Contract Management Template Excel

What is a Contract Management and Contract Management System?

Definitions of contract Management and Contract Management System:

Definition: Contract management is the management of contracts made with Business Partners (customers, suppliers, partners or employees). It is the process of systematically managing contract creation, repository, execution, and analysis.

Definition: A contract management system, is a framework ensuring contract management. Usually Excel or software, this is the backbone of your contract core processes. The main processes associated to contract are:

1. Creating: single contract and templates
2. Signing: from negotiation up to real signing
3. Archiving: getting contract in a safe place, with access rights managed and have an index of contracts, enabling control of dates

In everyday life, this can include the company policy on signing process and limitations (who-can-sign-what). If at this point of reading, you start thinking: “we do not have this”…

… Do not worry, you can start right here and right now. Managing legal cases is important. Some even hire a contract manager for this. Let’s see why.

Why implementing systematic contract management?

Hope is not a plan.

Worse case, you might even fail your contractual obligations. But even without going so far, you might just not get the best out of your contract. And even forget to request for other contract party to meets its obligations. In short:

• Breach of contract: you or undetected breach for counterpart
  • Litigation costs
  • Fines
• Business damages:
  • Relationships at personal or business
  • Loss of employee
  • Loss of customer or supplier
  • Unforeseen costs
  • Intellectual or Industrial Property
• Risks and uncertainty in conducting your core activities

When you’d rather wish not to ever use a contract and keep it at business relationship level, effective contract management is key to relationships between the contractual parties, fosters commitment and compliance, while mitigating risks. You don’t play with legal cases tracking and management.

This post goes into much more details, and provides as well an implementation checklist for starting a contract management project.

Excel Contract Management Template:

You may still wonder why Excel for contract management software. Because close to 1 billion Excel users and so many specialists still see this software as THE tool. And this is not likely to change soon… Let’s have a look at the contract management form, baby of years of best practice:

Structure of the Excel contract tracker:

There are 5 tabs in the contract register excel template:

• How to: a guideline on how to use the file
• Dashboard Contract View: a comprehensive dashboard across all contracts stored in the database. You have filtering options to update the view
• Single Contract View: it displays an overview on all information about a single contract, in a compact way
• Contract Database View: all contracts are stored, all versions.
• Paramaters View: in this tab you can customize the tracker at your convenience

 

Excel Tab with  Contract Monitoring dashboard:

 

Excel Tab with Single Contract View:

Benefit from information gathered in a single page:

• Contracts value / quantity per category
• Contracts value / quantity per contract owner
• Contracts value / quantity per renewal status
• Contracts value / quantity per signing status

 

The main view on a legal document:

What you see here is one of the two main views of agreements management system template. One single contract displayed with all its information:

• Legal
• Dates
• Business
• Benchmark

This is perfect for a print-out or a screenshot into powerpoint.

 

How to select a specific contract from the contract management database

 

Here is a classical drop-down menu, combining the name of the counterpart, the number of the contract and its version. This way, you can reach out to previous versions or store several contracts with the same partner.

Excel Tab with Contract Database:

This is the place where all contract details are stored. The relevant information is retrieved and displayed by the 2 previous tabs.

 

Fields of Contracts Tracker Spreadsheet database

Key fields of your contract tracking excel spreadsheet in the tab “database”:

The second main view is the tracking of contracts in a list view. All fields are in rows for each entry of tracking tab.

