Contract obligations

Every contract has obligations written into its terms and conditions which describe the actions and deliverables required over the contract duration by and from each party. Contract obligations are usually accompanied by a description of the penalties that will be incurred by either party should the obligations not be met.

The responsible party for a contract obligation can be a company or a contractor user. Obligations also have an owner; all obligations owned by the contractor are visible in the Contractor Portal, and can be viewed by all contractor users. The state of contractor-owned obligations can be updated by all contractor users except those with the Contractor Functional Support contract role.

Obligations are created automatically when communications which require response are sent. A due date is automatically set for these obligations. The owner and responsible party of an obligation created from a communication are set as follows:

• Company to Contractor communications: Owner = Contractor, Responsible Party = Contractor Representative

• Contractor to Company communications: Owner = Company, Responsible Party = Company Representative

The due dates of obligations can also be associated with contract dates such as Award Date or Planned End Date, or with specific milestone dates created by the company.

When the due date of an obligation is reached, it automatically becomes Overdue unless its state was already set to Completed. The obligation's Overdue status is shown on the Obligations tab of the Contract page. Note that if the due date of the obligation changes, the Overdue status will be removed if appropriate.

A separate reminder date can also be set for the obligation, relative to the due date. For an automatically-created obligation, this is set to 1 day before the due date, but can be edited.

A list of the obligations for which you are a member of the responsible party is displayed on the Overview page - see The Overview page for more information.

Notifications

Email notifications are sent to members of the configured responsible party for an obligation when:

• The due date and optional reminder date are reached.

• The due date of the obligation is changed.

• The responsible party is changed. Old members receive a notification that they are no longer a member; new members receive a link to the obligation.

The email contains:

• For manually created obligations, a link to the obligation.

• For obligations created from a communication, a link to the communication.