Contract questions and troubleshooting

The questions below are the ones that come up most often. Each answer links to the page that explains it in full.

Who can work on contracts

Can technicians create contracts?

No. Contracts are made in the desktop application, and a Fieldworker has the mobile app only — there is no contracts screen in it, and nothing on their permission list opens one.

Somebody who genuinely needs to work on contracts has to be an Admin, which gets both the desktop application and the app. That is a change of user type, not a permission you can tick, so it is worth thinking about before you make it: an admin can also plan, dispatch, quote and invoice.

Who can approve contract changes?

There is no approval step inside EyeOnTask for a contract. Anyone who can open the contract — that is, any admin — can change it with Edit Contract, and the change takes effect as soon as it is saved. Nothing queues for a second person to agree to, the way an expense claim does.

Nor does the contract keep a record of what was changed or by whom, so control here is a matter of who you give desktop access to, not of a setting you can turn on.

Where approval does exist is on the client’s side: the signed agreement. If a change alters what the client agreed to — the fee, the term, what the rate card covers — generate the document again and send it for signature, so the copy they hold matches the contract you are working from.

Can contract financial information be hidden from field staff?

It already is. The recurring fee, the rate card, the plan value and the invoices raised against a contract all live in the desktop application, and a fieldworker never has one — so none of it is reachable from the phone whatever you do.

What a fieldworker can see money-wise is on the job in front of them, and that is yours to control:

• Show rate & amount in mobile app settings decides whether they see rates and amounts on the items and services of a job. Turn it off and the job is a list of work rather than a list of prices.
• The Invoice, Quotation and Payment permissions on their record decide whether they handle billing on site at all.

Neither of those exposes the contract’s own terms. They are about the job’s own lines.

The technician’s side of a contract is the jobs it raises. Those reach them as ordinary jobs on the phone, carrying the equipment, services and instructions the work pattern put on them.

Billing and charges

Which contract type do I pick for a fixed-price agreement?

Fixed Price / Service Based — the same one you would pick for a pay-per-service agreement. It is one type, not two. What makes it fixed price is a recurring fee with nothing on the rate card: the fee is billed every period and the work is included, however much of it there is.

For a pay-per-service agreement, do the opposite — put the services on the rate card with rates, and leave the recurring fee out. See one type, not two.

Do I have to fill in the rate card on a fixed-price contract?

No. A plain fixed-price contract works with an empty rate card, and that is the correct setup for one — nothing on the rate card means nothing is chargeable.

Use it only for the exceptions: one service you do want charged, or a service that is included up to a point. 1,000 a month with twelve services a year included, chargeable after that is a fixed-price contract with one rate card row on it. See a plain fixed-price contract needs no rate card at all.

I completed a job under the contract, but nothing appeared on the invoice

Three things to check, in order:

1. The service is not on the contract’s rate card. A service picked on a job is only an instruction to the fieldworker until the rate card gives it a price — without one it stays a to-do and never reaches the job’s cart.
2. The service was never picked on the job. Being on the rate card is not enough on its own; the job has to carry that service under Job Type/Services, otherwise there is nothing for the rate card to price.
3. The rate card was changed after the job was created. Adding a service to the rate card does not go back and change jobs that already exist.

Open the job’s cart to confirm: an empty cart is the giveaway. See it takes both.

The invoice only shows the fixed fee — where are the jobs we did?

That is usually correct behaviour, not a fault. Scheduled work is what the recurring fee already pays for, so jobs inside their free quota appear as included lines at zero rather than as charges. The client can see the work was done without being billed twice for it.

Only work beyond the quota gets added on top.

What happens if I change the rate card after the job has already been created?

Nothing happens to that job. A rate card change applies to jobs raised after it — the ones already in the system keep the cart and the prices they were created with.

The same goes for adding a service, changing a rate, changing a quota or removing a service. If you want an existing job to reflect the change, open it with Edit Job and adjust its cart by hand. See changing the rate card after a job exists.

I put the service on the rate card, so why isn’t it charging on every job?

Because the rate card is a price list, not a standing charge. It only prices work that was actually recorded — a service bills automatically when it is on the rate card and selected on the job under Job Type/Services.

A job under the same contract that does not have that service on it bills nothing for it, which is right: the work was not done. See it takes both.

Do jobs from a work pattern bill automatically?

