The renewal you didn't see coming

1. Signed, saved, forgotten

The average business loses almost 9% of its annual revenue to poor contract management. In industries with complex supply chains or heavy compliance, it can be more than 15%.¹

Most of that isn’t lost in negotiation. It’s lost after the contract is signed, when it’s saved to an inbox, a shared drive or the desk of whoever bought the service, and nobody looks at it again until something goes wrong.

Why contracts end up in inboxes

• Whoever buys, signs. IT signs software deals, operations signs facilities contracts, marketing signs agencies. Finance pays the invoices.
• Nobody owns it after signature. The person who negotiated it moves on. The contract stays.
• The important dates are in clause 14. Notice periods and renewal terms are buried in the small print, not in a system.

2. What a missed date costs

Contracts rarely end. They roll over. That’s where the money goes.

1. Auto-renewal. Miss the notice window and you’re committed to another full term, often one to three years.
2. Price uplifts. Many contracts rise each year by inflation plus a margin. Unchallenged, it compounds.
3. Paying for what you don’t use. Software licences for people who’ve left. Services you stopped needing a year ago.
4. Lost leverage. The best time to renegotiate is before the renewal date. After it, the supplier has no reason to move.
5. Invoices above the agreed rate. Without the contract to hand, nobody checks that invoices match the price you signed.

A worked example

A software contract worth £24,000 a year renews for three years unless you give 90 days’ notice. Nobody notices the date. It rolls over with a 7% uplift, to £25,680 a year.

That’s more than £77,000 committed over three years, for a tool half the team stopped using.

3. Five dates every contract record needs

Alongside the dates, record the owner, the annual value, the payment terms, the termination terms and where the signed copy lives.

4. Build a renewal process

1. One register. Every contract in one place, with the five dates. Not a folder per department.
2. An owner for each contract. A named person who decides what happens at renewal.
3. Reminders well before the notice deadline. At 120, 90 and 60 days before, not on the day.
4. A decision at every renewal: renew, renegotiate or retire. Check usage and performance first.
5. Check invoices against the contract price. Every invoice, not just the first one.

5. Quick audit

Tick the statements that are true for you.

• We could list every contract over £10,000 a year within an hour
• Every contract has a named owner
• We know which contracts renew in the next 90 days
• Notice deadlines are tracked, not just end dates
• Someone checks invoices against contract prices
• We review software licences against active users before renewal
• Signed copies are stored in one place
• Leavers’ contracts are reassigned to a new owner

Fewer than six ticks? Start with the register. Our contract renewal tracker is an Excel template with a guide to using it.

Sources
1. World Commerce & Contracting, Contract Management: An Overlooked Driver of Business Agility and Financial Performance, August 2025. Reported by CFO.com.