1
Open the General settings page
In the left menu, expand the Platform section and click General (not the General under Security). Scroll to the Contract reference section.
Configuring Contract Reference Numbers
Every contract in Pactly carries a reference number, the identifier you search by and quote in correspondence. Left at the default, those numbers are just sequential, which tells you nothing about when a contract was raised or which part of the business it belongs to.
Pactly builds reference numbers from tokens you arrange yourself: a year, an incremental counter, and any fixed text you want to prefix. Set the format once and every contract created or uploaded from then on follows it.
What a reference number is made of
Section titled “What a reference number is made of”You assemble the format from a row of tokens. Each token contributes one part of the number, and Pactly joins them with hyphens. For example, a Year token followed by an Incremental 4-digit token produces:
2026-0001The available tokens are:
| Token | What it adds |
|---|---|
| Current Year | The four-digit year the contract was created, for example 2026. Required. |
| Incremental 3-digit | A counter padded to three digits (001). |
| Incremental 4-digit | A counter padded to four digits (0001). |
| Incremental 5-digit | A counter padded to five digits (00001). |
| Incremental 6-digit | A counter padded to six digits (000001). |
| Custom Text | A fixed text fragment you type, such as a business-unit acronym or a separator. |
The counter resets at the start of each year and increments by one for every new contract, so 2026-0001, 2026-0002, and so on.
Set up the format
Section titled “Set up the format”Step 1 of 4
2
Add the tokens you want
Click the + button to open the token menu, then choose a token to add it to the row. Add Current Year plus an incremental counter at minimum, and any Custom Text you need.
3
Order the tokens
Drag any token left or right to change where it sits in the number. The hyphen separators are added for you.
4
Save
Click Save. The format applies to every contract created or uploaded from this point on.
Step 1 of 4
To remove a token, click the × on the token and confirm in the Remove token dialog. To clear the whole format and start over, click Reset, which empties the row.
What happens next
Section titled “What happens next”The format applies going forward only. Reference numbers already assigned to existing contracts do not change. From the moment you save, each new contract picks up the next number in your chosen format, with the counter continuing from where the year left off.
Assign a specific number to one contract
Section titled “Assign a specific number to one contract”A contract no longer has to keep whichever number the sequence handed it. When one needs a particular reference, a legacy number carried over from an old archive or a number a counterparty already quotes, an administrator can set it directly on the contract.
Step 1 of 4
1
Open the contract
Open the contract whose reference you want to change.
2
Choose Assign Reference Number
Open the action menu in the contract header and choose Assign Reference Number.
3
Enter the number
The dialog shows what your company's format looks like, and the next free number in the sequence, which you can click to fill in. Type the number you want instead if it differs.
4
Check it is free, then assign
As you type, Pactly checks the number against every contract in your company and reports whether it is free or already used, naming the contract holding it. Click Assign once the number is free.
Step 1 of 4
The change is recorded on the contract’s timeline and in the audit trail, so there is always a record of who reassigned a reference and when.
Automatic numbering then works around what you assigned. When Pactly allocates the next reference for a new contract, it steps over any number already taken, including ones assigned by hand, so the sequence continues without ever minting a duplicate.