Regarding Contract and Entitlement in ITAM

Koki Sugimori · yesterday

Hello.

Regarding Contract and Entitlement in ServiceNow ITAM, what are the differences between these two, and what are their respective uses?
If you have any relationship diagrams or architecture diagrams for Contract and Entitlement, please share them.

Thank you in advance.

pr8172510 · yesterday

Hi @Koki Sugimori,

In ServiceNow ITAM

Contract

A Contract represents the commercial agreement with a vendor. It stores information such as

Vendor
Contract number
Start/End dates
Renewal terms
Cost and financial details
Attached documents

Entitlement

A Software Entitlement represents the license rights purchased under a contract. It stores

License metric
Purchased quantity
Rights (upgrade/downgrade, maintenance, etc.)
Software model association

Entitlements are used by SAM Pro reconciliation and compliance calculations to compare purchased rights against discovered installations.

Relationship

Vendor
   │
   ▼
Contract
   │
   ▼
Software Entitlement
   │
   ▼
Software Model
   │
   ▼
Installations / Usage
   │
   ▼
Compliance Position

Ex.

Microsoft Enterprise Agreement
          │
          ▼
       Contract
          │
          ▼
   Visio Entitlement
          │
          ▼
   500 Licenses Purchased
          │
          ▼
 Compare with Installations

Contract Entitlement

Commercial agreement	License rights
Manages vendor, dates, costs, renewals	Manages license quantity and metric
Financial/legal tracking	Compliance tracking
One contract can have multiple entitlements	Entitlements are used during reconciliation

Koki Sugimori · yesterday

@pr8172510

Thank you.

I have a few additional questions regarding the following points.

[Regarding Allocations]
When linking entitlement to actual usage, do we use Device Entitlement [alm_entitlement_asset] and User Allocation [alm_entitlement_user]?

[Regarding Contract and Entitlement in HAM]
Your response focuses on SAM, but for HAM maintenance contract or lease agreements, is it standard practice to manage them using only “Contract” without employing the concept of “Entitlement”?

[Regarding the Link Between Contract and Entitlement]
I understand that there is an intermediate table [clm_m2m_contract_asset] for linking contract and asset, but how are contract and entitlement linked?

Thank you in advance.

pr8172510 · an hour ago

Hi @Koki Sugimori,

1. Regarding Allocations

in SAM Pro, entitlements can be allocated to devices and users through allocation records.

Device Entitlement [alm_entitlement_asset] → entitlement assigned to a device/asset.
User Allocation [alm_entitlement_user] → entitlement assigned to a user.

These allocation tables help associate purchased rights with specific users or devices, depending on the license model and allocation method.

2. Contract and Entitlement in HAM

In HAM, maintenance contracts, lease agreements, warranties, and vendor agreements are typically managed through Contracts and related asset records.

The concept of Software Entitlements is primarily a SAM Pro construct used for software license rights and compliance calculations.

Therefore, for a hardware lease or maintenance agreement, it is common to manage

Asset
  │
  ▼
Contract

without using Software Entitlements.

3. Link Between Contract and Entitlement

In SAM, an entitlement can reference a contract through the Contract field on the Software Entitlement record.

Contract
   │
   ▼
Software Entitlement
   │
   ▼
User / Device Allocations

while

Contract
   │
   ▼
Asset

is commonly managed through contract-to-asset relationships such as clm_m2m_contract_asset.

The exact relationship can vary depending on the entitlement type and implementation, but the entitlement record itself typically carries the reference to the associated contract.