Does SAP contracts have grace end date functionality like Oracle ERP?

[Former Member]

Hi folks

as a user/customer in a company with SAP ERP and previously employed at Oracle I am curious about this:

Oracle ERP contracts module out-of-the-box includes a functionality called contract grace end date.  It basically gives the contract administrator the ability to put any number of days grace past the actual end date so that once the contract is expired other downstream systems like support can leverage the grace end date in entitlement calculations and continue support to a customer with an expired contract if it has a grace end date > contract expiration date.

Use cases for this are numerous: prolonged contract negotiations with a customer in good faith keep going before and after contract actual expiration, and the customer is not to be penalized by not having support during those extended negotiations.

Question:  Does SAP contracts have a similar functionality?  If not does anyone know of a successful customization that does this?

thank you.

[VeselinaPeykova · Accepted solution]

My experience with contracts was more as a business person than as a configurator.

What we did in our company was to start negotiations about a possible extension of the contract (if automatic renewal process was not already agreed upon certain conditions, of course) at least 1-2 months before the expiry date.

I understand that the time to finalize negotiations can vary per country, industry and company, but for sure your client can tell you how long it usually takes him to handle that.

Why can't they follow the same approach as us and start negotiations earlier?

You can configure follow-up actions for contracts close to expiration.

Why they cannot simplify the renewal procedures, so that they take less time?

We had no commercial ERP system, this is just a good business practice.

[Jelena · Accepted solution]

Why can't they follow the same approach as us and start negotiations earlier?

I'm wondering the same - can't say I have vast experience with the contracts, but the only place where I've observed a "grace period" would be the magazine subscriptions. If you have not renewed your subscription, some publishing companies might try to lure you back by sending an additional magazine issue in case you meant to renew but somehow forgot. If this functionality is provided by SAP it'll likely be in Media IS.

In other business settings I'd say it's rather uncommon. Some action gets triggered well in advance to ensure the contract is extended, instead of waiting till it expires and then allowing a grace period.

@G.Lakshmipathi - OP seems to be a user, so might not have full access to all the SAP offerings. But by the same measure I'm starting to doubt this was standard functionality in Oracle. I'm not sure how the users would be able to tell (in any ERP system) that some feature is "out of the box" or a customization.

[Lakshmipathi]

Have you gone through each and every field in contract before posting here?  For these types of queries, you can very well find out an answer had you checked in your system

G. Lakshmipathi

[Jelena]

Marge Wilaby wrote:

It basically gives the contract administrator the ability to put any number of days grace past the actual end date 

... and it exposes the company to financial losses. To my knowledge, no such frivolities are available in plain vanilla SAP (not sure about industry solution add-ons). That's why the best run businesses run SAP (and get their revenues).

Based on your description, it does not look like this grace period date actually drives any business process (other than telling some other systems "hey, don't cut off these guys just yet"), so I probably would've gone with a custom field. Didn't see anything like that available in standard configuration for the contracts, but maybe others know otherwise.