The most popular contract type is the standard Retainer/Flat Fee contract. You can use this contract type to charge customers a flat periodic rate that includes a predefined set of support services. The customer will pay in advance, or on an agreed-upon billing schedule.

Create a Retainer/Flat Fee contract

1. From Admin on the sidebar, go to Business administration > Contracts.

The Contracts page appears.

2. Click New contract.

3. Fill in the contract header details:

• Select the customer.
• Give your contract a name.
• Select the start and end dates.
  Note: Atera will automatically calculate today's date + three years ahead.
• Set the contract as Active if you'd like to enable the contract (optional). 
• Set the contract as Default if you'd like this contract to be your default for this customer (optional).
• Set the contract as Taxable if you'd like a tax to automatically be added to the contract (optional). Select the tax from the dropdown menu (or create a new one).

4. Under Contract Type, choose Retainer/Flat Fee.

5. Enter the Quantity.

• For a retainer, the quantity should be typically left at 1.
• For a flat fee (e.g., Office 365), the quantity should represent the number of mailboxes.

6. Select the Billing Period.

7. Select the Rate.

• For a retainer, the rate will typically be the monthly recurring retainer.
• For a flat fee (e.g., Office 365), the rate can be the price per mailbox.

8. Select the Service Level Agreement (SLA) Plan.

9. Enter any Notes as required.

10. Click Save.

Nice! New Retainer/Flat Fee contract created.

Recurring billing for Office365 and other services

A Retainer/Flat fee contract can be useful for recurring billing for Office365. 

Let's consider the following example:

• A customer purchases 10 x Office mailboxes for $15 per mailbox per month. In this case, we need to charge the customer a flat monthly fee for 10 mailboxes (10 x $15 = $150). 

We can set this up in one of two ways: 

• Option number 1: Use a quantity of 10 with a rate of $15
• Option number 2: Use a quantity of 1 with the rate of $150
  Note: Option 1 is recommended, use this rate as a generic rate.