Contracts, SLAs and academic-year terms

Your contracts is what your school currently holds: every agreement, when it started, when it ends, and what it costs. It is the page to open when somebody asks "are we still buying that".

Academic years, not calendar years

Terms run to the academic year, so an agreement almost always ends on the 31st of August and starts on the 1st of September. That is what schools budget against, and it is why a renewal decision lands in the summer term rather than at Christmas.

Multi-year terms

An agreement may run for more than one year. The contract page says which year you are in — "year 3 of 5" — and what each remaining year costs.

The middle years of a multi-year term are not decisions. What arrives each summer is a confirmation of what happens next, and only the final year carries a real renewal choice. The page makes that distinction rather than leaving you to work it out from the dates.

Rolling agreements

Some agreements continue year on year until somebody says otherwise. They still produce an invitation each summer with both prices on it, so continuing is a decision you take rather than one that happens to you. See renewals.

What a contract page shows

• The service, the service area, and the person to speak to about it.
• The term: start, end, which year of how many.
• The price: net, VAT and gross, for this year and for the years to come.
• What is included, and anything you are entitled to draw down — consultancy days, visits, reserved guidance.
• The order it came from.

What it entitles you to

Holding an agreement can unlock more than the service itself: guidance reserved for subscribers, e-learning included with the package, documents you could not otherwise download. Those appear as ordinary items with no gate on them for you, so it is worth knowing what you hold before you buy something separately. See guidance and documents.

Changing one mid-term

Agreements run to their term. Where something genuinely has to change — a school converting, a service withdrawn — that is a conversation, and the help bubble with the contract open is the place to start it. The ordinary answer to "we want less of this next year" is the renewal.

Visits and days

Where an agreement carries a number of days, see visits against a day entitlement.