Contract expiry reminders: what to track for renewals, terminations and auto-renewal clauses

1. 1Expiry date: the last day of the term. Framework agreements, annual service contracts and leases all have one.
2. 2Notice period: how many days before expiry you must notify the other side to renew, terminate or renegotiate, often written as "thirty days' written notice before expiry". This is the date that tends to get missed.
3. 3Auto-renewal: whether the contract renews automatically, for how long, and whether the price changes on renewal.
4. 4Obligations due before expiry: final payments, deposit refunds, delivery acceptance, return of data. Leaving these until after expiry puts you on the back foot.

Not every contract has all four, but check each one for every contract. Where something does not apply, record "none" rather than leaving it blank.

Set the reminder from the day action is needed, not from the expiry date. If termination requires thirty days' notice, the first reminder should come around forty-five days before expiry, leaving time to decide internally whether to renew and to get approval.

Two reminders work well: the first asks the owner to decide whether to renew; the second, a few days before the notice deadline, checks that the notice has gone out.

Who receives the reminder matters more than whether one is sent. A common split: the business owner decides whether to renew, legal confirms how notice is given and worded, and finance watches payments and price changes after renewal. When the owner leaves or changes role, their contracts' reminders move with the handover.

Reminders in a personal calendar or a spreadsheet comment disappear when people change. It is more reliable to record the expiry date, notice period and auto-renewal flag as fields on each contract in the contract register and generate reminders from those fields. For the other fields a register should hold, see contract register template: the fields you need.

E-signature does not cover this stage: tracking obligations and expiry after signing is contract management, as explained in e-signature vs. contract management system.

Start with four kinds of dates: expiry, notice period, auto-renewal and obligations due before expiry. Work back from the notice deadline to set reminders, give each reminder an owner, and keep reminders in the contract register.

Zico (FIM) is a contract lifecycle management system; after approval and signing, it sends automatic reminders for payment, delivery and expiry milestones, and archives performance milestones with the register.