Contract intelligence — what have we agreed with each customer?

Contract intelligence answers one question: What have we agreed with each customer, does it keep to Finance’s limits, and how likely is it to renew? Every morning it makes sure there is a contract record for every subscription in your billing and every open deal in your CRM, checks that every running subscription rests on a contract, adds up what is under contract by segment, and converts anything in another currency into the one you report in. It belongs to the Sales family — see Modules.

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What it does

A contract is where the terms live — how long it runs, when it renews, how often it is billed, how many days a customer has to pay, what discount was given. Billing holds the start date, the product and the revenue, and almost nothing else. Contract intelligence puts the two together. Once a day, after your tools have synced, it:

• Opens a contract record for every billing subscription, once Setup says Start from billing. The record carries what billing knows — the customer, the start date, the product, what the subscription brings in a year — and says it rests on billing alone until someone adds the signed contract or your standard online terms.
• Opens a draft for every open deal. A deal is a contract not yet signed. The draft is the same record, filled in as the deal moves and confirmed at signature. It carries the deal’s amount, and its term and billing interval where the deal holds them.
• Checks coverage both ways — how many running subscriptions rest on a signed contract or your online terms, and how many signed contracts no subscription is billing.
• Adds up what is under contract for the whole company, each size group, each customer-fit band, each country, each status and each basis, in your reporting currency.
• Draws the 12 months ahead — what is signed, and what renews weighted by the standard chance of renewing — once your contracts carry a renewal date or a term.

Beacon never writes into your billing or your CRM. A term a person typed in, or read from a signed contract, is never overwritten by the morning run, and nothing is ever deleted.

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What it produces

Its headline is four figures. Two are worked out every morning; two are designed and not calculated yet. The first two names link to their definitions, which also say how the Data API and MCP will carry them — neither serves them yet. Contract health and forecast confidence get their definitions when they are calculated. Behind them it also produces:

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How the records are built

Every figure is a count or a sum worked out by fixed, written rules, so the same billing and the same deals always give the same figures. The full rules are in Contract intelligence — how it is calculated. The scores — designed, not calculated. Contract health has five parts with fixed weights. Changing the weights is the account owner’s decision; Beacon never changes them on its own. Forecast confidence comes from three of the parts — complete 50%, close to its template 30%, forecast accuracy 20%. Under 60 a contract’s forecast is flagged and kept out of the committed pipeline without sign-off; under 70 it is kept out of the board forecast unless Finance includes it; under 40 it is indicative only. Finance’s standard limits are a gross margin of at least 65% after discount, a discount of at most 25%, payment terms of at most 60 days, and lifetime value of at least 3.0× the cost to win the customer. Only Finance changes them. None of the scores is calculated today, because how four of the five parts turn what Beacon reads into a number from 0 to 100 — and which fields each deal stage needs — is not yet written down. Six statuses. A record is In the pipeline (a deal is open), Expected new deals (not opened yet — from Sales capacity, not built), Signed, not started, Active, Renewing (within 90 days of its renewal date) or Ended. Only signed, active and renewing contracts count as under contract.

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What you see on its page

In Beacon, open The Brain and choose Contract intelligence. The banner shows recurring revenue on billing by segment, how many of your running subscriptions have a contract on record, and that contract health is not yet calculated. The page has six tabs:

• Overview — monthly recurring revenue for the last 12 months on billing, or the 12 months ahead once any contract has a renewal date or term, by total, segment and customer fit; the chain from an open deal to the Sales forecast; and what the module reads and feeds.
• Dashboard — contracted revenue by segment and customer fit; renewals within the next 90 days; the module’s own charts — contracts by status, renewal risk by contract year, how much of the forecast rests on firm terms, and whether contract intelligence is working — which read Not yet calculated or Needs renewal dates today; and six contract analytics — contract length, payment terms, contract value, discount, billing frequency and renewals ahead — sliced by segment, customer fit or country.
• Signals & alerts — what the module watches, its six alert rules, and that none is sending.
• Scorecard — the five parts and their weights, the steps from parts to scores, Finance’s guardrails, the standard renewal chances, and the rules. Every score reads Not yet calculated.
• Contracts — five views. Contracts: every record, 25 at a time, with search and filters by status; select one to see its terms, where each came from, and its own forecast and next invoices. Coverage: every subscription without a signed contract, largest first, each with Add contract — type in the terms, or use your standard online terms — and the reverse check, contracts with no running subscription. Templates: a suggested template per size group from your billing. To review and Add contracts — uploading signed PDFs for Beacon to read — are shown and marked After launch. What a contract holds: the 28 things a contract holds, and which of them the record keeps today.
• Setup — the module’s seven questions, with the answers in use. Answers are saved from this tab.

The page reads Not measured yet until your CRM is connected, Coming until the first morning run has written, and Running with gaps once it has. It does not read Live yet, because the scores are not calculated.

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What it needs

See Connect your tools for how each connection is made.

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Reads from

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Which modules read it

All of these read the scores or the confirmed terms, and today the records rest on billing alone with no score, so none of them receives anything from this module yet. The Modules page in The Brain shows which modules are running for you.

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Alerts

Six alert rules are built: No alert is sent yet. Every contract alert needs the scores, which are not calculated; the first to start will be Contract missing fields, once the fields each stage needs are written down. Who gets the alerts is picked from your Beacon users in Setup.

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Setup questions

• Where are your contracts kept? Recommended to start: signed PDFs, uploaded and confirmed. Other answers: a contract pipeline in HubSpot; a contract tool; nowhere in one place yet.
• What about the customers you already have? Recommended: start from billing, then fill in the terms. This is the answer that opens a contract record for every subscription.
• Finance’s limits on contract terms. Recommended: use the standard limits — discount at most 25%, payment terms at most 60 days. Finance answers.
• Your usual contract, per segment. The starting term, billing and payment terms for each size group — for example 36 months, billed yearly, 30 days to pay for Enterprise; 12 months, billed monthly, 14 days for small business. Every new deal’s contract starts from it until the real terms are confirmed.
• Which contract details must be in by which stage? Recommended: products and amount by Proposal; term, billing and payment terms by Contract sent; start date when won.
• Do you run paid pilots before the subscription? If yes, contracts carry the pilot’s length and price, and the standard chance that a pilot converts is 80%.
• Who gets the alerts? The Finance lead, RevOps lead and CS lead, picked from your Beacon users. Waits for your users.

Answers are saved from the Setup tab and the module runs on them. How you segment your customers, whether you have a sales team and which currency you report in are asked once, in Company DNA, and used here too.

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What is not calculated yet

• Contract health, forecast confidence and the five parts behind them.
• Whether each contract keeps to Finance’s guardrails, and how close it is to its template — there are no templates yet, only the suggested ones.
• The chance of renewing for your own company — the standard chances are used until 20 completed contracts per segment let Beacon learn yours.
• New business in the 12 months ahead — it comes from Sales capacity, which is not built.
• Each contract’s own revenue forecast and next invoices.
• Reading signed PDFs — Add contracts and To review are after launch.
• Alerts — none is sent yet.
• Contract coverage and contracted ARR through the Data API and MCP — defined, not served yet.

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