Contracts FAQ
Answers to common setup and operating questions about Contracts.
For what the app is and how to set it up from scratch, see the
Contracts Overview.
Setup
Do I need to configure anything before my team can start creating contracts?
Enable the Contracts app from the Apps Marketplace and grant licences. By default, managers and above can create contracts. To change who can create contracts, open Settings → Who can create contracts and choose the audience. Until you save that picker, the app falls back to the Allowed roles list, which defaults to Admin and Super Admin. Admins and app admins can always create contracts regardless of this setting.
Who can see a contract once it is created?
Admins and super admins see every contract. Other users see only contracts for locations they have access to, plus any contract they uploaded or own. Contracts with no location assigned are visible to admin roles only. To enforce strict location scoping for all users, enable Enforce community scoping in Settings — until then, contracts created before location scoping shipped remain visible to everyone.
Permissions and access
Who counts as a “contract manager” and what can they do?
A contract manager is anyone who is an admin, a super admin, a Contracts app admin, the contract’s current owner, or its original uploader. Contract managers can edit, renew, amend, send for signature, and run AI analysis on their contracts. Ownership can be reassigned manually or transferred automatically when an employee is offboarded.
How do I control who can approve contracts?
Open Settings → Approval roles and select which roles can approve. The default is Admin and Super Admin. You can also build multi-level approval workflows under Settings → Approval Workflows, where each level specifies its approvers, whether all approvers or just the first must approve, and an escalation timeout. The submitter is never routed to approve their own contract.
Day-to-day
How does renewal work, and what does “auto-renew” mean?
When you renew a contract, the system creates a new contract record starting the day after the original ends, carrying over the same terms. The original’s status changes to Renewed. If you mark a contract as auto-renewing and set a renewal term in months, the system uses that term to project lifetime value — but the actual renewal still requires someone to click Renew or the renewal to be triggered by a workflow automation. Contracts are eligible for renewal when they are Active, Expiring, or Expired and their end date is within 6 months.
What are renewal-risk alerts, and when do they fire?
A daily job scores contracts by how close their end date is: Critical (within 30 days), High (within 60 days), Medium (within 90 days), or Low (within 180 days). Separately, the configurable Expiration warning days (default 30, range 1–365) and Renewal reminder days (default 90, range 1–365) control when email and in-app expiration and renewal-decision reminders are sent. You can also subscribe to a downloadable .ics calendar of upcoming renewals.
How do obligations work after a contract is signed?
Obligations are post-signature commitments you track against a contract — for example, “deliver monthly SOC reports by the 5th.” Each obligation has a cadence: One-time, Recurring (weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, semiannual, or annual), or Milestone. Completing a recurring obligation automatically creates the next occurrence, advancing the due date by one interval. The system stops spawning new occurrences once the recurrence end date is passed. Reminders fire at the 7-day, 1-day, and due-today marks, plus a newly-overdue alert the day after.
What does the AI risk score mean, and how is the threshold set?
When AI is enabled, each uploaded contract receives a risk score from 0 to 100: Low (0–30), Medium (31–60), High (61–80), or Critical (81–100). In Settings → Risk score threshold, you choose which band triggers auto-flagging (default is High). Contracts scoring at or above the threshold are flagged for review. Each contract gets 3 AI analysis runs per rolling 12 months by default; admins and app admins bypass this cap.
What is the AI playbook scan?
A playbook is a set of admin-defined rules, each requiring a specific clause type (such as termination, liability, or confidentiality) in contracts of a particular document type. When you run a playbook scan, AI checks the contract text against every applicable rule and reports whether each required clause is present, missing, or deviates from the ideal. Each rule can carry fallback positions, a walk-away condition, and a severity level.
Can AI draft a new contract for me?
Yes. An admin first creates an intake questionnaire for a document type under Settings → Drafting Forms. A requester answers the questionnaire, and the system either merges those answers into a base template or has the LLM generate the free-form sections to produce a draft contract. The result is a starting draft in Draft status that you review and refine — it is not a finished, signable document.
How do I standardize the clauses my team uses?
