Overview
Maintaining up-to-date and accurate contract information is crucial to optimizing your financial resources. It helps identify opportunities for cost efficiency, avoid overpayments, and negotiate better terms during renewals. It also ensures you never miss important renewal dates, preventing service interruptions or less favorable renewal terms, and facilitates effective spending tracking, allowing you to monitor and manage expenditures to ensure they align with your budget. This checklist will guide you through the process of cleaning up inaccurate or missing contract information so you don't miss any renewals and can manage your contracts more effectively.
Step 1: Filter Contracts
When identifying contracts that need attention, consider the following options:
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Using the Contracts Page:
- Access the Contracts Page and click on Filters.
- Apply filters such as Status: Inactive, Stage: Not Set, Undetermined Contracts, and Renewal Requests Needed to identify contracts requiring review.
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Using the Requests Page:
- Navigate to the Requests Page.
- Apply the Requests Needing Contracts filter to quickly find requests that require contract records.
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Using Tropic AI:
- Ask questions like "Do I have any contracts that are inactive?" or "Which requests need contracts added?" to quickly surface relevant information.
- Using these options will help you efficiently identify contracts that need attention and ensure your contract data remains accurate and up-to-date.
Step 2: Review Contract Records
For each contract that appears in your filtered results, some of the following actions may be needed based on its status:
Undetermined Contracts
- Navigate to the contract record and determine why the status is undetermined.
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Upload missing documents or add key metadata such as Start Date, End Date, Contract Owner or even the Total Contract Value.
- For example: Some undetermined contracts may be month-to-month subscriptions that require a Start Date and need the Renewal Type updated to Perpetual Renewal.
- Confirm and save changes to update the contract status appropriately.
Inactive, Not Set Contracts
- Review the contract to determine why the Stage is marked as Not Set. Every inactive contract should have a stage assigned, as it helps clarify why it is inactive (e.g., Renewed, Terminated, Not Renewed). Understanding the difference between Terminated and Not Renewed is important—Terminated means the contract was canceled during the term, while Not Renewed indicates it reached the end of the term without being extended.
- Confirm key lifecycle details, such as renewal terms, termination dates, and contract owner information.
- Update the Contract Stage to reflect its current status (e.g., Active, Renewed, Terminated, etc.). If applicable, you can use bulk editing to update multiple contracts at once, making the process more efficient
- Save changes to ensure the contract stage accurately reflects where it is in its lifecycle.
Requests Needing Contracts
- Navigate to the Requests Page and apply the Requests Needing Contracts filter.
- Click on the specific request that requires a contract.
- Go to the Workflow Tasks tab.
- Under the open task, click Upload to add the required document.
- Complete any additional required fields, then click Save to ensure the contract record is updated.
Action Required Contracts
- Click into the contract record to check what needs to be completed.
- Address any pending tasks, such as adding missing fields, confirming renewal terms, or uploading any missing documents.
- Once resolved, save changes and ensure the contract status reflects the updates.
Step 3: Update Contract Data
- Ensure you are the contract owner or have the necessary user role.
- If the contract’s stage is marked as “Not Set,” review the contract details and update the stage to reflect its current lifecycle (e.g., Active, Renewed, Terminated).
- Verify that you have provided Start and End dates and that they are accurate
- Mark the contract as Not Renewed/Not Renewing if it was not renewed at the end of the term, or if you are not planning on renewing it. Tip: Verify that you’ve opted out of any automatic renewals.
- If a contract is renewing, ensure that you have a request in progress. If not, submit a request here.
- Ensuring a contract follows the full lifecycle—Active → Renewal in Progress → Renewed → Inactive Renewed—is key to maintaining an accurate contract dataset.
- Mark the contract as terminated if it was canceled during the term.
- After making the necessary updates, ensure to save the changes to the contract record.
Cross-Check Supplier & Transaction Data (Optional but Recommended)
- Ensure the Supplier Name in the contract record matches Tropic’s supplier list to prevent reporting discrepancies.
- If a contract is missing a supplier, use Supplier Matching to confirm vendor alignment in Tropic.
- Check if there are unmatched transactions related to this contract. If so, create Transaction Mapping rules to categorize them properly.
Why It Matters: Ensuring supplier accuracy and categorizing contract-related transactions improves financial reporting and spend visibility.
Step 4: Complete the Review
- Continue reviewing and updating the remaining contracts in the filtered list.
- Double-check all updated records to ensure accuracy and completeness.
- Confirm that all contracts have been reviewed and updated accordingly.
Additional Resources
For more detailed instructions about Contract Management, please refer to the following resources: