RSC Contract Register Field Descriptions

This document outlines the data standards for inserting and editing contract records in the RSC Corporate Contracts Register. It contains a list of fields and information about what data is allowed in each one.

The following fields are mandatory for every contract, and must contain a valid value:

• Organisation
• Contract Reference
• Contract Title
• Contract Type
• Status
• Contracting Departments

Those mandatory fields have an asterisk (*) next to them in the list below.

You can leave all the other fields blank if you do not have the information.

Organisation *

Must be: Royal Society of Chemistry

Id

A unique code generated by the Contract Register to refer to each record. This is not the same as the Contract Reference.

If you are uploading new contracts, you must leave this blank.

If you are updating records then the relevant Ids will be part of the contract download from the Contract Register and the Id number must be included in the upload file.

Contract Reference *

This non-validated field is to provide a unique future link to Netsuite. The goal is that budget holders and users should be able to review spend against an individual contract rather than just a supplier as at present. The table below provides a list of how you should compile references.

Please do not worry if you get it wrong or are unsure. The Administrator will correct any errors during housekeeping.

Contract Title *

Free text and intended to be the common name used to refer to the contract e.g. what is on the front cover of the file or the actual contract.

Contract Type *

The type of Contract it is. Must be one of the following values exactly:

• Call-Off Contract
• Framework Contract
• One-Off or “Spot” Contract
• Renewable or “Period” Contract
• Rolling with no Renewal

Status *

This indicates whether the contract is Open, Closed or Archived.

It is intended that current contracts are ‘Open’, expired contracts are generally ‘Closed’. If you need to access details of a contract in the future, you can show it as ‘Archived’ to make finding just those easier.

The entries in this field must be one of the following values exactly:

• Open
• Closed
• Archived

Contracting Departments *

You can use one or more of the following departments.  Note that if you want to upload multiple departments then you must separate them by a line break.

• Education and Professional Practice
• Events Exhibitions & Travel
• Finance & Legal
• HR/OD and Facilities Management
• Publishing
• Sales & Marketing
• Science & Communities
• Technology

Category 1, Category 2, Category 3

These three fields store the Category under which the contract is stored. We are using ProClass to classify our contracts  (see www.proclass.org.uk).

The entry must match exactly with the Category names. Those names can be found in the Contract Register itself (the ‘Categories’ menu link).

Suppliers Names

The name or names of the Suppliers involved. The field is free text but must comply with the following Guidelines.

All abbreviations related to supplier names should be in full as below (subject to the supplier name field character limit):

• Supp – Supplies
• Assoc – Associations
• Serv – Services
• Consult – Consultancy
• Int – International
• Exception is Limited – Ltd
• Remove unwanted punctuation such as full stops after names, and hyphens in names, commas
• ‘And’ should always be replaced with ‘&’
• Data in upper and lower case

If you enter multiple suppliers in the upload, then these you must separate them by a line break.

Local Supplier

Defined as having a CB or PE postcode.  You must enter as Yes or No.

Start Date

The date from which the contract is let.  You can enter in a DD/MM/YYYY or YYYY/MM/DD format. 

Initial Expiry Date

The date that the contract ends. You can enter in a DD/MM/YYYY or YYYY/MM/DD format.

Contract Duration (months)

The number of months the contract is let for. This is calculated by the system automatically so must be left blank in the upload.

Contract Extension Option

Whether you have an option to extend the contract. In the system this will display as Yes or No, in the upload only exactly ‘Yes’ is treated as Yes, everything else is considered to be No.

Contract Extension Taken

Whether the contract has been extended or not.  In the system this will display as Yes or No, in the upload only exactly ‘Yes’ is treated as Yes, everything else is considered to be No.

Contract Extension Notes

Free text.

Extension Expiry Date

The end date of the contract extension.  You can enter in a DD/MM/YYYY or YYYY/MM/DD format.  This is used to re-calculate the Expiry Date (originally set to the Initial Expiry Date).

Expiry Alert Months

How long before the Expiry Date the Contract Owner would like to receive an email alert about the contract.  Options are: <blank>, 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 12 months, 18 months.  If the field is left blank no alert about this contract is sent.

Expiry Alert Sent

System generated.  This field shows the date that an automated email was sent to the contract owner based on the Expiry Alert Months.

Annual Value

The value of the contract annually. Must be a number.

Total Value (Estimated)

The estimated total value of the contract over its lifetime. Must be a number.

Contract Owner

The name of the person responsible for the day-to-day management of the contract. It does not have to be the person who signed it. Free text but intended to be the first and last names of the person.

Contract Owner Email

The email address of the contract owner. Must contain an ‘@’.

Contract Owner Telephone

The telephone number of the contract owner. Must be the full number, not just the extension.

Contract Co-Owner

You may record a co-owner where there are:

• Commercial relationships in the contract with more than one Department
• A business owner (usually a Department) and a Technology owner (this is only for technology systems whether cloud hosted or held locally)

The main business owner should always be listed as the primary owner.  This person will receive an e-mail alert when the contract is due for renewal.

Contract Co-Owner Email

The email address of the contract co-owner. If entered, must contain an ‘@’.

Contract Co-Owner Telephone

The telephone number of the contract co-owner. Must be the full number, not just the extension.The telephone number of the contract owner. Must be the full number, not just the extension.

Contract Exists

This flag is used to indicate whether a contract is in place or whether the record is for a known relationship. 

Valid values are:

• Y – a contract exists (but we may not have a copy of it)
• N – a contract does not exist

Contract Document and Other Documents

Note that these options are not available in the contract upload.

Where a physical contract exists, you can upload a copy to the contract record. The Legal Team’s FileDirector system will contain the original version and supporting documents.  (A FileDirector reference may be shown in the Notes field).  A link to a drive where related documents are stored may also be attached (note that this should be a public web address or an internal shared address and not a reference to a document on a local hard drive).

Notes

The contract notes is a free text facility that enables us to capture useful information that may be of value in ensuring that managers have a good understanding of our contracts. There are limitations to the data that can be held as standard in the Register, so RSC is using the Notes field to capture additional information about our contracts that we think will be useful.

The specific information that we are capturing is: 

You must label the data items and separate them by a space. For example:

Created At and Modified At

These are date/time stamps showing when the contract record was first entered, and the last time it was manually edited.  You can view the full edit history in Contract Edit. They are system generated.