Add contract and license details to apps

This guide relates to the legacy version of the Contracts and Licenses feature. For information about using the new Contracts feature, see Manage contracts and renewals.

You can choose whether to add license details to apps directly or record details of contracts and then link the licenses within each contract to apps. In either case, you need to determine whether you're creating a new license, updating an existing license, or renewing an existing license. 

Contracts vs licenses

Licenses represent the access and usage rights you've purchased for an app. When you record app license details in Trelica, you define the structure of that license:

  • Per-user licensing - a number of users and a corresponding rate per user.
  • Per-unit licensing - a number of non-user related units (e.g. servers) and a per-unit rate.
  • Flat rate - a fixed fee for a defined period. This fee is not directly tied to any count of users or units (but it might include a maximum number of users or units).

You can then use this information to track your license entitlements (i.e. how many licenses are available under the current contract) and your license assignments (i.e. how many of these licenses are assigned to users). 

For larger organizations with more formal procurement processes, license information may be contained in order forms, purchase orders or invoices. In Trelica, these documents are referred to as contracts. Contracts act as a "wrapper" for licenses. They provide a more efficient way to group licenses together when you're purchasing multiple licenses and / or license plans from a single vendor under one contract.

Let's use an example: Atlassian is a provider of multiple apps (Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket etc). Each Atlassian app is licensed with different plans (e.g. Standard, Premium, Enterprise). It's common for larger companies to purchase a mix of Atlassian products and license plans under a single contract, either directly from Atlassian or via a reseller.

One option is to enter each license into Trelica, repeating the start / end dates and uploading the same supporting document each time. However, by starting with a contract you can group all of these licenses and license plans under a common reference document and license start / end dates.

Contract is a good catch-all term, but the downside is that it can be confused with a legal agreement or Master Subscription Agreement (MSA). In most situations, a legal agreement with your SaaS vendor won't contain license details.

Import contracts automatically

If your organization uses a procurement management system, you may be able to import contract details into Trelica automatically. For example, you can connect Coupa to Trelica to import Purchase Orders (POs), including attachments and (if entered into Coupa) line item detail.

Once you have set up a contract integration, the Contracts list is automatically updated with new contracts from your source system. You can then review the imported contracts, extract license details and link them to app licenses. 

Review imported contracts

By default, contracts are imported with a status of "new". We recommend periodically reviewing all new contracts and updating the status of each so that you can keep track of progress:

  • Select Excluded if the contract is not relevant to SaaS management. This might include non-software spend that has been miscategorized in your source system. Excluded contracts are hidden by default; to view excluded contracts, filter the Licenses list by status.
  • Select Queried if you need to clarify whether the contract is relevant or if information is missing and needs to be added before you can extract license details. 

  • Select Accepted if the contract is relevant and contains sufficient data to create licenses in Trelica.

Extract license details

Depending on the format of the data in your source system, the information relating to app licenses will either be contained in a document attached to the contract or recorded as line items below the contract details. 

Coupa contract.png

If the license details are contained in a document, you will need to add line items to the contract manually. There is no requirement to create an entry for every line item in the document; you can simply add entries for the app license line items and ignore the other data. For more information about adding line items, see Add contracts manually below. 

If line items have been created automatically from data in the source system, you will need to link the relevant line items to app licenses. Expand the context menu for the line item, select Link to license and then follow the steps described under Add licenses to contracts below.

Coupa contract license.png

Add contracts manually

If you want to record contracts in Trelica but your organization is not using a supported contract system, you can add contracts manually. 

From the Licenses list, select the Contracts tab and then click New. Enter details and attach documents as required.  

The 'agreement date' should be the start of the license period, rather than the date the contract was issued or signed. This date, combined with the duration, are used to set the default period for any licenses associated with the contract.

New contract.png

Once you have entered the basic contract details, add entries for the licenses contained in the contract. Below the contract details, click Add and select New license, and then follow the steps described under Add licenses to contracts below.

