Controller's Office
Ways that the Unit can help to improve to get an External Sales signed agreement
(contract) in place.
External Sales activities should use one of the University standard contract templates
(http://policy.umn.edu/contracts/categorycontractlist/247) whenever possible. However, if the External Sales
customer presents their company contract as the agreement for review, these steps will help to speed up the
contracting process for your unit:
1) Offer the University Standard Contract (obtained from the University’s Standard Contracts Library (which
also has instruction sheets for completion of many of the University’s Standard Contracts)) as a counter offer
with the message that this will greatly improve the speed by which the contract will be completed. If the
customer accepts it with no changes and signs it, it is known as a Standard Contract and it does not need to be
reviewed by the Office of the General Counsel, as all of the contracts on the Standard Contracts Library are
pre-approved for signature if no changes are made/requested.
2) If they choose to "mark-up" or "take exception" to parts of our standard agreement, please ask the Office of
External Sales to provide a version of the Standard Contract that will enable the customer to make any
changes in redline form on the Contract. Once received from the customer, the revised Contract should be
sent to the Office of External Sales for processing and transmittal to the Office of the General Counsel for legal
review (the agreement at this point is a non-standard contract).
3) If the customer rejects use of the University’s standard contract and insists on using their company contract,
negotiations on terms & conditions will generally take longer than starting with the University’s standard
agreement.
If you have any questions, please email your question to extsales@umn.edu.
Thank you,
Internal/External Sales Office