Only if the job types in the pattern are on the rate card. A work pattern has no special route to the invoice — the jobs it produces are tested against the rate card like any other. Job types on the rate card bill (at zero inside the quota, at the contract rate beyond it); job types left off it arrive as to-dos and add nothing.

How do I tell whether a job will bill, before I invoice it?

Open the job and look at its cart. That is the only thing that reaches the invoice — a line in the cart will bill (at zero if the quota covers it), an empty cart will not, whatever job types the job carries. See checking before you invoice.

The job has two services and only one of them billed

That is correct if only one of them is on the rate card. The two conditions are tested service by service, not once for the whole job — the one on the rate card goes to the cart, the one that is not stays a to-do beside it.

A job my work pattern created still uses the old rate

It was generated before you changed the rate card. Patterns produce jobs in advance — Advance day for recur pattern in work settings decides how far ahead — so jobs dated weeks from now may already exist and count as existing jobs.

Only jobs the pattern raises after the change use the new rate card. See jobs already generated ahead of time.

Will the rate card charge the client even if no work was done?

No. Nothing on the rate card bills on its own — it prices work that was recorded on a job. The only amount that arrives regardless of activity is the recurring fee.

Do items and materials follow the same rule as services?

Nearly. An item has no to-do stage: you put it in the job’s cart yourself, so it is a priced line the moment it is added. What the rate card decides for an item is the price and the quota — contract rate and free quota if it is on the card, master rate and charged in full if it is not.

Can I charge for something that isn’t on the rate card?

Yes — you just have to do it by hand. Add the service or item to the job’s cart yourself and it will bill, but at your master rate (your standard price list) rather than at the contract rate you negotiated with this client.

Leaving something off the rate card makes it manual, not free. See which price gets used.

Where is the Master List that “Apply Taxes from Master List” refers to?

It is your saved items and services. Each one carries its own tax choice, set on its record — Choose Tax on an inventory item, No Taxation / Select Taxation on a job type/service. Turn the option on and every line the rate card prices takes the tax its own record was saved with; leave it off and there is no tax to choose on the contract.

To change what a line is taxed at, edit the item or service, not the contract. See tax on a contract.

Do not confuse it with the master rate, which is about price rather than tax — your standard price from the service and item lists.

The same client has two contracts. Which rate does a job take?

The one from the contract the job was raised under. A rate card reaches only its own contract’s jobs — it is not a price attached to the client, so the same service can sit on both cards at different rates and each job bills at its own. See a rate reaches only the jobs of its own contract.

What is the difference between the contract rate and the master rate?

The contract rate is the price agreed with that one client, set on the contract’s rate card. The master rate is your standard price from the service and item lists. Anything on the rate card bills at the contract rate; anything added by hand that isn’t on it bills at the master rate.

I set a fixed contract amount, so why is the client being billed more?

Something went past its free quota. Once a rate-card service or item is used beyond what the contract includes, the excess is charged and added to that same period’s invoice — this is what the billing panel calls overage. The recurring fee itself has not changed.

I left the deposit off the first invoice. Can I put it on the second?

Yes. The deposit is not tied to the first invoice — it is offered in Fetch & Link on every manual invoice you raise, and stays on offer until you actually use it. Leave it unticked now and it will be there next time.

What it cannot do is go on twice. Once the deposit has been taken on an invoice, it stops being offered on any later one.

The deposit is still showing up on a later invoice

That means it has not been billed yet. The deposit keeps appearing in Fetch & Link until it lands on an invoice, so seeing it there is a reminder rather than a fault — tick it when you want to charge it.

If it has genuinely been charged twice, it was not the deposit field doing it: check whether the amount was also written into the recurring fee.

Quotas and renewal

What happens to the quota if I make a free-quota line billable?

The unit comes back. Quota is what covers the lines the client is not charged for, so once you tick Billable the allowance is no longer paying for that line — the contract gets its unit back and the line is charged at the contract rate from the rate card, not at your master rate.

Untick it again and the line goes back to being covered, taking a unit with it. See billable and the quota.

The same service is done three times on one job. How do I add it?

Add it to the job’s cart three times, as three separate lines. A service line is always a quantity of one, so repeating the work means repeating the line rather than raising a number.

Taking your AC cleaning service with a free quota of 3: three lines use exactly three units of quota. All three appear on the invoice as included lines at zero, the contract’s remaining allowance is now nil, and there is no overage to pay. The fourth cleaning, whenever it comes, is the one that gets charged at the contract rate.

Items are different — an item line has a real quantity, so five of a part goes on one line and counts as five.

If I copy a job or invoice with free-quota lines, do they stay free on the copy?

Yes, as long as the allowance still has room. The copied lines keep their quota status and show at zero, and they use more of the quota — a copy is new usage, not a duplicate of the old, so the contract’s remaining balance goes down again.

Once the allowance is exhausted, copied lines bill at the contract rate rather than at zero. See copying a job or an invoice.

Why can’t I add a free quota for my service?

Check the service’s Service duration in hours. A free quota can only be given to a service whose duration is 1 — set it higher and the rate card will not accept a quota for it.

The duration lives on the service itself, at Settings → Modules → Work → Job Type/Services; see job type/services. Change it to 1 there and the quota can be set.

Nothing else about the service changes: it can sit on the rate card and bill at the contract rate either way. It is only the free allowance that depends on the duration.

I cancelled a contract. What happens to its jobs?

Nothing. Cancelled is only a status — the jobs stay as they were, scheduled or completed, and nothing is withdrawn or raised because of it. If the work should stop, close off or delete those jobs yourself and stop the work pattern. See cancelling a contract.

If I cancel a job after it has used quota, is the quota restored?

No. Cancelling leaves the job in place, and with it the cart line that consumed the quota. To get the allowance back, either delete the job or remove the line from its cart.

You do not always have to remove a line outright: reducing an item’s quantity returns exactly that many units as soon as you save. A service line has no quantity to reduce, so for those the line itself has to go. See getting quota back.

How do I invoice every 15 days?

Not automatically — there is no fifteen-day option. The automatic frequencies are Weekly, Fortnightly, Monthly and Half-Yearly, and a contract can only run on one of those.

Two ways round it:

• Use Fortnightly, if every fourteen days is close enough. Most agreements written as “twice a month” are happy with it.
• Switch the contract to Manual on the billing panel and raise each invoice yourself on the day it is due. Fetch & Link still gathers the period’s jobs for you, and you set the date range you are billing.

Changing the frequency itself is done with Edit Contract, on the billing step.

Can I change the recurring fee after the contract has started?

Yes — at any point in the term, up or down. Edit Contract changes the recurring fee whenever you need to, and invoices already raised are left alone — they keep the amount they were billed at. The next invoice picks up the new fee, and the plan value on the billing panel recalculates immediately.

If money is owed back for a period already billed, settle it on that invoice — a credit note, or an edit if no payment has been recorded yet.

The contract does not keep a history of the old fee, so nothing on it later explains why the earlier invoices were higher. Note the reason on the contract or the client while you are making the change. See changing the fee part-way through.

Can I download a contract?

Yes. On the contract, Preview & Send Email → Contract opens the agreement in its preview, and you download it as a PDF from there. Print and email sit beside it. See the contract document.

What you download is the contract as it prints in the contract template — the layout, filled in with this agreement’s details. A predrafted contract has nothing to download: it is not an agreement with a client yet, so copy it into a real contract first and download that.

How do I create a new contract template?

Contract template means two different things, so check which one you are after.

The printed agreement — the document the client reads and signs. That is a template in the ordinary sense: a layout. Create one at Settings → Templates → Contract Template, where Create New Template adds a layout and Set as default decides which one is used when nobody picks. See document templates and templates.

A contract filled in ahead of time — everything set except the client, ready to be copied whenever you sell that agreement. That is a predrafted contract, also called a blueprint. Save an existing contract as one from its footer, or start from Add pre drafted contract on the contracts list.

The first is about how a contract prints; the second is about what a new contract starts with.

What happens if the invoices add up to more than the contract value?

Nothing stops them, and nothing warns you. The plan value is the fee multiplied by the term — a total of the agreed money, not a budget the system enforces. Anything chargeable on top of the fee bills as it happens: overage past a free quota, work added to a job’s cart by hand, items charged in full.

So invoicing past the plan value is normal on a busy contract rather than a sign something is wrong. If a client should not be billed beyond a point, that has to be managed on the rate card — quotas, or leaving a service off it — not by expecting the contract value to hold the line.

