Managing contracts and extensions

[Marisa_Pettit1]

Hi!

I’m trying to figure out the best way to organize my contracts and their extensions.

For example:
Company A has Contract Alpha and Contract Beta.
Initially, Contract Alpha was to be complete on 1/30/2021, but Company A has chosen to extend their contract to end on 2/10/2021. The extension to the Alpha contract will have a different PO number, budget, etc. so they will have different ‘internal codes’ that we use to track the progress, deliverables, timeline, etc.

What I’m looking for/trying to figure out:
The best way to have the contract extensions be set up like a contract and subcontract(s) relationship so that they are ‘nested’ somewhat like this, but in Airtable form:

• Company A
  • Alpha Contract
    • Alpha contract extension 1
    • Alpha contract extension 2
    • Alpha contract extension 3
  • Beta Contract
    • Beta contract extension 1
    • Beta contract extension 2

Ideally, the end result would probably be most beneficial if it were displayed using one of the apps (Gantt, maybe?).

I’m at a loss and would appreciate any suggestions/directions.

Thanks!

[Jeremy_Oglesby]

Hi @Marisa_Pettit1,

So I imagine a 3-table setup being the best starting place for you:

• Companies
• Contracts :: Each Company can have multiple Contracts
• Terms :: Each Contract has at least 1 Term, but possibly many

Terms could be labeled with a “Type” as either “Original” or “Extension”.
This should be workable with the Gantt Chart, I think.

Here’s a quick and dirty example:

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[JonathanBowen]

Hi @Marisa_Pettit1 - suggestion for the base structure here is:

• 3 tables - Customers, Contracts, Contract Periods
• A contract belongs to a customer
• A contract period belongs to a contract

Something like this:

Your PO, budget details might, in fact, be against the contract period (although this depends upon how you set up your contracts)

[JonathanBowen]

Haha! These two solutions are so close, it must be the right answer :winking_face:

[Jeremy_Oglesby]

lol… glad to know I’m in good company with the way I approached this problem :winking_face:

[Bill_French]

I’m thumbs-upping every message in this thread.

[Marisa_Pettit1]

Thank you so much! I’m about to try this out and will let you all know how it goes.

[Marisa_Pettit1]

So, I’ve made some progress, but I’m now thinking that maybe the Gantt app isn’t the best route to go. Thoughts?

I think in an ideal situation the outcome would be similar to the Org Chart maybe, so that the hierarchy is clearly evident. If I’m on the right track with that line of thinking, the original contract would be at the top and then the extensions of the contract would fall underneath. If so, then how should I set up the self-linking linked record field to make this manageable? Or do you have suggestions on a different/better approach?

[Jeremy_Oglesby]

@Marisa_Pettit1
If you are wanting to carry on discussion about how best to structure your data, can you give more detail about what you want to see and why?

I ask because creating same-table references for contracts in order to use an Org Chart style hierarchy is a very different data structure than using the Contract << Terms setup suggested by @JonathanBowen and myself.

It’s understandable that the Gantt chart app itself may not fit your needs, since it’s likely meant to be used with shorter time scales than, say, a year per “chunk”.

But I’m not sure exactly what your vision is for the functionality and who needs to view this data, for what purpose they need to view it, and what they need to be able to do with the data in addition to viewing it. That may make a difference in terms of what “App” might be the best choice, if any is needed at all. Often, just a good Grouping or nested Grouping in a Grid view is sufficient:

Can you give us more detail about what you need to see, how you want to input data, how you want to interact, or how you need others to see/interact with your base?