow itself when it reaches its end. On approval, aduanasHQ sends the Products and the purchase order to the warehouse (P4W) and emails the importer's contact.
• Receipt (no state change): every time the warehouse receives against the purchase order, a receipt is created and the Received counter of each line goes up.
• Invoice (no state change): every proforma invoice raises the Committed counter of the lines it includes.
• Shipment (no state change): every shipment raises the Shipped counter.
• Close (Approved → Closed): automatic after a shipment when, on every line, received reached ordered and shipped reached received; or manual, by an administrator, with the Close button (see Closing a contract).

Each line's counters

Every contract line carries four quantities, shown in the lines table once the contract is no longer a draft:

Two figures the application uses everywhere derive from them:

• On hand = Received − Shipped: what is physically in custody.
• Available = Received − Committed: what can still be put on an invoice.

The counters are compared every night with the documents behind them; if any differ, an alert appears and an administrator can fix it in one click (see Alerts).