If a contract invoice is reversed, does the contract value recalculate?

No, and it is not meant to. The plan value on the billing panel is the recurring fee multiplied by the term — what the agreement is worth over its life. It is a projection of the deal, not a running total of what has been billed, so cancelling a bill does not move it. The only thing that changes it is changing the fee or the term themselves, and then it recalculates immediately.

There is no void action on an invoice in EyeOnTask. An invoice with no payment against it is deleted; once a payment has been recorded it cannot be deleted at all, and the way to reverse it is a credit note. Either way the contract’s own figures stay as they are — what the client actually owes lives on the invoices, not on the plan value.

I quoted extras alongside the package. Do they reach the contract?

Not on their own — but there is a button for it. The package becomes the contract; the extra items and services you quoted beside it stay on the quote until you fetch them.

Open the contract’s Rate Cards step and press Fetch, top right. The quote’s items come onto the card at their quoted prices.

That is usually exactly what you want: the client has agreed a price for that filter once, and fetching it makes the same price stand for every replacement the contract covers, instead of it being worked out again each visit. The lines stay editable if a price was only meant for the first sale. See fetching the quote’s lines.

Can I change the contract’s name?

Yes. Edit Contract reopens the wizard at Contract Details, the same first step where the name was set, and the Contract Name is editable there along with the category, description and tags. Update saves it.

Renaming changes nothing else. What invoices, jobs and the client’s Contract History refer to is the Contract Code, not the name, so the links between records hold whatever you call the agreement.

The Contract Code itself cannot be edited. Unlike an invoice code, which you can set to suit your accounts numbering, a contract keeps the code it was given — which is what makes it safe for everything else to point at.

What happens if I change the contract’s Project/Site?

The change is allowed without any warning, and it applies from that moment forward.

• Work patterns pick up the new site. You do not have to open them; the jobs they raise from now on are booked at the site the contract now names.
• Jobs you raise by hand afterwards use it too.
• Jobs already created stay where they were. A visit booked at the old site is still at the old site, and nothing about it is rewritten.

That is usually what you want — a client moving a serviced site to a new address keeps the history of what was done at the old one, while the coming visits go to the new. If a job already scheduled needs to move as well, change it on the job itself.

Does the status change on its own when the end date is reached?

Yes. Once the End Date passes the contract becomes Expired by itself — there is nothing to mark, and no reminder to action. Renew Contract becomes available at the same moment, since it only works on an expired contract.

What happens if a contract is put on hold while jobs are running?

Holding an agreement is done in two places, and they are independent of each other.

The work. Pause the contract’s work patterns. No further jobs are raised from the moment you pause. Jobs that already exist are untouched — assigned work stays assigned, a job in progress carries on, and everything the pattern has already produced stays exactly where it is. Resuming the pattern starts the routine again.

The money. Pausing the pattern does not stop the invoices. If the contract is set to Automatic, the recurring fee goes on being billed — automatic means the recurrence is on, and there is no pause for it. Switch the contract to Manual on the billing panel and nothing is raised until you raise it yourself. See stopping the billing part-way through.

So a contract on hold with jobs still running is a normal situation: the visits already booked go ahead, no new ones are created, and whether the client is still billed for the period is your decision, made by that automatic-or-manual switch.

Can I generate invoices after the contract expiry date?

Yes, by hand. Open the expired contract and Add Under This Contract → Add Invoice works as it always did, with Fetch & Link offering the next period and gathering its jobs. Billing a period past the end date is not blocked — you get a warning that it falls outside the term, and you can go ahead. This is how the last invoice of an agreement usually gets raised.

What stops is the automatic side: an expired contract raises no invoices of its own, so nothing is billed for a period it no longer covers. See invoicing after the term has ended.

Can I create jobs after the contract has expired?

Yes — from the contract itself. Open it and Add Under This Contract still raises a job against the expired agreement.

You cannot reach it the other way round. Adding a job from the scheduler or from Work, the Contract dropdown lists running contracts only, so an expired one is not offered there.

What expiry does stop is the recurring side: work patterns raise nothing further, because pattern dates default to the contract’s own dates and the routine ends with the term.

Nothing else changes. Jobs the pattern already scheduled stay on the calendar and run as planned, and a job you add by hand on an expired contract behaves like any other job on that contract — its lines still price off the rate card, at the contract rate rather than your master rate. See the contract lifecycle.

