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Are there any system limitations when projects have multiple prime contracts?

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Background

If your company is managing your construction projects in Procore, you can create one (1) or multiple prime contracts in each Procore project. 

Example

When to create a single contract

Most general contractors managing Procore projects create a single contract for a single project. This is the simplest way to manage projects that have an upstream approval requirement—such as approval from a single project owner or a single funding source. A single contract allows your team to manage your contract with the project owner as well as your upstream invoicing. 

When to create multiple contracts

If your project has multiple delivery methods, owners, clients, or funding sources, you may want to create multiple contracts. This allows you to manage multiple contracts and your upstream invoicing with multiple delivery methods, entities, phases, stages, and more. Reasons to create multiple contracts include: 

  • Multiple Clients and Funding Sources
    A project can have multiple clients or funding sources. For example, a specialty contractor might choose to create a separate contract for each client. Or your construction company might have been contracted to complete work on a project with more than one funding stream, such as a private donor, a public grant, a public authority, bonds, grants, loans, or a combination of all these examples. See Configure Settings: Prime Contracts. 
  • Multiple Stages
    A project can have multiple contracts for different project stages. For example, you might want to create multiple contracts for pre-construction, course of construction, and aftercare/maintenance.
  • Multiple Phases
    A project can have multiple contracts for different work phases. For example, you might want to create multiple contracts to manage the project's foundation, plumbing, HVAC, and so on.
  • Multiple Delivery Methods
    Depending on your delivery method, these are some reasons you might want to create multiple contracts. 
    • Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP) Contracts. A project can be fast-tracked or a phased GMP job. You might want to create multiple separate contracts for each established scope-of-work package.
    • Construction Manager as Advisor (CMa) Delivery Methods. If your company is operating as a CMa, you might want to create separate contracts between the owner and the various contractors hired by the owner.

Before creating multiple contracts, be aware of the limitations detailed below.

 Tip
Will the contract's Schedule of Values be aligned with the line items on the project's budget? If so, Procore recommends that you create your project's budget before the contract to eliminate repetitive data entry. To learn how to add line items to the contract's SOV using the project budget, see Create the Prime Contract Schedule of Values from the Project Budget. 

Answer

Yes. When creating multiple contracts in one (1) Procore project, be aware of these limitations:

  • Procore imports ALL of the line items on your project's budget. You cannot specify which budget line items to import.
    If you only want to import certain line items from your budget, Procore recommends choosing a different method for adding line items to a contract. See Create a Prime Contract SOV from the Project Budget. This prevents you from having to delete unwanted line items after the import. 
  • You are limited to one (1) set of granular permissions per Procore project
    You cannot create a unique set of granular permissions for each contract. See Grant Granular Permissions in a Project Permissions Template.
  • You will NOT be able to sort, add filters, or group report data from the Prime Contracts tool in other tools
    You will NOT be able to sort change events by each contract on the Change Events list page. To workaround this limitation, Procore recommends building a custom project report to show financial data that is sorted, filtered, or grouped by its respective contract. See Create a Custom Project Report.
  • You will NOT have the ability to map your commitments or automatically complete cost data
    You will not be able to map purchase orders and subcontracts to more than one (1) contract. Procore is also restricted from automatically completing cost data. If the same cost code & cost type combination is used on more than one (1) contract, Procore will NOT be able to automatically complete the direct cost amount and/or subcontractor invoice amount to your owner invoice. To avoid this limitation, you can create a unique billing period or sub-job for each contract.
  • If you use an ERP Connector, there is a one-to-one relationship with Prime Contracts. You can only ERP link one prime contract for every ERP-linked job.