The assignment of handling contracts to flight events is automatically performed in a background process in the application as briefly described below.

In a first step, handling contracts including a freely definable selection of services, prices and price configurations can be created in the operative module Contract. These contracts can be individually designed for specific customers, aircraft, time periods etc. A list of all contracts is stored in the application's database.

With Seasonal Flight Plan (optional) and Flights, a constantly updated seasonal and daily flight schedule is created and maintained and available to the module Services.

Contracts can be assigned manually (basic) or automatically (Automatic Contract Assignment is an optional function).

Contract Assignment Procedure

The basic condition for a contract to be taken into account in this process is the validity of the contract. In this respect, the following conditions have to be met:

The contract has to be valid at the time, i.e. the flight has to take place within the contract's period of validity.
The contract has to be marked as active.
The system internal contract status indicates invoicing allowed. Please refer to chapter The Table Contractual Workflow Types -> Status for more information on the system internal contract status.

Manual Contract Assignment
In addition to the automatic assignment, it is also possible to manually select a contract for an event. This is possible for both flight events as well as non-flight events. A manual assignment is done with the creation and filling-in of a new data record (button Create a New Object ) or pressing the button for automatic contract assignment.

By assigning a contract to an event, all services contained therein are automatically entered in the table Contract -> Contract Items. This list includes both standard as well as optional contract services and cannot be edited. The table Events -> Contract Items only lists the optional contract services and is used to record details about those optional services actually provided for the customer.

Automatic Contract Assignment
During the automated contract assignment, all flight events which are imported from a flight scheduling system (e.g. Flights) are automatically checked for applicable contracts.

In the contract assignment procedure, the imported flight data is checked for a contract featuring conditions which are met by the actual flight data. The function monitors certain key data of flights, such as airline, aircraft type, flight times. The data to be monitored are configurable, but need to be fixed before the first installation. If these data change, the background process checks for the best matching contracts and applies them directly to the corresponding events under Service. This correlation uses the "best match" concept, i.e. selected data is compared and the contract with the best compliance is selected for the flight. In case no compliances are found or certain contradictions occur, no contract is assigned.

Contract Assignment using Rules

The application allows the user additionally to control the contract assignment by using rules.

Basic requirements for the assignment of a contract are the validity rules listed in the previous chapter.

In addition to this, each contract has to be assigned a specific Contract Type (e.g. Airline Contract). All contracts with an identical Contract Type are assigned a numerical Priority. During contract assignment, the contracts with the same Contract Types are checked from highest priority to the lowest. As soon as a rule applies, the corresponding contract is assigned and the check process for this Contract Type is stopped.

Now the check routine starts again with the next Contract Type and is performed as described above. After all contract types have been checked, the process is finished. Note that this check routine might result in the assignment of multiple contracts of different types to a single flight event.

Further criteria – or in technical terms "rules" – which determine under which conditions a contract shall be assigned to a flight (e.g. Airline, Service Type Code…), are defined in the module Contract, table Contract -> Assignment Rules (please refer to chapter The Table Contract -> Assignment Rules).

The use of contract assignment based on rules also allows the automated assignment of contracts to non-flight events. The rules required for this alternative assignment are implemented by top system according to customer-specific requirements.