Commercial catalog, quotes and contracts¶
Draft based on the recorded implementation and intended screens. The commercial console is partly connected and still under development. Deployment and reader acceptance are unverified.
Zerohive uses a plan catalog for standard commercial rules and a quote process for negotiated terms. A commercial contract records the agreed scope applied to a workspace. Billing then provides the separate financial records needed to understand charges, payment and subscription activity.
This distinction helps a buyer check what has been agreed, an administrator understand the resulting capacity, and a finance owner avoid confusing a negotiated deal with a completed payment. Ordinary users and external participants do not receive commercial administration powers; their workspace administrator remains their first contact when access is affected.
Understand the records¶
| Record | Purpose | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Plan definition | Standard seat bands, storage, API allowance, trial policy, availability, entitlement coverage and currency prices | Whether the plan fits the organization's needs and whether it is available for self-service or requires a quote |
| Quote | Proposed or negotiated commercial terms for an organization | Target plan, licensed seats, currency, term, contact, hosting, line items and current approval state |
| Commercial contract | Recorded commercial terms applied to a workspace after conversion or replacement | The workspace, active state, source quote when present, scope and history |
| Subscription and billing workflow | Recurring billing position and progress of a particular purchase or change | Payment requirement, effective time, status and whether the requested change has actually been applied |
| Invoice or receipt | A financial record associated with a charge or recorded payment | The correct organization, reference, amount, currency and payment evidence |
A quote can exist before its organization has a workspace. A contract must belong to a workspace. A saved plan or quote does not give every employee access: membership, product permissions and the allocation of purchased licenses remain separate.
Standard plans and negotiated scope¶
The current commercial ladder distinguishes Starter, Standard, Premium, Enterprise, Enterprise Plus and Private Cloud. Enterprise supports the self-service path through 250 seats; larger Enterprise Plus requests use negotiated quotes. The quote drafting boundary requires more than 250 seats for Enterprise Plus.
Private Cloud represents a hosting and isolation decision. A private-cloud attachment can be recorded separately on a negotiated agreement; large headcount alone does not prove a need for dedicated hosting. A commercial record does not establish that the required infrastructure has been provisioned. The Private Cloud commercial plan also does not activate disabled HiveAI Private Cloud capabilities; see HiveAI availability.
Seat and storage allowances, trials, add-ons and product coverage depend on the applicable commercial policy and access controls. Read usage, capacity and entitlements for what those allowances mean. Catalog examples in designs are illustrative, not current offers or promised prices. Review the actual offer for the organization before making a commitment.
Prices, quantities and currency¶
A standard pricing row gives a price per licensed seat in one currency. A plan can have several currency rows but only one active fallback default. The fallback is used when an active price for the requested currency is unavailable; it is not a currency-conversion service. Confirm the currency actually returned with the price.
Negotiated quotes retain a catalog reference price and may provide an override. The override takes precedence when present, including when it is zero. The base subscription line must match the quoted seat quantity and effective seat price. Additional lines can describe separate commercial items.
For a sanitized example, 300 seats at 20 currency units per seat correspond to a base amount of 6,000 currency units before considering other applicable charges or adjustments. This arithmetic is not a quotation, tax calculation or payment instruction. A field showing 20 is a unit price; it should not be read as the organization's total bill. Use the actual billing summary for the amount payable, currency and applicable discount, tax or proration.
From negotiation to contract¶
The normal lifecycle is a request or draft, submission for approval, approval, recorded acceptance and conversion into a workspace contract. Rejection sends the negotiation back for revision. Expiry or cancellation closes eligible quotes without creating a contract. Converted, expired and cancelled quotes retain their history.
Approval and acceptance are separate recorded milestones. The implemented staff workflow does not itself prove that a different person reviewed the terms, that a customer signed a document, or that money was collected. The organization and commercial owner must retain the appropriate decision and acceptance evidence.
Once a quote has been accepted, its terms cannot be edited through the ordinary draft action. The current workflow also does not allow an accepted quote to be expired or cancelled through those actions. If the agreement changes at that point, ask the commercial owner to resolve the next step; do not assume that another visible button reverses acceptance.
Conversion applies an accepted quote to one existing workspace or provisions a new one with an eligible initial administrator. It creates a contract, marks the quote converted and can replace an existing active contract. It can also affect the workspace's plan, licensed capacity and product access.
Conversion currently returns no payment checkout. A converted quote or active contract is not proof of payment. Confirm the financial position through subscription, invoices and payment. Infrastructure delivery, workspace readiness and member access also need their own checks.
Contract renewal and replacement¶
Commercial contract renewal is different from a recurring subscription payment. The implemented contract-renewal action immediately replaces an active commercial contract with a new active record and applies its terms to the workspace. The previous contract becomes inactive and remains available as history.
There is currently no verified draft-only save or separate approval stage within that renewal action, even though the intended screen contains renewal-draft wording. Do not treat selecting renewal as a harmless reminder or assume it schedules a future change. Staff should resolve the outstanding implementation and design constraints before relying on this as a complete renewal journey.
The record's term length describes commercial scope. It does not, by itself, prove that an expiry reminder, automatic commercial-contract renewal or a specific future activation date is scheduled. Subscription renewal and billing reminders are described in the Billing guide.
Catalog changes and their effects¶
Authorized platform billing staff maintain plans and currency prices with a recorded reason and before/after history. Some seeded plans are system-owned and cannot be recreated or deprecated through ordinary catalog administration. Deprecation marks an eligible plan inactive rather than deleting the commercial history.
Changing a catalog price, changing a workspace's negotiated contract and completing a paid subscription change are separate operations. Do not assume that editing a price immediately recalculates every existing invoice or agreement. Review the actual contract and Billing outcome for the affected organization.
Responsibilities and problem recovery¶
Managers should establish headcount and product needs with the workspace administrator. Executives and procurement owners should confirm scope, recurring commitments, hosting requirements and acceptance evidence. Tenant administrators should verify the resulting plan and capacity, then allocate access through membership and permissions. Platform staff handle the service-wide catalog and negotiated commercial records under separate staff authority.
If a result is unclear, keep the quote or contract reference, organization, intended change and time of the attempt. Ask the authorized commercial or support owner to compare the current record and history before repeating an action. A delayed downstream update, an unpaid charge, a failed save and a missing member license require different remedies. Avoid a second purchase simply because an unrelated screen has not refreshed.
The current console still has gaps in quote-status display, draft editing, new-workspace conversion, contract history and renewal handling. Those gaps are being tracked alongside the documentation. This draft explains the intended journey and current boundaries without claiming a completed or deployed staff experience.