You can also record other line items, such as professional services or call-off support days. This information is not required for tracking licenses in Trelica, but it is useful if you want to reconcile the total displayed in Trelica with the contract value.

To import license details from a spreadsheet, please contact the Trelica Support and Customer Success team

Add licenses to contracts

If you have imported contracts from an external system or added contracts manually, you will need to add licenses and/or link line items to licenses:

  1. From the contract details page, either:
    • Click Add and select New license, or
    • Select an existing line item, expand the context menu and select Link to license.
  2. The New license dialog is displayed. Select the app that the license applies to from the Application dropdown list. By default, the list is restricted to apps associated with the contract vendor. Select Vendor is a reseller to search the full app catalog. 
    Add license to contract.png
  3. Once you have selected the app that the line item relates to, you can either:
    • Select Create new from the License list and enter details to create a new app license.
    • Select an existing app license (if applicable) from the License dropdown list and either update the license details or renew the license as appropriate.

    For more information, see Create, update or renew licenses below.

Add licenses manually

If you have not entered contract details, you can add licenses to apps manually. You can also update existing licenses (for example, to add more users) and renew licenses. 

To add a license to an app manually, open the Apps inventory, select the relevant app and then open the Licenses tab. Either click New license or expand the context menu for an existing license and select Edit or New terms as appropriate. For more information, see Create, update or renew licenses below.

Add app license manually.png

Create, update or renew licenses

Regardless of whether you're adding or linking licenses to a contract, or adding licenses to apps directly, it's important to determine whether you're adding a new license, updating the details of an existing license, or renewing an existing license:

  • Create new - If there are no existing licenses recorded for the app or if the license is for a different license plan or has different start and end dates to any existing licenses, create a new license. 
  • Renew existing - If you're rolling forward or extending an existing license while keeping the same plan, use the renewal option. The license details are all rolled forward, but you can update the price and number of users/units to account for any changes made on renewal. For more information, see Manage app license renewals.
  • Update existing - If the license is associated with a contract and you're adding new users or units to an existing license while keeping the same license plan and end date (often referred to as "co-terming" license seats) then update the existing license. Trelica automatically apportions the costs based on the date of the change. For more information, see Update an existing license below. If the license is not associated with a contract, create a new license to record the new users or units for the relevant term. 

License details

Plan name refers to the type of license plan, such as "Individual", "Professional", or "Enterprise". This is particularly relevant if you're purchasing a mix of license plans for a given application.

Use the Price and Number of users/units options to define the license model. Recording these details helps to ensure the license utilization assessment is accurate.

As you enter pricing details the summary on the right-hand side updates automatically. This is a good way to sanity check what you're entering. For example, if you accidentally entered an annual price set to monthly, the summary will show a much larger number than you were expecting!

Enter license details.png

Update an existing license

When updating an existing license to add more users or units to the existing license term, you need to take care to merge the changes into the existing license and contract correctly. Note that this option should only be used for licenses associated with contracts.

  1. If you're adding or linking to a license from a contract, select the relevant app and then select the license you want to update from the License dropdown list. 
    Alternatively, from the Licenses list or the Licenses tab on the app profile, edit an existing license. 
  2. Update the Price and Number of users / units, to reflect the new total. For example, if the existing license was for 100 users and this update is for 10 more, change the number of users to 110.
  3. Update the license Start date to reflect the start of the updated terms rather than the original start date.
  4. Change the Duration to set a Renewal date that matches the renewal of the original license. For example, if the original license for 100 users started on Jan 1st and expires on December 31st and this update was adding 10 more users on July 1st, set the start date to July 1st and the renewal date to December 31st. If your updates are not "co-termed" to align with the existing license end date in this way, create a new license rather than updating an existing one.

Next steps

Once you have added license details to apps in your inventory, you can start using Trelica to manage license renewals. You can also compare license entitlements to actual usage to ensure you have sufficient licenses without over-purchasing. 

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