You can create a contract manually. In addition, a contract can be created automatically through Oracle Order Management or by creating a product that has a warranty in Oracle Installed Base.

A contract in Oracle Service Contracts comprises of a header, one or more lines and
one or more sublines. The header is where you enter a brief description and specify the contract duration. You can default values from the header of a contract down to the lines and, if applicable, to sublines as well.Lines list the individual service, usage, and subscription items that are included in the contract. A single contract can have multiple lines.Sublines specify what the service covers or the counters where the usage is tracked.
You can access this information from the Pricing/Products subtab of the Lines tab.
 

Header
The header level is composed of the fields at the top of the Service Contracts Authoring form as well as the Summary tab. The Summary tab also includes several secondary tabs. The following list briefly describes these pages:
• Parties: Enter information about the customer, including the bill to and ship to information for the contract.
• Pricing/Billing: Assign a price list and various accounting rules for pricing and billing contracts. In most cases, Oracle Service Contracts retrieves the contractual prices of services or usage from Oracle Advanced Pricing, however, pricing is done manually in some situations.
• Renewals: Define the renewal rules that are applied during manual or automatic renewal of the contract.
• Administration: Define administrative components that are used to process the contract, such as the QA checklist, contract groups, and workflow.
• Security/Text: Grant contract access by the resource group or user level.

Lines
Each line inherits certain information from the contract header such as effectivity dates, bill to and ship to information, and billing rules and schedules. These can be changed as appropriate to allow the contract to conform to the customer requirements. A contract line may be related to one or more sublines.

Three line types are available:

• Service lines: Cover a broad category of items that can include activities such as field service, depot repair, call center, technical support, or any other user-defined business activities. Each service line can cover one or more items that a customer owns.
• Usage lines: Charge customers for usage. For example, a photo copier company might wish to charge for the number of copies that are made within a period.
• Subscription lines: Cover subscriptions for both tangible and intangible items. Tangible items include magazines, collateral, or any other physical item that can be shipped through Oracle Order Management. Intangible items can be collateral sent through e-mail.

Note: Subscription lines do not have sublines.

The Lines tab includes several secondary tabs, which include:
• Accounts
• Effectivities
• Pricing/Products
• Exemption/Payment Options
• Counters
• Events
 

Note: The fields within each secondary tab are unique to the line type that you select.
For details on entering lines, refer to the specific line type topics.
• Entering a Service Line (General Procedure)
• Entering a Usage Line in a Contract
• Entering a Subscription Line

Sublines
Sublines specify what the service covers or the counters where the usage is tracked. You can access this information from the Pricing/Products subtab of the Lines tab.
 

The following list describes how each line type uses sublines:

• Service lines: Sublines for service lines specify what the service covers. A service line can cover a party, a customer, a site, a system, a product, or an item. 
• Usage lines: Sublines for usage lines specify the counters where the usage is tracked.
• Subscription lines:  Subscription lines do not have sublines.