How do I renew an expired contract?

Open the contract, press the ≡ menu in the action bar at the top right, and choose Renew Contract. The dialog asks for one thing — the new term’s Start Date — then Next. See renewing an expired contract.

There is no wizard to work through. The End Date and Duration shown under the date are worked out for you, because the new term runs as long as the one that just ended, and the renewal carries the same rate card and work patterns. If something needs changing, open it with Edit Contract afterwards.

Renew Contract is greyed out

The contract has not expired yet. Renew Contract only becomes available once the term has ended — until then there is nothing to renew. If you need a second agreement while this one is still running, use Copy Contract, which works at any time.

What is the difference between Copy Contract and Renew Contract?

Both create a new contract with the terms already filled in. Renew carries the same client’s agreement into a new term and is only offered once the old one has expired. Copy works at any time and is what you use to start a similar agreement, usually for someone else. See copy against renew.

When a contract renews, does the free quota start again?

Yes. A renewal is a fresh contract, not a continuation — the terms carry across, but quotas start again from zero.

Does unused quota carry forward to the new term?

No. Anything unused stays with the term that ended. A contract that included four visits a year gives another four on renewal, not four plus whatever was left over.

Jobs and work patterns

Can one contract have more than one work pattern?

Yes, and this is often the right answer. Each pattern runs on its own cadence, so a single agreement can cover daily dusting and a weekly window clean, or four weekly camera routes that between them cover a whole site every month. See work patterns.

How do I update a work pattern on a contract?

Open the contract, press Edit Contract, go to the Work Patterns / Jobs step, open the pattern and change what you need. Update Pattern saves it.

Jobs the pattern has already created keep what they were created with — only the ones raised afterwards follow the new version. See changing, pausing or ending a pattern.

How do I delete a work pattern from a contract?

Same route — Edit Contract → Work Patterns / Jobs → open the pattern — and then Terminate, which is how a pattern is removed from a contract. Pause beside it stops new jobs without ending anything, which is what you want for a site closed temporarily.

I ended a work pattern and some jobs disappeared

That is intended, and only the untouched ones went. Ending a pattern removes the jobs it raised that nobody had acted on — creating a pattern makes its jobs immediately, so a pattern set up wrongly would otherwise leave a run of unwanted jobs to delete by hand.

Any job whose status had moved, or that had work recorded against it, is still there with its history. See what happens to the jobs it already made.

How do I remove the repeat from a single job rather than a contract?

That is a recurring job rather than a contract pattern. Open the job’s recurrence, and Delete Recurrence Pattern in the footer ends the series; the Paused / Running switch beside it stops it without ending it. The same rule applies to the jobs already raised — untouched ones go, acted-on ones stay.

I created the job from the Scheduler — does it still count under the contract?

Yes, as long as you selected the contract on the job. A job belongs to a contract whenever a contract is chosen on it; where the job was created makes no difference.

Is an extra, unplanned job automatically an extra charge?

No. Ad-hoc jobs follow exactly the same rule as scheduled ones — the rate card decides, and only for services the job actually carries. Leave call-outs off the rate card and a fixed monthly fee covers as many as the client needs; put them on it and each job that has a call-out on it bills.

Equipment and leasing

The contract expired — how do I put its equipment on a new one?

Link the units to the new contract, and that is all. An expired contract holds no claim on the equipment that was on it, so there is nothing to release or detach first; the old contract stays as the record of that term.

You can link from the new contract’s Link Equipment step, or from each unit’s own page with Add Contract. A unit sitting on two live contracts at once is fine too. See a contract does not tie a unit up.

Two contracts scheduled the same unit for the same hour. What happens?

A unit on two live contracts is a normal setup, and each contract schedules its own work independently — so a preventive maintenance visit from one and a calibration from the other can both land at 10:00 on the same fieldworker. Nothing stops them: a work pattern assigns without checking whether that person is already booked. Only work you add by hand raises a warning, and even that lets you continue.