Unique Number	This is unique to the contract and all its versions and appendix	Signing date	The day you signed the contract
Version	Starts with 1 and change each time you release a new contract	Starting date	The date the contract is starting. Usually differs from signing date.
Current	Yes / No (is this the valid current version)	Duration	Total expected contract duration in years
Counterparty	The name of the person or organization you are signing with	Termination date	The date the contract comes to an end
Counterparty Owner	The name of your contact within the counterparty organization	Days to expiration	auto calculated
Business Owner	Your internal contract owner. Probably the one signing it or the person in charge within team of signing person	Next possible notice date	The date you have to quit a contract before next renewal.
Legal Owner	Your internal legal department or your lawyer	Days to next notice date	auto calculated
Category	See below parameters. This is segmented your database (partner contracts, HR contracts,...)	Auto renewal	Yes / No
Status	This refers to the contract management process chart: negotiation, signed,...	Value	Total expected amount of contract, in USD. May not always apply
Type	Is this contract strategic?	Annualized Value	Value divided by duration in years
Form	Paper / eSigning: helps to find the true original
Liabilities	An amount in USD, as per your engagement in contract. May not always apply.
Juridiction	Usually mentioned at the end of contract
Link	This is an hyperlink to the corresponding version of contract

This is how you you get the most comprehensive contract monitoring template. For your own success.

How to add a contract into the contract tracker database

Just add a line into the table with right-click, add a unique contract number and the database is automatically updated. This is the right time to:

• create a link to your contract
• check your access rights are correct

 

This is really a matters of minutes for creating a contract database in excel. Full overview, pre-defined parameters, all configurable. Creating an entry in the database as easy as expected.

How to filters contracts in the tracking database:

There are numerous ways to filter the contract tracking spreadsheet, just a click:

 

The available standard filters of the contract management dashboard in Excel are:

• Category: you can filter per category / department / type of contract. It depends on how you set the categories in the beginning.
• Status: whether a contract is signed or pending
• Business Owner: the one in charge of the contract from business point of view
• Legal Owner: the one in charge of the contract from legal point of view. Can be external.
• Alarm: one of the best features… When is my contract renewal etc…?

But you may build any filters and customize the contract register template. There is no protection, no macro.

How to set and customize parameters of contract tracking database in Excel

The contract lifecycle management in Excel covers all the life of the contract. All its phases. We have created specific parameters for all the contract life cycle and contract analysis. You can edit following parameters of the contract management spreadsheet:

• 

  Categories: a segmentation and classification of your contracts (Sales, Partnerships,…)

• Business Owners and Legal Owners: who is owner of the contract from the legal and the business point of view
• Status: is it already signed, still in negotiation,…
• Form: do you have a paper or a eDocument. Is long term critical when you need to deepdive
• Type: a second kind of classifications of your contracts. Is this strategical or neglectable
• Notification days: how many days in advance do you want to get notified before the contract is expiring (expiration reminder or renewal reminder)

All parameters of this case management excel template are provided with the default value, the most used, but you adapt it to whatever makes your situation specific.

Real-life tip:

Don’t spend too much time at the beginning in defining your categories in the legal case tracking template. Just start build your database.  This way, You will soon realize, by doing it, which filter you would like. It takes a couple of seconds to amend. Do not over engineer your contract analysis template at the beginning.

What data structure is needed in the background of the contract tracking excel template

Structured way of processing your contracts repository and monitor changes

Obviously the contract management database template implies a structured way of working. But this is straightforward. You just need a classical folder structure, possibly cloud based (google drive, MS Teams,…) to ensure right access management in a clean way:

• one folder per contract, including all versions and appendix, (and its unique number in naming is not mandatory but better)
• tight control on access rights

Real-life tip:

First time I built my contract folder structure when starting a new job as Group Category Director, I put all my focus on structuring the directories and folders to host all contracts versions, by name and version etc… This is obviously necessary, but shall not prevent you from creating the “index” out of it: this excel template. And the best way to marry both approaches, is to have one single document in .pdf for each contract, gathering the contract and the appendix (a little of Adobe would help). This way, only one hyperlink per contract.

Main benefits of the contract management template in Excel:

The three main benefits are:

1. Classification and searchability: with all the parameters
2. Not missing the deadlines
3. Get your company a strong brick on the wall of risks mitigation

You can as well use the template for software renewals or more generally as agreement tracker. Whatever your use case, it helps to ensure your contract annual maintenance and renewal maintenance.

Real-life tip:

I can only recommend to lock the Excel spreadsheet, and for one person to become the one and only user. For compliance first, but as well risk is too big that people kill your file…