Customer contract life cycle

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Customer Contract Life Cycle

    The customer contract life cycle outlines the various states a customer contract undergoes, each enabling specific actions. Understanding these states and their associated actions helps ServiceNow customers manage contracts effectively, ensuring compliance with date validations and proper handling of contract lines and entitlements.

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    Life Cycle States and Actions

    • Draft: Contract is generated. Customers can modify start and end dates, add or remove contract lines and entitlements, and manage sold products or install base items within the set date range.
    • Active: Contract is activated on the activation date. Modifications are allowed via manual updates, integrations, or CRM workflows. The start date is fixed, but the end date can be extended beyond the current date. Contract lines and sold products can be added or modified.
    • Expired: Contract is deactivated on the expiration date. No further actions are permitted.
    • Canceled: Contract is canceled with no further actions allowed.
    • Suspended: When a sold product is suspended, related contract lines and entitlements in Draft or Active states also move to Suspended, pausing all activities except editing fields and creating related records. Upon resumption, the contract line or entitlement state updates based on its start and end dates. Expired state is applied automatically if the end date has passed during suspension.

    Parent-Child State Relationships

    When a parent customer contract moves to the Expired state, its associated contract lines and entitlements also expire. However, changes in child entity states do not affect the parent contract state. Sold products or install base items referenced must share the same state as their associated contract line or entitlement.

    Date Validations

    Contract lines must have start and end dates within the parent customer contract's date range. Any modifications to contract line dates must comply with the parent contract’s start and end dates to maintain consistency and validity.

    A customer contract goes through the various states in each phase of its life cycle.

    In each state, a customer contract is enabled to perform certain actions as mentioned in the following table.
    Table 1. customer contract life cycle, related states, and actions that it can perform
    Life-cycle State Action
    A customer contract is generated. Draft
    • The start and end dates of the customer contract can be modified such that the child records' dates are within the date range.
    • The related contract lines and entitlements can be added, removed, or modified.
    • The sold product/install base item covered can be added or removed.
    Customer contract gets activated on the date of activation. Active
    • Modifications to the customer contract can be done manually, via integration and via Sales Customer Relationship Management workflow.
    • The start date can't be modified.
    • The end date can be extended and should be greater than the current date.
    • customer contract line items can be added.
    • The sold product/install base item covered can be modified.
    Customer contract is deactivated on the date of expiration. Expired No action.
    Customer contract is canceled. Canceled No action.

    The customer contract line items and entitlements also perform similar actions in the respective states.

    When a parent entity moves to the Expired state, the child entities inherit the same state. For example, when a customer contract expires, the related contract lines and entitlements also expire.

    However, the state change of a child entity doesn't affect it parent entity.

    The sold product or install base item referenced either in the contract line or an entitlement must be in the same state as the entity where it's referenced.

    Suspended state

    When a sold product is suspended, the related customer contract lines and entitlements, in the Draft or Active states, move to the Suspended state as well.

    A suspended customer contract line or entitlement is paused for any activity, except the following:
    • Editing the field values.
    • Creating records in the corresponding related lists.

    On resuming the sold product, the related customer contract line item or entitlement acquires the state depending on its start and end dates. For example, a resumed entitlement that has its start date in the past and its end date in the future, acquires the Active state.

    Exceptionally, when a contract line or entitlement in the Suspended state has reached its end date, it moves to the Expired state automatically.

    Date validations

    A customer contract line associated with a customer contract must be created within the customer contract's start and end dates. Any modification to the dates of customer contract lines must comply with the date range of the parent service contract.