Contracts and certificates that monitor themselves
Almost every company tracks expiry dates in a spreadsheet maintained by one person. It goes well for years, and then once it does not — usually with a contract worth forty thousand.
How it works today
The contracts sit in a folder, the dates in a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet is maintained by someone who does not look at it daily. Whoever signed the contract may not even work there any more.
A missed notice period costs an extra year. An expired certificate costs an audit, or an engineer turned away at the site gate. You find out about both afterwards.
- More than fifty live contracts or certificates
- Contracts that roll over automatically with a notice period
- Certificates a client requires you to hold
- Documents that have to be collected from new suppliers or staff
What happens, step by step
- 1Read the documents
Contracts, certificates and declarations are read from the folder or system they sit in today. Existing documents come along, not only new ones.
- 2Extract dates and terms
Start date, end date, notice period and renewal condition are pulled out, with the place they were found so it can be checked.
- 3Count back to the action date
It is not the end date that is monitored but the last day on which you can still do something. That is the date things go wrong on.
- 4Assign an owner
Every contract gets someone responsible. Without an owner an alert lands nowhere and nothing changes.
- 5Remind and repeat
Alerts go out at fixed points in advance and repeat until something happens. For supplier documents the reminder goes straight to the supplier.
- 6Block where it matters
An expired mandatory certificate blocks the scheduling or the order, rather than only sending an alert that can be clicked away.
Where it goes wrong when it is built too simply
These are the questions we ask in the quick scan. If a supplier does not ask them, they surface later anyway — usually once there is already an invoice.
- A contract where the notice period is written out in words, buried in clause 14.3.
- A framework agreement with sub-contracts that each have their own term.
- A certificate that has been renewed but saved under a different filename.
- A supplier resubmitting an expired document with a new date in the filename.
- A contract inherited in an acquisition whose original cannot be found.
- A notice period that runs from the signature date rather than the start date.
What it delivers
One missed notice period usually costs more than the whole automation. That is the honest way to look at this one: it is insurance with a measurable premium.
The second effect is less obvious but larger. Because the dates are extracted with their source shown, the spreadsheet stops being a private record in someone's head — and that person can go on holiday.
Below roughly fifty contracts this is usually a spreadsheet problem rather than an automation problem, and we will say so.
Build: €4,500 – €8,500
Category: Extensive automation
Build time: 26 to 45 hours
Lead time: 4 to 6 weeks
Maintenance: Managed, €395 per month
A range, not a quote. What it becomes for you follows from the Automation Check. All prices →
See all prices →Start with one process
Tell us which work gets retyped most often at your company. If automating it turns out to be a bad idea, you will hear that in the first conversation — before there is an invoice.
The first conversation is free and without obligation. Want it substantiated? The Automation Check is €295 — deducted if you have us build within 30 days.