It is common for landscape contracts to change while the contract is being serviced. Aspire supports revisions that apply to future work on a contract while maintaining the history of work already completed.

This article explains the capability of Aspire that allows you to easily transition to new contract terms without the need to create a new opportunity.

⚠️ If wanting to change the number of service occurrences, Aspire recommends that you do not use the Change Contract capability of the Aspire software. Instead, create a new contract and cancel the old one.

The following steps summarize the process for making changes to an active contract in Aspire:

📌 This cycle may occur multiple times throughout the life of the contract. Note that during any particular change cycle, multiple individual changes can be made to the contract’s services.

For example, you could add two services, remove one service and modify several item costs associated with another service – all within the context of a single contract change cycle.

Each time you go through this change process for a given contract, a new contract revision is created. The revision is maintained within the single contract, so the contract continues to be tracked under its original Opportunity Number.

The original contract is considered to be revision zero (0) with successive revisions being in numerical order (v.1, v.2, v.3, etc.)
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When looking at the estimate for a job that has undergone contract revisions, Aspire allows you to see the revision history for the services on the contract.

Only users who are assigned to an Aspire Role that has the Change Opportunity permission (a) enabled will be able to initiate a change to an existing open contract.

Initiation of a contract change is performed on the Opportunity screen within Aspire by selecting the Change option in the three dot menu. The Change option is only available under the following conditions:

1. The user who is logged into Aspire has been given the Change Opportunity permission.

2. The opportunity has a job status code of In Process.

3. The opportunity has no revisions OR the current opportunity revision is still active.

When you select the Change option (b) on the Opportunity screen for a job that is in process, Aspire displays the Change Opportunity box (c) that requires you to specify a start date for the revision.

The New Revision Start Date must be greater than the latest Opportunity Start Date or the Active Revision Start Date. Furthermore, the New Revision Start Date must be prior to the Opportunity End Date.

📌 Note that if the example below had an existing active revision, the Active Revision Start Date would also be displayed.

To proceed with the contract change, click the Save icon. To cancel the contract change, click the Cancel icon. Each following revision created for a given opportunity is assigned the next revision number starting at 1.

As soon as the Save icon is selected, Aspire creates a contract revision for the opportunity, and sets the Revision Status to Pending. The Revision Status remains in Pending status until the revision is later won or cancelled.

Upon clicking the Save icon to create the revision, Aspire will display the Estimate screen for the opportunity. This makes it convenient for you to make the appropriate price adjustments to the contract. It is not, however, essential that you make price adjustments immediately – you can leave the Estimate screen, and go back later to make the changes.

If you go to the Opportunity screen for a contract with a change in the Pending status, the words Changes Pending will appear in red next to job status (a). This makes it easy to identify opportunities for which contract changes are pending.
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For contracts that have changes pending, Aspire removes the following options from the triple dot menu, which are otherwise available on the Opportunity screen:
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This is because these options should not be used while contract changes are pending.

When you are ready, you can go back to the Estimate screen to make any necessary adjustments to services.

When a revision is in Pending status, you will be able to apply the following updates to the contract:

These updates are described in the following subsections.
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📌 Note: Until you win the revision, you can go back to the Estimates screen to apply additional updates.

⚠️ It's important to understand that over the period of time during which you are making changes to the contract, Aspire will still allow your company to schedule and complete active tickets associated with the Contract based on the existing contract version rather than the new version whose changes are pending.

This period of time can be anywhere from a few minutes to multiple days to even weeks. By the time you are ready to Win the changes so that the contract is being executed according to the new rules, tickets may have been completed that you had originally intended to change.
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Aspire will catch these conditions when you attempt to win the contract, but may not allow you to complete the winning of the contract.

🧠 Being aware of these potential conflicts can help you to adjust your business processes accordingly.

For example, you can communicate within your organization when a contract is being changed so that work tickets are not being advanced while the change is being updated in Aspire.

Now, let’s move to the types of changes that can be applied to a contract.

When the estimate is in pending status, the plus icon (+) will be available to the left of every opportunity service, just like it is when estimating (a). Clicking the + icon will add a new service (b) to the estimate and its revision number (c) will appear. You may then select a service as you would when you create an estimate for a new opportunity (d).

Any services added in this manner, and the items/kits underneath them, are considered pending and will show green bars on the left and right sides until the revision has been won (see below).

If you remove a service or service item that is still in the pending status (highlighted in green) by clicking the three dots next to GM%, the added green element is removed.
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When the estimate is in pending status, the three dot menu icon (a) will be available to the right of each active service. Individual items or kits, underneath an active service, may not be deleted without deleting the parent service, and thus do not have a three dot menu (b).

To remove an existing active service and all items under it, click the three dot icon on the service line (c). A small dialog box will pop up allowing you to select Change or Delete. A confirmation dialog window will be displayed (d). Clicking Confirm (e) in the confirmation window will delete the service.

Any services deleted in this manner, and the items/kits underneath them, are considered pending and will be highlighted by red bars until the revision has been won (f). Until the revision has been won, the deletion may be undone by clicking the three dot icon (f) next to the deleted service.

When the estimate is in pending status, there will be a three dot icon (see (a) above) available to the right of the GM% that will allow you to change an existing service.

The service that is being used as an example has 52 occurrences of which 44 have been completed.

When the change icon (a) is clicked for a multi-occurrence service (b), Aspire will have you select the ticket on which the change begins by giving a dropdown list (c) of tickets that are in an Open or Scheduled status. If there are no tickets in the list to choose from, an error message will be displayed.

You may select any ticket in the list (d), and changes you select will be applied to that ticket and all that follow it in the list. In this example, where ticket occurrence #46 is selected, occurrence #45 will be left alone, and occurrences from #46 forward will be changed later when the revision is won.

Once you have selected the right ticket occurrence, click the Save icon (e). At this point, the changed service will be shown with yellow ends as shown below.

Two versions of the service will be represented:

At this point, you may modify the individual fields for the new version of the service or its underlying items (a). You may also add (b) or remove (c) items as you can for an initial estimate.

If you reduce the number of occurrences for a service (d), then when you win the changes, Aspire will cancel the necessary number of open or scheduled tickets to bring the total annual occurrences in line with the new number of occurrences. In this case, you must ensure that there are is a sufficient number of open or scheduled tickets for Aspire to cancel, otherwise you will receive an error when you try to win the changes.

⚠️ Aspire recommends that you avoid changing the number of service occurrences using the Change Contract capability of the Aspire software. If it is necessary to change the number of occurrences, it is recommended that you cancel the original contract and create a new contract to replace it.

While the changes to the service are in Pending status (highlighted in yellow), clicking the Undo button on the three dot icon will allow you remove all changes from the service.
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📌 Note also that you cannot delete a service with pending changes. If you decide that you wish to delete the service, you will first have to undo the changes.

While changes are pending for a job, Aspire allows you to change active services into optional services or optional services into active services.

When you change an optional service ➡️ active service, Aspire creates the new active service by assigning it a new revision number.

When you change an active service ➡️ optional service, Aspire deletes the originally existing active service and shows it as a deleted revision. It then creates a new optional service with a new revision number.

Example:
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To change the Summer Color optional service (a) to an active service, place the mouse cursor over the symbol to the left of the version number (b). The cursor will display as four arrows pointing outward. Click down and drag the Summer Color optional service up into the area with the other active services (c). When you drop to service by releasing the mouse button, a confirmation dialog will display (d). Upon confirming the dialog by clicking the Confirm icon (e), the change will be reflected in the Estimate screen (f).

📌 Note that the service is split in two with the original optional service displayed in the Optional Service section (h), and the active service displayed up with the other active services (g).

Similarly, active services can be changed into optional services by moving the active service down to the Optional Service area as shown below:

While the changes to the contract are still pending (have not been won), you may determine that you specified the wrong starting ticket for which the changes should be applied. The starting ticket can be changed!

On the estimate screen, click on the service (a) to display the Service Detail screen (b). The Begin Change on Work Ticket field shows the ticket occurrence you selected when you initiated the change (c). Select from the drop-down the new ticket (d) on which changes should begin. Click the Save icon in the top right corner.

The Pricing Summary screen shows financial information for the contract as if changes have been applied. Therefore, deleted services or prior versions of new services are not included. This allows you to review expected cost and margin based on the new estimate.

The Pricing Summary (a) is available by clicking the triple dot menu (b) at the top of the Estimate screen and selecting Pricing Summary.

While a job is in a Pending status (prior to winning the changes), Aspire adjusts the menu options available at the top right of the Estimate screen. The following options are in the triple dot menu:

Each of these options are explained in the following subsections.

Selecting the Edit Contract Change option will open up the same Change Opportunity dialog box used to initiate the change so that you can update the revision start date.

Selecting the Undo Contract Change option will remove all pending service additions, deletions, or changes from the contract and remove the contract from Change Pending status.
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Selecting the Win Contract Change option will lock in all changes applied to the contract. When you select this option, but before changes are applied, Aspire will check a couple conditions:

⚠️ If any of these conditions are not met, Aspire will display an error message. Aspire will not allow you to apply the changes until you have corrected the error.

If validation passes and the opportunity is Fixed Payment invoice type, Aspire requires you to update and save the payment schedule to Win the change.

(See Payment Schedule for Changed Contracts)

Aspire will create, update or cancel tickets associated with that contract as appropriate based on changes that you have applied as listed below:

If there is a prior active revision, the new revision will replace it, so Aspire will change that prior revision’s status from Active to Inactive. Finally, Aspire will change the status of the new revision to Active.

When a new contract estimate with a Fixed Payment invoice type is completed, Aspire requires you to create a payment schedule that will create invoices in Invoicing Assistant at specific times.

When you change a contract, Aspire requires you to update the payment schedule to reflect any changes to cost for ongoing customer payments. You will update the payment schedule by clicking the Edit Payment Schedule icon.

After confirming that you wish to Win the changes (b), if you have not already updated the payment schedule, Aspire will automatically bring up the Edit Payment Schedule screen (c) so that you can specify the new payment schedule. When you save the changes by clicking the Save icon (d), Aspire will complete winning the contract changes. If you click the Cancel icon (e), Aspire will not complete the winning of the changes and the changes will still be pending.

Contracts can be printed from the Print Proposal option (a) in the triple dot menu (b). There are two options to the Report Settings dialog window that will allow you to modify the proposal that the system generates:

1. Opportunity Revision Through (c) – Allows you to specify the revision upon which the generated proposal should be based. For example, specifying revision 2 indicates that the proposal should be based on the second revision.

2. Include Revision History (d) – This checkbox allows you to decided whether or not the generated proposal should include line items from versions of the contract prior to the revision indicated in the Opportunity Revision Through field.

When you renew a contract that has changes, the renewal is created based on the most recent revision of the contract. If, for example, you are renewing a contract that has a mowing service v.0 that was replaced by mowing service v.1, Aspire will apply the v.1 mowing service to the revision.