---
title: "Understanding Supplier Contracts for Customers"
canonical: "https://kb.myframeworks.com.au/space/FRAM/492077058/Understanding%20Supplier%20Contracts%20for%20Customers"
format: markdown
---
**Supplier Contracts** allow your business to apply negotiated purchase prices or discounts to products when creating quotes, sales orders and purchase orders for specific customers or projects. Instead of manually entering promotional or reduced rates each time, the system automatically applies the lowest available cost from your supplier contracts, ensuring you always benefit from the best pricing terms and maintain accurate margins.

**Supplier Contracts** are particularly valuable for project-based work or when suppliers offer special pricing to win specific customer accounts. The contracts can be configured at three levels of specificity: 

- business-wide (available to all customers in your business).
- branch-specific (available only at designated branches).
- customer-specific (available only for nominated customers).

This flexibility ensures pricing agreements are applied correctly based on your commercial arrangements.

> ⚠️ The Supplier Contract feature requires the **SCP** feature code to be active in your Frameworks instance.

## Use Case

Supplier Contracts are commonly used in these scenarios:

- **Project-based pricing:** A timber supplier offers reduced rates on framing timber for a large residential development project. You create a supplier contract linked to that specific customer and project, ensuring the special pricing is applied only to that customer's orders and the correct purchase costs are used when ordering from the supplier.
- **Customer-specific agreements:** A building supplies business negotiates special pricing with a plumbing supplier for all products sold to a major construction company. The supplier contract is created for that customer across multiple branches, and whenever staff create quotes or orders for that construction company, the system automatically flags which products have contract pricing available.
- **Branch-specific promotions:** A hardware group negotiates a promotional discount on paint products for three branches in a regional area. The supplier contract is assigned to those three branches only, ensuring the promotional pricing is available to all customers at those locations but not at other branches.

## How Supplier Contracts Work

Supplier Contracts link four key pieces of information together: 

1. The **supplier**
2. The **products **(via the supplier's pricing or discount)
3. The **business/branches** where the contract applies
4. Optionally, the specific **customers** who can access the pricing.

When you create a supplier contract, you define whether it uses fixed pricing (specific dollar amounts) or discount percentages (applied to the supplier's standard cost). You also set the contract's validity period with start and finish dates, ensuring expired contracts are not accidentally applied. The contract can include a supplier reference number, which is automatically carried through to purchase orders for tracking purposes.

The **Business** field determines which branches within your organisation can access the contract. Each branch in Frameworks is assigned to a business, and only branches assigned to the contract's business can use that contract. Within that business, you can further restrict availability by specifying which branches can apply the contract. This prevents accidental use of contracts at locations where the supplier agreement doesn't apply.

If you assign specific customers to the contract, only those customers' quotes and orders will show the contract as available. If you leave the customer list blank, the contract is available for all customers at the designated branches. This gives you control over whether a contract is broad (available to everyone) or targeted (available only to specific accounts).

## What Occurs During the Supplier Contract Process

When sales staff add products to a quote or order, Frameworks checks whether any active supplier contracts exist for the combination of product, branch, and customer. If a contract exists, the **Has Supplier Contract** checkbox becomes active for that product line, alerting staff that special pricing is available.

The contract pricing is not automatically applied to the product lines—this is intentional to give sales staff control over when to use special pricing versus standard pricing. Staff must manually apply the contract through the **Special Buy-in** option in the Actions menu. This opens a window showing the current costs versus the contract's new costs, making it easy to compare pricing before applying the change.

Once applied, the new costs are used to recalculate the product's sell price based on the chosen pricing mode (markup percentage, GP percentage, or fixed sell price). The supplier from the contract is also linked to that product line, ready to be used when creating a purchase order.

If the quote or order needs to be fulfilled through purchasing, staff can create a linked purchase order directly from the quote or order. The linked PO automatically includes the contract supplier, the negotiated costs, and the contract reference number, ensuring the supplier receives an order that references their pricing agreement.

## The Supplier Contract Process Steps

At a high level, using supplier contracts involves these steps:

1. **Negotiate pricing** with the supplier for specific products, customers or projects.
2. **Create the supplier contract** in Frameworks, defining the business, branches, pricing rule, and validity dates.
3. **Assign customers** to the contract (if customer-specific) or leave blank (if available to all customers).
4. **Assign branches** where the contract will be available.
5. **Create quotes or orders** for the customer—the system flags products with available contracts.
6. **Apply the contract** using the Special Buy-in option to update product costs and margins.
7. **Create a linked purchase order** to order the products from the supplier using the contract pricing.

For purchase orders created directly (without a linked sales order), supplier contracts can be applied to the purchase order, and the contract costs are automatically used when adding products.

> ✅ ## Related Information
> ✅ 
> ✅ - <u>[Apply a Supplier Contract to Sales Quotes and Orders](https://sterlandsupport.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/fwksproau/pages/490733604)</u>
> ✅ - <u>[Create a Supplier Contract](https://sterlandsupport.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/fwksproau/pages/492109836)</u>
> ✅ - <u>[Assign Customers to a Supplier Contract](https://sterlandsupport.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/fwksproau/pages/491814919)</u>
> ✅ - <u>[Assign Branches to a Supplier Contract](https://sterlandsupport.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/fwksproau/pages/492470279)</u>
> ✅ - [Supplier Contracts - Implementation Guide](https://sterlandsupport.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FRAM/pages/492371979)
> ✅ - <u>[Supplier Contract Dashboard](https://sterlandsupport.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FRAM/pages/28401920)</u> (Layout and Field guide)
> ✅ - <u>[Supplier Contract Maintenance](https://sterlandsupport.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FRAM/pages/28391886)</u> (Layout and Field guide)