Enable the Clause Library in Settings. Admins can create reusable clause templates organized by type: payment, termination, liability, confidentiality, indemnity, warranty, dispute resolution, or general. Each template tracks its usage count. The playbook scan can then check uploaded contracts against these required clauses per document type and flag what is missing or off-standard. Individual clauses can be marked inactive to retire superseded wording without deleting them from contracts that already reference them.
How do I import or migrate existing contracts into the platform?
You have four paths. Upload individual PDF, DOC, or DOCX files (up to 10 MB each) from the contract creation page. Bulk-upload a batch of scanned PDFs through the OCR pipeline (AWS Textract or Google Document AI) to extract searchable text. Forward documents to a per-contract inbound email address — attachments become new versions. Or import a legacy contract register via the Smart Import CSV target. Contract numbers auto-generate with your configured prefix. When AI is enabled, each uploaded file is analysed to extract key terms, obligations, and a risk score.
When something looks wrong
Why can’t I see a contract I know exists?
Contracts are scoped by location. If the contract’s primary location is one you don’t have access to, it won’t appear in your list — unless you are its uploader or owner. Ask an admin to check the contract’s location assignment or to reassign ownership to you. Admins and super admins always see every contract.
I submitted a contract for approval and nothing happened — why?
Check three things. First, make sure Require approval is turned on in Settings. Second, confirm that at least one user holds a role listed in Approval roles. Third, if you are using multi-level approval workflows, confirm an active workflow exists whose value conditions match the contract’s value. When no workflow matches and no default workflow is configured, the system falls back to the legacy single-level, role-based path. Approvers receive email and in-app notifications and can approve or reject in one click from the email.
My contract shows “Expiring” but the end date hasn’t passed — is that a bug?
No. The system automatically updates a contract’s status to Expiring when its end date is approaching but still in the future. Once the end date passes, the status moves to Expired. The transition is date-driven and happens automatically.
Why did the counterparty portal link stop working?
Portal links expire after 30 days by default. Additionally, the token rotates after each upload from the counterparty side, so the original link becomes invalid once they upload a revised copy. Generate a new link from the contract’s detail page.
I can’t download the contract file — it asks me to verify my identity first.
Your admin has enabled Require step-up authentication for contract downloads in Settings. You need to re-verify your identity (for example, re-enter your password or complete a second factor) before the file is served. This setting is off by default.
Licensing and limits
Does Contracts require a licence?
Yes. Contracts is a licensed marketplace app. An admin enables it from the Apps Marketplace, and individual users need a licence assigned before they can access it.
What are the file and field limits?
Uploaded contract files must be PDF, DOC, or DOCX and no larger than 10 MB. AI smart-field extraction processes up to 40 custom fields per contract. Admins can define custom fields across 9 field types: text, text area, number, date, select, multi-select, checkbox, URL, and email. The contract value column supports up to 15 digits with 2 decimal places.
What are the configurable ranges for approval and notification settings?
| Setting | Range | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Renewal reminder days | 1–365 | 90 |
| Expiration warning days | 1–365 | 30 |
| Approval escalation timeout | 1–90 days | — |
| Reminder before escalation | 1–720 hours | — |
| Legal review value threshold | 0–10,000,000 | 100,000 |
| Auto-approve value threshold | 0–10,000,000 | — |
| Small contract value threshold | 0–10,000,000 | — |
| Large contract value threshold | 0–1,000,000,000 | — |
Which e-signature providers can I use?
Three options: the platform’s built-in E-Signature app (native signing), a connected DocuSign account, or a connected HelloSign (Dropbox Sign) account. Choose the default provider in Settings → Default e-signature provider. You can also mark a contract as signed manually for offline signatures.
When do vendor certification expiry reminders fire?
A daily job sends reminders at the 30-day, 7-day, and 1-day marks before a certification expires. Supported certification types are SOC 2, COI, W-9, Security Audit, Insurance, and Other. Enable Notify vendors of cert expiry in Settings to also email the vendor contact.
More help
- Contracts Overview
- Ask AI — the assistant answers Contracts questions from these articles.