Contract and Record Status Overview

 

The status of a contract - whether it is active or expired - is critical information when working with contracts. It is needed anytime a company needs to understand it’s legal obligations. 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 Record Status. The Record Status indicates whether a contract is Active or Inactive in addition to more detailed sub-statuses such as Evergreen, Auto-Renewing, or Expiring. The Record 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 Record 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.

 

 

 

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.

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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 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 Auto-Renewing: If a contract’s renewal type is auto-renew, the status will be displayed Auto-Renewing and display the days left to the auto-renewal. Expiring: If a contract has no renewal provision or a different one not covered by the system, it’ll show as Expiring with the days left to the contract expiring. Terminating: If a contract is terminated, and the termination effective date is less than 180 days away, the pill will display terminating. Superseding: If a contract is superseded, and the supersession effective date is less than 180 days away, the pill will display superseding. Extending: If a contract with an optional extension is extended, the pill will display extending.
Inactive	Inactive contracts will just show up as Inactive. When you hover over the status, the sub-status will show: Expired: If a contract is not renewed and didn’t have an auto-renewal provision, on it’s expiration date the contract will be marked as Expired. Terminated: If a contract is Terminated, then the sub-status will be terminated and the termination date will be shown on-hover. Superseded: If a contract is superseded, then the sub-status will be superseded and the supersession date will be shown on-hover. 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.

 

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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:

 

 

Renewal Types

• 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.

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.

 

 

Most contracts uploaded through Smart Import will have the Record Status automatically generated because Ironclad AI detects many of these properties.

 

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	Smart Import support
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.	Yes
Effective Date	date	Th 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.	Agreement Date
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.	Initial Term Length
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.	No
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 Term Length
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.	Yes, however, only Auto-Renew is detected by Smart Import.
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.	No

 

 

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.