This screen enables you to review fixed-term contracts with contributing individuals and organisations. All users can view the details for those contracts from the Cost Centre, which they have access to. Details such as the contract fees/transactions will be available to those higher level users.
When trying to commission a contributor that is listed as under Contract, you can use this screen to review the contract details before proceeding.
The left side of the screen shows a listing of contracts for the chosen contributor. To view each one, click on the appropriate contract. The right hand side shows the details of each contract, including Contribution, contract type, paperwork status etc.
Contribution: Over a period of 1 year (or however long the contract runs for), the details of the contract- a brief description of what the contributor is due to produce for the length of the contract.
The Frequency field is a drop-down selection - Weekly, Fortnightly, Monthly, Quarterly, Unrestricted (used for stringer or agency contracts).
The notice period will default to one month (but is editable)
The Due on field is a free field in which one can enter '1st Tuesday of the month', 'every Wednesday', or whatever that is necessary.
Under Contract terms & paperwork
Blogs - Does this contract relate to a blog?
Confidential - Should this contract be kept confidential
Rights Reviewed - Has the contract been reviewed by the Rights department (note: only RCS administrators may update this checkbox)
Recipient - Who should receive and sign the paperwork for contract (eg Agent for the contributor or the contributor directly)
Handled by - Initials of who (in the Rights department) that is handling this contract
Issued - Date the contract was issued/sent to contributor
Chased - If the contract has not been returned, the date the last reminder was sent out.
Returned - The date the contract was returned
Exclusivity - Any limitations on a contributor's freelance activity whilst under contract to GNM. When a contract is renewed- whatever was agreed on the previous contract will be copied over into the new one. Otherwise the Exclusivity field will be blank by default- please copy the relevant clause into RCS from the hard copy contract.
Scheduling payments
Look for an Approved by statement in the Contract's audit section in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. If it says: "Not approved yet", the contract is unapproved and the contract can still update all fields (Department heads and above). When a signed contract has been returned and the contract has been approved, ticking Allow Payments will open up the Schedule trx button that will schedule the contract fee according to the terms set up.
Terminating a contract
To terminate an approved contract, click on Terminate.
Any scheduled outstanding payments must cancelled manually otherwise they will be paid. To do this, click on Scheduled transactions, find the payments you wish to cancel and for each one tick the Cancel checkbox.
If a pay-off has been agreed with the contributor, EITHER amend the last payment preceding the termination date OR create a new payment remembering that the scheduled date should be set to the date on which the payment is to be instructed to Accounts.
Approving a contract
For RCS Department Heads and Managing Editors and the Rights department, the following additional functionality is available:
- approve a new contract immediately by pressing the Approve button.
Spikes
For content that the contributor has produced but is not published for matching see Spiked content
Monitoring
For contracts that are live, alerts to users listed as Owners (see contract details) of the contract can be created to monitor contributions. See Contract Monitoring for more details.
Creatives
The Creatives window is where the creative contributors are recorded for a contract. This may be the name of the contributor that appears with the content, if different to the supplier's name, or in the case of large agencies the content might appear under different names or credited against a library.
A new name can be inserted by creating a new row and typing in the name. New names are automatically added to the list of Contributor names.
Other actions
The Cost centre dates... button can be pressed to display a list of the cost centres and the calendar month in which their contracts are meant to be renewed.
Contract documentation (including scans of signed copies) can be viewed by pressing the Documents... button.
The contract term sheet can also be issued at this point by checking the Issue p'work? checkbox.
Click on the Stats button to get a short summary of Content published and matched against this contract. This information appears next to the button:
Click on Rights... button to reveal the copyright details of the contract as recorded in the Rights tab. If the button is coloured red, the rights agreed are non-standard.
To see the contract value, how it is split between cost centres, and the schedule of payments instructions click on the Fees etc... button. The Transactions button also displays this window, but with the payment instructions as the initial focus. RCS Administrators can also see and maintain the list of contract Owners in this window.
Click on Contributor... to view the contributor's contact details.
To see which editorial department/web section's content will be automatically matched to the contract see Match rules...
Click on Other costs to bring up a list of Other payments or expenses that have been entered against the selected Contract.
Press Content... to view a list of published content that have been matched against the contract.
Click on Contributor... to view the contributor's contact details.