Business Procedures Tips
Contracts and Services Agreements
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Please keep in mind that typically no contracts (entertainment contracts, services agreements, etc.) may be made with UT System employees due to the Conflict of Interest policy, http://www.utsa.edu/hop/chapter4/4-31.html.
On Services Agreements, the project director you identify for the service should not be the same person as the authorized account signer in your department. Having this as two separate individuals follows segregation of duty protocol.
Should you have questions about Services Agreements or any other contracts, please contact Bob Miller.
Good news when working with Entertainment Contracts! Because of the service coding with entertainment contracts, Business Expense Forms are no longer required with these types of contracts.
When routing entertainment contracts and services agreements, an invoice needs to be attached to the packet. (Some of the details may already be listed in the contract/agreement, but for payment to be processed, an invoice must be attached.)
As a reminder, contract and services agreement signature authority is delegated to Vice President for Business Affairs, Kerry Kennedy, and Associate Vice President for Administration in Business Affairs, Pam Bacon. Other staff do not have the authority to bind the university to a contract.
For non-entertainment service contracts (such as for an external speaker at a workshop your department is hosting), you can do a purchase order (PBO) if the amount is under $5,000. The purchase order is a contract between UTSA and the service provider.
Always use Services Agreement templates from the (Associate Vice President for Administration) Public Folder on Outlook. Changes are made periodically to the templates and using the most up-to-date template form will save processing time. Reusing an older template will cause processing delays. Please use a large paperclip (instead of stapling) documents in contracts, services agreements, etc. as documents will be separated for processing, re-organizing in the stack, and photocopying.
Please route all contracts and services agreements to VPSA at least three (3) weeks prior to the events. This will provide time to review and handle any issues (such as risk, compliance, assessment, etc.) or unforeseen circumstances and route for approval. When there are complex issues with a contract or services agreement, please allow additional time for handling.
When working with templates (such as entertainment contracts, services agreements, etc.), please enable the Track Changes feature in Microsoft Word. It is very helpful when working with (and reviewing) these types of legal documents to be able to know what changes have been made (no matter how small).
In MS Word 2007, click on the Review tab at the top, and click on the Track Changes icon.
As a reminder, Contracts, Services Agreements and all other contractual documents must route through the VPSA Office before being submitted to VPBA. If you have questions about processing contractual documents, please contact Bob Miller in the VPSA Office.
There are some new websites for contracts. We recommend you bookmark these/save them to your favorites for ease in access. As always, please contact Bob Miller in the VPSA Office directly with any questions before routing your contracts and agreements and having the vendors sign these documents.
Please use this website (instead of Public Folders) to download current templates for contracts and agreements: http://utsa.edu/bussvc/departments/forms.html. Please do not attach any routing forms from this website. We have a routing form that applies to contracts and agreements in Student Affairs (which helps to expedite their handling).
Guidelines, Training and Informational Resources about contracts and agreements are available on http://utsa.edu/bussvc/departments/training.html
<< Back to the Business Procedures Tips Archive
Have a Business Procedures Tip to share? Please send it to Bob Miller.