Amending a contract's amount
Back to index The scenario Your elevator maintenance vendor is raising the monthly rate from $2,350 to $2,630. You need the recurring expense to post at the new number from now on. On a FIXED...
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The scenario
Your elevator maintenance vendor is raising the monthly rate from $2,350 to $2,630. You need the recurring expense to post at the new number from now on.
On a FIXED contract, that is not a "small edit". It is an amendment, and the system treats it as one.
The one-sentence version
Change the price on a FIXED contract, and the contract goes back through the full approval chain, and back to the board if the new amount is at or above the board floor. Nothing posts at the new number until that clears.
This is the whole point of FIXED. A committed price cannot drift upward quietly. Somebody has to say yes to the new number, the same way somebody said yes to the old one.
How to do it
The amount lives on the template, because the template is the "what". So:
- Go to Property Settings, then Accounting, then Expense Templates. (Shortcut: the Manage templates link in the header of the Scheduled tab.)
- Open the template.
- Change Default amount to the new number.
The moment you do, the screen changes to tell you what you just triggered.
What you see
The amount field turns amber, and directly under it, where the helper text used to be, you get:
Was $2,350.00
with the old price. So you can always see what you are moving away from.
An information banner appears:
This will re-run approval
This template is on a FIXED contract (Elevator Maintenance). Saving a new price is an amendment: the full approval chain and the board (at or above the floor) will re-run before the next occurrence posts.
The sidebar shows the delta live: Amendment · $2,350.00 → $2,630.00.
If the new amount crosses the board threshold, you additionally get a warning:
Board re-vote required. The new amount ($2,630.00) is at or above the board approval threshold ($2,500.00). Saving will re-trigger the one-time board vote on this template. Scheduled instances will pause until the board approves the updated amount. Previously generated expenses are unaffected.
The save button changes from its usual label to Save Amendment (or Save and re-submit for board vote if the change crosses the board floor). A consequential save never looks like a routine save.
- Press Save Amendment.
What "re-arming approval" means
The contract's approval is re-armed: it goes back to pending, and the full chain runs from step one.
Concretely:
- The contract flips to a pending state. Its badge on the Scheduled tab reads Re-approval required · Amendment.
- Its Next run reads Paused. Nothing generates.
- The full staff approval chain runs. Every approver, from the first step. Not just the last one, not just the board.
- The board also votes, if the amount is at or above the floor. It is never board-only, and it is never chain-only.
- Approvers see the old and new amount side by side, with the percentage change. See What approvers see.
If you re-open the contract editor while this is in flight, it tells you exactly where you stand:
Generation paused until approved
The $2,350.00 to $2,630.00 amendment is in the approval chain. Approvers see the old and new amount side by side; generation resumes automatically once the chain (and board, if applicable) approves.
When the approval lands, generation resumes automatically at the new amount. You do not have to do anything else.
What happens to the expense that already posted
This is the part people worry about, so here it is plainly.
Occurrences that already posted in previous periods are untouched. Last month's $2,350 expense stays a $2,350 expense. History is history.
The occurrence representing the current contract (the one the approval is attached to) is corrected to the new amount, and the books are corrected with it. The old entry is reversed and a fresh, balanced entry is posted at the new amount, with the full history preserved. You do not end up with two live entries, and you do not end up with the books showing the old number while the contract shows the new one.
The correction and the reversal are both recorded in the audit trail. Nothing about this is silent.
Amending while an approval is already in flight
You amended it to $2,630, the chain is running, and the vendor comes back with $2,590 instead. You can amend it again.
The in-flight approval is superseded and a fresh chain starts from step one on the new number. Approvers who already voted on $2,630 do not carry their vote forward, because they voted on a number that is no longer the ask. The books are corrected to the newest number in the same way.
This is safe to do. You are not going to end up with two competing approvals or two competing entries.
What about VARIABLE contracts?
On a VARIABLE contract, changing the template amount is not an amendment, and it does not re-run the staff chain. That is the whole definition of VARIABLE: the amount moves, and moving it is normal.
What still applies on a VARIABLE contract:
- An occurrence at or above the board floor still routes to the board, unless the board-voting bypass is explicitly turned on. See Bypassing board voting.
If you find yourself wanting price changes on a VARIABLE contract to re-approve, you do not want a VARIABLE contract. You want a FIXED one. Flip the contract type (which itself re-arms approval).
One thing an amendment also does
If the expense was tagged to a board decision (see Tagging an expense to a board decision), amending the amount clears that tag.
That is intentional, and it is important. The board approved "up to $40,000 to replace the lobby carpet". If you then change the amount, you no longer have the board's blessing for the new number: they approved a specific thing. So the coverage is dropped and the expense routes back to the board normally.
This is recorded in the audit trail as its own event. Nobody has to notice that the coverage silently stopped applying, because it does not silently do anything.
What the system records
The re-arming of the approval is written to the audit trail, tagged with the reason amendment, so it is distinguishable from a renewal or a contract-type flip. The reversal of the old entry and the posting of the corrected one are both recorded. If a board-decision tag was cleared by the amendment, that is recorded as its own event naming the decision that was dropped.