Walkthrough

This walkthrough creates a contract for a customer, adds products to it, configures a line item, previews its invoices, and activates it.

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Before you start

You’ll need:

• A customer already set up in Zenskar.
• At least one product in the catalog, if you plan to add products manually rather than auto-populate.

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Step 1: Create the contract

1. Choose the customer the contract is for.
2. Set a start date.
3. Optionally set an end date. If you leave this blank, the contract is open-ended.

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Step 2: Add products to the contract

Choose one of two approaches:

• Auto-populate — the system adds all default products and pricing configured for the customer’s business entity. Use this when the customer is on a standard offering.
• Pick manually — choose each product yourself and set its price. Use this when the deal is custom.

Each product you add becomes a line item on the contract. You can add as many line items as the deal needs — for example, a flat monthly platform fee alongside a pay-per-use API charge.

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Step 3: Configure each line item

For each line item, you can configure:

1. Pricing model — choose per unit, volume, or tiered. See the pricing model docs for how each one calculates a charge.
2. Price versions — set different prices for different time periods if the price changes over the life of the contract (for example, $10 per seat for the first half of the year and$12 from the second half onward).
3. Billing schedule — choose how often invoices are generated and whether payment is due upfront or at the end of the period.
4. Anchor dates — align the billing cycle to a specific date (such as the last day of the month) instead of the contract’s start date, if needed.
5. Discounts — add a flat dollar amount off, a percentage off, or free units, depending on what the deal calls for. See the pricing model docs for each discount type.
6. Minimum commitments — set a guaranteed minimum the customer pays or a minimum quantity, even if actual usage comes in lower.

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Step 4: Preview the invoices

Before saving or activating anything, use invoice preview to see what the contract would generate. This works on unsaved drafts too, so you can test what-if scenarios before committing to a configuration.

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Step 5: Save the contract

Saving runs validation checks — for example, confirming the end date is after the start date, the contract has at least one product, and the customer and business entity are valid. If a check fails, fix the flagged issue and save again.

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Step 6: Activate the contract

Move the contract from draft to active. This automatically generates the first invoice.

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Step 7: Adjust quantities as the deal evolves

Once the contract is live, you can change quantities going forward:

• For recurring products like seats, change the quantity from a specific date forward — the system automatically splits the timeline (for example, 10 seats from January, 15 seats from April onward).
• For on-demand products like credits, simply add units — they stack on top of the existing pool.

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What’s next

• To edit a draft contract after the fact, see “How to update a contract” in the how-to guide.
• To understand why invoices stay in sync automatically, see the contracts concepts doc.