How do you handle an on going contract with an account ?

Hi Folks,

I posted something similar in the general help wanted forum, having now found this forum here is the refined version!

Scenario:

We receive a lead, to provide a years worth of products, to be called off on a JIT basis, at an agreed price (+/- an index). The lead becomes a potential when a tender is submitted to supply 100,000 widgets to the company over a year. If we assume a widget costs £1, the potential revenue is 100,000. The contract gets awarded to ourselves, and we start supply.

Note that we have never supplied a quote, and we start to receive purchase orders - 1000 widgets one day, 5000 widgets a week later, nothing for 10 days etc. very variable.

I want to be able to record / review / view / report on:

The performance of the contract (actual revenue vs forcast, and actual product vs forcast) over the year.

Track each order / PO associated to the potential. Both volume/value received, and the products delivered (including time taken to deliver).

Track the invoices issued (attach these as documents from google docs ?) , and the payments received (invoices probably remain produced in another system), so that information is available in ZOHO to anyone reviewing / interacting with the account.

Can I do this with a single Potential record ? If so how should I set its status (the account is one, but the potential is ongoing) ??

Should I be using multiple potentials here ? I could see this getting very messy!

Should I be raising a quote each time (even if the customer does not want it!) to match each SO against ?

Many thanks in advance for your thoughts as to how best to manage this part of the process! I Should add that the account may have more than one contract with differing dates / products (a different master potential ?) and ad-hoc orders (which would have a separate quote created and sent to the client).

Regards,

Martin