In companies that use a high number of contracts, several contracts are often subject to the same business controls (for example, agreements on pricing or terms of payment). Contracts with the same business requirements can be linked to a master contract as lower level contracts. The general requirements stipulated in the master contract are then valid for all the lower level contracts assigned to it. The referencing procedure acts as a set of rules in Customizing which enables you to control which data from the lower level contract can be changed and which data has to agree with the master contract. This ensures that the defined requirements remain consistent in all the assigned lower level contracts.

If any of the fields in the master contract that have to be identical to the equivalent fields in the lower level contract are changed, these fields must also be changed in all assigned lower level contracts.

The workflow enables you to control the process of changing master contracts simply and efficiently. All the lower level contracts assigned to a master contract are updated and the employees involved are automatically informed if an error occurs, such as an application error or if the document is blocked.

Changing the master contract triggers a workflow that accesses the assigned lower level contracts and automatically copies the changes to the lower level contract. If an error occurs, a work item appears in the inbox of the person who changed the master contract, who has to process it manually. A separate window displays all the changes that have been made for information purposes.

If a temporary error occurs in a lower level contract that you want to change, for instance, it is blocked because someone is processing it, the system carries out the changes later on in the background. You can decide how much later on the system makes the changes by making the settings for a time span in Customizing. If the system cannot make the changes after several attempts, the person who changed the master contract receives a work item in their integrated inbox. When you trigger the work item, the system tries to change the lower level contract in the background again. If an application error then occurs, the system replaces the work item with a new one that can only be processed online.

In order to guarantee consistent data retention, all the lower level contracts that are to be changed are blocked until the workflow has finished. Once the changes have been made, the workflow finishes and the document is unblocked.

The following graphic illustrates this process schematically: