What it is
Measured. How long this contract runs, in months. A plain number that carries more weight than it looks like it should: revenue recognition, cash flow projection, renewal timing and expected account value are all built on it. Beacon reads this value, it does not derive one. It comes from your CRM or your contract system, and the only thing Beacon does to it is track how confident it is in it.How it is calculated
It is not calculated. It passes through three states, and knowing which one you are looking at matters more than the number.
Each confirmed field replaces its assumption and raises Beacon’s confidence in the contract as a whole. That confidence is published — you can see how much of a contract is confirmed rather than assumed, and forecasts built on a mostly-assumed contract are labelled as such.
No deal can be marked won without a contract record being created. If that fails, the deal is put back to its previous stage and someone is told — the term does not quietly go missing.
Where it comes from
These two paths are alternatives, not additions. Beacon does not mind where contracts live; both produce the same record and the same forecasting behaviour.
The template library is the part that needs work up front. Where no template matches a deal’s segment, market and tier, Beacon falls back to a default, flags it as low confidence and tells your operations team there is a gap. And template defaults are not replaced by figures drawn from your own history until at least twenty contracts have completed in that segment and tier.
How fresh it is
Updated on any change to a mapped field in your CRM or contract system, on any manual update, and on a stage change — plus a daily pass. Status changes take effect immediately rather than waiting for the pass. Every response carries two timestamps.as_of is the moment the value describes. computed_at is when Beacon last worked it out. Read both rather than assuming a cadence.
Currency and rounding
Neither applies. It is a whole number of months, and it holds no money value. The 12, 24 and 36 month options you may see in a template are that template’s defaults, not a limit on what Beacon will accept. Any term your systems record is published as recorded.What changes it
Before the close, freely — each confirmation replaces an assumption. At the close it locks. From that point the term describes what was signed. At renewal a new contract record is created, ninety days ahead of the renewal date, carrying its own term. The previous one keeps its history rather than being overwritten, so a term that shortened from 24 months to 12 at renewal is visible as a change rather than a correction. A material departure from your template — a term well outside the norm for that segment — is flagged for review and the contract is held out of committed pipeline until someone confirms it was intended.What it is not
- Not a predicted term. Before close, Beacon estimates the likely term from segment history. This is what the contract says.
- Not the renewal date. The term is a duration; the renewal date is a point in time, and it comes from your billing system rather than your contract.
- Not the contract’s financial forecast. Beacon builds a monthly revenue timeline, invoice schedule, cash flow projection and recognition schedule from the contract. None of that is published on the account — this row carries the term and nothing else.
- Not an expected term. Beacon separately works with a probability-weighted expected length for margin projection. That is a forecast; this is the commitment.
This value is read from your systems rather than produced by Beacon, which means it is described here by where it comes from rather than by a published field contract. That is a known gap on Beacon’s side and is being closed; the value itself is accurate.