It sorts itself out where it matters:

• On the day. The fieldworker cannot run both. Only one job can be In Progress at a time — putting the second one in progress puts the first On Hold — so they do one, then the other.
• On the timesheet. Worklog counts the stretch each job was actually in progress, not the slot it was booked into, so the overlap is never counted twice.
• On the equipment. Both jobs land on the unit’s service history. It is one asset timeline, whichever contract raised the work.
• On the bill. Two contracts, two invoices. Each one gathers only its own jobs for its own period through Fetch & Link, and each job is priced by the rate card of the contract it belongs to. A job never reaches both bills.

What you may want to fix is the clash itself, since the scheduled times will now be wrong on one of them: open one job on the scheduler and drag it to a free slot.

If I delete a piece of equipment, what happens to the contract?

Nothing on the contract changes. There is no separate contract history in EyeOnTask to lose: what a contract holds is its jobs, created and done, and the invoices raised against it, and deleting a unit leaves both as they are.

What does go is on the unit’s own side — its service history is deleted with it. That is the reason to archive a unit rather than delete it when it is simply out of service.

Can I change the Mode of Payment after the contract is created?

Yes. Open the contract, press Edit Contract, and go back to the Payment Terms step — the wizard reopens with everything already filled in, and Mode of Payment can be changed there along with the Lease Invoice Frequency beside it. See the invoice rhythm.

Can one contract cover both my equipment and the client’s?

No. A servicing contract works on the client’s equipment; a leasing contract rents out your own. One contract never mixes the two.

If I lease equipment out, can I still service it?

Yes. A leasing contract can carry work patterns just like a servicing one — set the pattern up with the service you want performed and every job it creates does that work on the leased asset. The rent is handled by the leasing terms; the servicing runs off the work pattern, on the same contract.

When is a usage-based leased asset actually billed?

When it comes back. Usage is the span between deploy and undeploy, so the charge is only final once the asset is returned. At job finish the app asks whether the equipment is staying or coming back — leaving it on site keeps the meter running, taking it back closes the usage period for invoicing.

Does a daily or hourly rate follow the invoice cycle?

No. Only flat / period rates are tied to the invoice cycle. Daily and hourly rates are usage-based and come from the deploy-to-undeploy time, whatever the lease’s invoice frequency is. See equipment leasing.

Predrafted contracts

I changed a package after quoting it. Does the quote update?

No. A package is copied into the quote at the moment you add it, not linked to it. Change the blueprint afterwards — the quantity from 5 to 10, a rate, a service — and quotes already made from it keep what they had, as does any contract already created.

The new version is used from then on: the next quote it goes onto, and the next contract built from it. If a quote that is still open genuinely needs the new figure, add the package again or edit the line by hand. See editing the blueprint later.

What is a blueprint?

Another word for a predrafted contract — a contract saved with everything filled in except the client. It is a master copy rather than a live agreement: it bills nobody, raises no jobs, and no term runs against it. You copy it each time you sell that agreement.

How does a predrafted contract work?

Build the agreement once — billing terms, rate card, work patterns — and save it as a blueprint, either from a contract you already have or from Add pre drafted contract on the contracts list. Blueprints sit on their own Pre Drafted Contract tab.

When you sell it, the blueprint is copied into a real contract two ways: pick it while creating a contract and the whole draft loads in, or put it on a quotation with Add Package and convert the quote once the client approves. Either way you supply the client, the dates and the equipment; everything else is already there. See predrafted contracts and packages.

Why can’t I add a client to a predrafted contract?

Because a blueprint is meant to be reused across many clients. And since equipment belongs to a client, equipment cannot be attached either — which is why the predrafted wizard is four steps instead of six. You add the client, dates and equipment when you turn it into a real contract.

What is the difference between a predrafted contract and a package?

They are the same thing seen from two places. It is a predrafted contract in Settings, and a package when you pull it into a quotation. See predrafted contracts and packages.

The contract document

The agreement I generated looks thin — sections are missing

The gap is almost always on the contract rather than the document. An empty Scope of Work, no Terms & Condition, or equipment that was never linked leaves nothing for those sections to show. Fill them in on the contract and generate it again.

What is the difference between Contract Document and Field Photos?

Contract Document holds the agreement file itself — including the signed copy once the client has e-signed it. Field Photos from Jobs are the pictures your fieldworkers captured while doing the work. They sit near each other on the contract page but are not the same thing.

Contract types

Why can’t I select Time Based?

It is listed so you can see it is coming, but it cannot be chosen yet. The two types available today are Fixed Price / Service Based and Equipment Leasing.