This article will walk you through what a Record Status is, where it is located, and how it affects the contract lifecycle.
The status of a contract - whether it is active or expired - is critical information when working with contracts. Companies spend a lot of time managing the lifecycles of their contracts to stay on top of upcoming expirations and renewals and to ensure the statuses of their contracts are up to date.
Ironclad simplifies this process by representing this concept with Contract Status. The Contract Status indicates whether a contract is Active or Inactive in addition to more detailed sub-statuses such as Evergreen, Auto-Renewing, or Expiring. The Contract Status information is presented in the status pill, which is visible across the platform wherever records are visible. This includes the Dashboard, reminders, and contract relationships search. The Contract Status is automatically populated and updated based on the effective date, expiration date, and auto-renewal type.
If you want to learn about the associated Lifecycle Preset, refer to Use the Lifecycle Preset in Workflow Designer.
The following functionality will be live on July 10th. To learn more about the features included in our July release, refer to What's New in Ironclad: July 2025.
Contract Status and Renewal Status Webhooks
You can use Contract or Renewal status updates to trigger downstream automations with external systems. You can configure these statuses to notify other systems and trigger automation flows when the Contract or Renewal status has been updated. Learn more about contract and renewal status webhooks (coming soon).
View Images of the Status Pill in Various Locations
Enable Contract Statuses
If you were an Ironclad customer prior to September 13, 2023, an admin must enable this. To enable this functionality, navigate to Company Settings > Settings and toggle on Contract lifecycle. You must add the Lifecycle Preset to your workflow configurations before turning on this feature to ensure the statuses are accurate.
If you became an Ironclad customer after September 13, 2023, this functionality is automatically enabled.
Statuses and Sub-Statuses
In addition to the main statuses of Active, Expired, and Unknown, the Record Status pills also convey sub-statuses and the number of days left to an event that may change the status of that contract. When users hover over the Record Status pills, they will see relevant information such as when the contract expired or when the contract is auto-renewing.
The filters for statuses only allow users to filter by
Active,
Inactive, and
Unknown statuses, while filters
on renewal type, expiration date, etc. can help users get specific sub-statuses.
The following table describes all of the possible statuses and sub-statuses for a record:
| Status | Sub-Status |
|---|---|
|
Active
|
Active
If a contract is not Evergreen and more than 180 days
away from a future status, the status will show just
Active.
Evergreen
If a contract is marked as having an Evergreen renewal
type (ie. is a perpetual contract, or doesn’t have
an expiration date).
180 Days Before a Future Status
|
|
Inactive
|
Inactive contracts will just show up as Inactive. When
you hover over the status, the sub-status will show:
Executed
Contracts that have been signed but have an effective
date in the future, thus being inactive at the moment
will show up as Executed and display the number of days
left to the Effective Date.
Activating
If you re-activate an inactive contract via actionability,
the status will display as activating, with the number
of days to the new effective date.
|
|
Unknown
|
If the Ironclad system is unable to determine the status
of a contract due to missing information, it’ll be denoted
as such and the status pill will let the user know what
information is missing.
Use the edit functionality to add the missing properties
via the metadata panel for a record (right hand side
panel) in order to ensure the correct statuses are populated.
|
Auto-Renewals
Contracts that are marked as auto-renewing are truly auto-renewing in the
Ironclad system. For records where the Renewal Type property
has a value of
Auto-Renew,
their expiration date will automatically be moved forward by their renewal
term, up to the maximum number of allowed auto-renewals set in the contract.
Users will be able to clearly see:
- the renewal history of the agreement.
- the number of times the agreement renewed.
- the term length the agreement renewed for.
Renewal Types
The renewal type for an agreement will govern what happens on its expiration
date if it has one. The renewal types of contracts govern their statuses
and you must follow these definitions for statuses to populate accurately.
For example, some organizations refer to contracts that auto-renew as
“evergreen” indefinitely. However, in Ironclad, “evergreen” means contracts
that have no concept of a term or an expiration date. For auto-renewing
contracts with infinite auto-renewals, please list their renewal type
as auto-renew and leave Renewals Allowed blank to have them auto-renew
indefinitely.
- Auto-Renew: These agreements will automatically renew on their expiration date which means they will then have a new expiration date which would be the current date plus the renewal term length.
