Support Central
Manage all your contracts, changes, and payment applications in a collaborative environment.
Aconex Connected Cost allows all organizations to manage contracts, contract changes, and payment processes in a sophisticated but easy to use tool. When both parties are using Aconex, they can collaborate on the platform while maintaining the privacy and security of their data.
Contracts in Aconex Connected Cost reflect the real-world agreements between two parties who are providing and paying for goods and services.
In Cost, the two parties are referred to as the upstream and the downstream organization. The upstream is the organization paying for the goods and services that the downstream organization provides.
Contracts are created in Cost as either an upstream or downstream contract, depending on your organization’s role, and they have slightly different functionality.
Once a contract has been created, the contract change and payment application processes can begin to capture changes to the agreement and payment approvals.
Note: in some regions contract changes are called variations and payment applications are called progress claims.
Your organization may not have access to the budget and earned value management features in Cost. In this scenario contracts and the collaborative features still work, but the contracts won’t have links to budgets and forecasts.
Contact your Oracle representative or Oracle support if you’d like to know more about budget and earned value management features in Cost.
Downstream contracts can be shared with the other organization in Aconex to allow collaboration. When the contract is shared, the downstream organization can create and submit contract changes and payment applications for the upstream to approve.
When working on a shared contract, both organizations can create contract changes and payment applications, but only the upstream can approve them.
Cost has a built-in process for the draft, submission and approval of contract changes and payment applications. While being drafted, the details are not visible to the other organization.
Contracts can be created in a different currency to the project base currency used for budgeting on the cost worksheet. The currency selected for the contract applies to all contract pay items, contract changes, and payment applications.
Cost uses project exchange rates to convert the contract values to the project currency so you can track commitments and actual costs against your budgets and forecasts.
Aconex Connected Cost applies some fundamental logic and calculations using your contract data. If you are using the project controls license and have a cost worksheet, contract values are reflected against each control account so you can track your project expenditure.
Below are some fundamental rules that apply to downstream contracts. Upstream contracts don’t currently link to the cost worksheet and have no impact on any values.
| Downstream Contract Logic | |
| Approved contract amount | Always displayed as commitments on the cost worksheet. |
| Approved contract impact on estimate to complete | May affect the estimate to complete, depending on the forecast method. |
| Payment application amount | Always displayed as an actual cost. |
| Approved contract change amount | Always displayed as a commitment on the cost worksheet. |
| Approved contract change amount impact on estimate to complete | May affect estimate to complete depending on the forecast method and ETC drawdown flag on the contract change. |
| Pending & proceed contracts, changes, payment applications | Don’t affect the approved commitments or estimate to complete but do show up in the status based columns like proceed contracts and all commitments. |
| Foreign currency contracts | Contract commitment values are converted to the project base currency using the project budget exchange rate. Payment application values are converted to the project base currency using the project actuals exchange rate. Contract forecast is converted to the project base currency using the project forecast exchange rate. Retention (withheld) amounts are converted to the project base currency using the project budget exchange rate. |
For more detailed information on calculations in Cost, visit Cost Worksheet Calculations.
All organizations on Aconex can use Cost to create and share contracts.
Organizations paying for the project controls license also have access to the cost worksheet to manage budgets, progress, earned value, and more. For an overview of the features available see Introduction to Aconex Connected Cost.
If your organization only has the contract management features, Cost is simplified to allow you to get working with contracts quickly and easily. Contracts are created in the same way regardless of the license, the only difference is whether contract items link to budgets on the cost worksheet.
See the difference between the Project Controls and Contract Management license in the screens below.
Rule 1 is applied against the total value of the contract and is useful when a contract includes negative pay items, as shown in the example below.
This rule also applies when contract changes are being submitted and approved, to prevent negative changes reducing the contract value below the all actuals amount.
Without this rule, a payment application for 100% of Item 1 and Item 2 could be approved, which would cause payments to exceed the total value of the contract.
Note: The scenario in the table below is prevented by Rule 1.
| Current Amount | All Actuals | Percent Invoiced | |
| Pay Item 1 – Area A | $1,000 | $1,000 | 100% |
| Pay Item 2 – Area B | $1,000 | $1,000 | 100% |
| Pay Item 3 – Backcharge | -$200 | $0 | 0% |
| Contract Total | $1,800 | $2,000 | 111.11% |
Rule 2 is similar to Rule 1, but applied to each pay item on the contract. It’s possible for the total contract to be less than or equal to 100%, but individual pay items could still be over 100%.
Note: The scenario in the table below is prevented by Rule 2.
| Current Amount | All Actuals | Percent Invoiced | |
| Pay Item 1 – Area A | $1,000 | $1,100 | 110% |
| Pay Item 2 – Area B | $1,000 | $800 | 80% |
| Pay Item 3 – Backcharge | -$200 | -$100 | 50% |
| Contract Total | $1,800 | $1,800 | 100% |
Contract validation can be disabled by Oracle Support on a per-contract basis. If your project has the need to run contracts with validation disabled please contact support.
Warning: While validation is disabled, it’s still possible to approve payment applications that exceed the contract value. This could result in actual costs exceeding commitments on the cost worksheet. We recommend that you have validation re-enabled as soon as possible.
Before validation can be re-enabled, the total contract must be less than or equal to 100% percent invoiced (rule 1), and all pay items must have a percent invoiced less than or equal to 100% (rule 2).
Validation can only be re-enabled manually by Oracle. Please contact Oracle Support to re-enable it.
