John,

Software License records and Software License Contracts serve two different complementary purposes in SAM within ServiceNow.

The Software License records identify the number of rights you purchased to use that software at a particular point in time. For example, if you purchased 20 rights to use Adobe Acrobat last week and another 10 rights this week, you would have two Software License records: one for each purchase with a Rights count of 20 and 10, respectively. These records are necessary to perform the count of Rights owned for the software.

The Software License Contract is where you manage contractual details, such as what type of contract do you have with the software publisher and when is that contract valid. This allows for some management of different scenarios such as:

• Enterprise contracts - you can identify a contract with a License type of Enterprise and apply it to the contract. You will then show as always compliant for the software, but can use the Software License records to indicate true ups.
• SaaS or Subscription - for this type of contract, you need to attache the Software License record and identify the dates it is valid. Then the rights purchased and indicated in that Software License record are only counted by the Software Counter for the period that you've indicated it is valid.

I hope this helps get you going.

Ben