- Optional Extension: These agreements have an optional extension which means that the party can choose to renew the agreement by the renewal term length without renegotiating the contract. There may be a notification requirement to exercise this option.
- Evergreen: These are agreements that don’t have an expiration date, which means they are active forever. Also known as perpetual agreements.
- None: This is for agreements that don’t have a renewal provision and will expire on their expiration date. If an agreement has no renewal provision but also doesn’t have an expiration date, it’ll be active forever.
- Other: For renewal provisions that are not covered by these options.
Ensure Record Status is Populated and Accurate
The Record Status is populated by looking at the values of a few key properties on each record, such as Expiration Date and Renewal Type, and running calculations on them against the current date. For example, if Expiration Date for a record is 1 year after the current date, then the Status for that record will be Active.
If the required properties are not populated or are not accurate, then the
Record Status will be Unknown or inaccurate.
You must ensure the values of these properties are accurate for Record Status to work properly.
Smart Import Status Support
Most contracts uploaded through Smart Import will have the Record Status automatically generated because Ironclad AI detects many of these properties.
To learn more about the properties supported by Smart Import, refer to the Ironclad AI Overview.
The table below shows the full list of properties that drive the Record Status and Auto-Renewal logic and whether each is supported by Smart Import:
| Property Name | Data Type | Description | Required for Status/Auto-Renewals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Expiration Date | date | The expiration date is when this agreement will end or become inactive, if an expiration date isn’t present then the effective date plus the initial term length are used to determine the expiration date. |
One of Expiration date or Initial Term Length are required in order to determine the expiration date of an agreement.
Not required if the agreement is evergreen/perpetual or doesn’t have an explicit expiration date. The agreement will then stay active until the user manually marks the contract as expired.
|
| Effective Date | date | The effective date is when this agreement begins and is considered active. If the effective date is not defined then the executed date of the agreement is used as the effective date. | Required for statuses and auto-renewals. |
| Initial Term Length | duration | The initial term length is the time from the effective date that the agreement will be effective for. If this is not defined, then the agreement will be active until the expiration date. If an expiration date is also not defined, then the agreement will be active indefinitely, until the agreement is manually marked as terminated or expired. |
One of Expiration date or Initial Term Length are required in order to determine the expiration date of an agreement.
Not required if the agreement is evergreen/perpetual or doesn’t have an explicit expiration date. The agreement will then stay active until the user manually marks the contract as expired.
|
| Renewals Allowed | number | Agreements that have an auto-renewal, may have a maximum number of times they will auto-renew before expiring. If left blank then the number of auto-renewals will be unlimited. | Only required for auto-renewing contracts that have a maximum number of auto-renewal. If not present or left blank the contract will auto-renew perpetually until canceled/terminated. |
| Renewal Term Length | duration | If an agreement auto-renews or has an optional extension, that renewal/extension will have a term (1 year, 6 months, etc). | Required for agreements that are auto-renewing or have an optional extension and used to calculate the new expiration date when the agreement renews. |
| Renewal Type | text - multiple choice |
The renewal type for an agreement will govern what happens on its expiration date if it has one.
Auto-Renew: These agreements will automatically renew on their expiration date which means they will then have a new expiration date which would be the current date plus the renewal term length.
Optional Extension: These agreements have an optional extension which means that the party can choose to renew the agreement by the renewal term length without renegotiating the contract. There may be a notification requirement to exercise this option.
Evergreen: These are agreements that don’t have an expiration date, which means they are active forever. Also known as perpetual agreements.
None: This is for agreements that don’t have a renewal provision and will expire on their expiration date. If an agreement has no renewal provision but also doesn’t have an expiration date, it’ll be active forever.
Other: For renewal provisions that are not covered by these options.
|
Required if you would like to accurately track the full lifecycle of the agreement.
If this is not present or left blank, the contracts will either stay active forever or expire if an expiration date is present.
|
| Other Renewal Type | text |
Yes, if you would like to account for renewals not captured by the renewal types listed above.
The system, however, will expire these agreements on the expiration date if an expiration date is present.
|
Update Workflows to Populate Properties
To ensure these properties are accurately tracked across all of your records, it is important that they are included in all of your workflow configurations. Ironclad has made this easy to do by creating the Lifecycle Preset. This preset makes it simple to add all of the important properties with associated launch form questions and conditions to any workflow configuration. To learn more, refer to Use the Lifecycle Preset in Workflow Designer.