Templates and clauses

A clause is one section of wording. A template decides which clauses print and in what order. A version is a template frozen at a moment in time, and it is the version — not the template — that a quote is built from.

You build a version, then press Publish version. From that moment it cannot be edited. To change the wording you create a new version and publish that.

This is the point of the whole design. Every quote records which version it was built from, so an agreement signed in March still says what it said in March, however much you have rewritten since. If a published version could be edited, you would have no way to prove what anybody actually agreed to — and that is the one thing a contract system has to be able to do.

A clause with no service set is shared: it prints on every agreement built from a template that lists it. Definitions, Acceptance, Limitation of Liability, Governing Law — the wording that does not change based on what was sold.

You place these by hand, in the order you want them, in Templates→the version you are editing.

A clause assigned to a service behaves completely differently. You never place it on a template. It reaches the document automatically whenever the quote contains an item from that service.

Each one prints as one of two things, set by Prints as:

• A summary paragraph — short, and gathered near the top of the agreement with the other services’ summaries.
• A detail section — the full terms, printed later in the document with the other detail sections for that service.

Order in service sets the sequence within a service. The services themselves print in the order set on the Catalog→Services tab.

Service clauses reach the page through placeholders you put in a clause body. Type an @ and pick one:

• @serviceSummaries — one summary paragraph per service on the quote.
• @serviceDetails — every detail section of every service on the quote, grouped and in order.
• @costSummary — itemised cost table with a discount row per line.
• @webCostSummary — services and cost, splitting one-time from recurring. For project work rather than managed services.
• @projectTimeline — milestone table from the dates on the quote.
• @definitions — both parties’ names and addresses.
• @signatures — the signature block.

This is what stops a template growing. With @serviceSummaries and @serviceDetails in place, adding a whole new service to your business means creating the service and pointing an item at it. The template is never touched again.

Clause bodies can pull in real values with double braces — {{client.legalName}}, {{org.address}}, {{quote.termMonths}}, {{quote.startDate}}.

The Templates screen shows a warning when your catalog references clause wording nobody has written yet — an item assigned to a service that has no sections, for instance. It is worth clearing, because each one is an agreement going out lighter than you intended.

Not sure how services and items divide up? Catalog, services and discounts covers that first.