Contracts

A contract sets the terms Summance runs on: what to bill, when revenue is recognized, and what each customer owes, calculated automatically once the contract is in place.

What a contract holds

A contract captures everything needed to bill correctly from day one: the rate, any included minimum or seat count, which products it covers, and when the term starts and ends. It doesn't matter whether a customer pays per API call or per seat, once it's set up, both work the same way.

Worked example

Two contracts, two different pricing models, each built to fit how a business actually runs.

Driftmetric Team (usage-based)

Includes

50,000 API calls a month
Unlimited monitored services
Month-to-month term

Pricing

$0.02 per call above the included 50,000

Acme Team (seat-based)

Includes

5 seats
Shared workspace and roles
Month-to-month term

Pricing

£19 per additional seat
Flat monthly price, nothing metered

Both add up to the same three things: a rate, an included allowance, and a term. Only the numbers change.

How a contract arrives

A contract can arrive four ways: typed or pasted directly, uploaded as a document (PDF, DOCX, HTML, Markdown, or plain text, up to 20 MB), submitted by your own app through the API (for example, automatically the moment a new customer completes your signup flow, no person involved), or pulled automatically when a deal reaches Closed Won in your Salesforce or HubSpot. The first three are read by Summance's AI and turned into contract terms; the fourth is mapped directly from the CRM deal's own fields, no AI involved. Every path lands as a Draft first — reviewed and activated separately, never live the moment it's submitted. Whichever way it arrives, it becomes the same kind of contract described above.

Diagram showing four ways a contract can start — typed or pasted, uploaded as a document, submitted through the API, or synced from a Salesforce or HubSpot deal — all arriving as a Draft contract.

The New Contract screen: paste contract text directly, or upload a document.

The API path submits into this same flow without visiting this screen.

The rest of this section goes deeper on each part: how a contract gets created (Contract ingestion), what happens to it over time (Contract lifecycle), where Penny fits in (Penny's role), and how mid-term changes work (Contract amendments).