Obligations

What are Obligations in Ironclad CLM?

Once a contract is signed, obligations define required actions for each party, ensuring compliance and outlining consequences for non-fulfillment. Each obligation has an owner, status, and type.

Ironclad offers the ability to create, manage, and track obligations using predefined types and properties. You can create structured obligations from archived contract records using predefined out-of-the-box obligation types. To ensure accountability, you can assign ownership to other Ironclad users and modify key details such as type, name, description, status, and owner. A centralized Obligation dashboard provides a comprehensive view of all obligations, allowing you to filter by key properties and save custom views for quick access.

Obligation Permissions

Obligation permissions in Ironclad are tied to repository record access. To create or own an obligation, a user must have at least edit access to the related record in the repository. When a legal or operations user assigns an obligation, Ironclad automatically checks if the assignee has view access to the record. If they don’t, the assigner will receive an error message notifying them that the assignee lacks the permissions. Users with workflow/record view permissions can see all linked obligations but can only edit the ones they own. Those with edit permissions can modify or reassign obligation ownership.

Obligations Dashboard

You can manage obligations using the Obligations Dashboard. Here, you can add, view, and edit obligations. You can also filter your obligations and create saved views for easy reference.

Obligations Within Contracts

When an obligation is created, it is linked to a contract within Ironclad. You can click on any workflow/record, and then click on the associated document. The document displays.

From here, you can click the Obligations tab located on the right and view a list of the obligations associated with that contract, as well as edit, delete, and add obligations. Obligations are grouped together by their obligation type. 

Obligations and Entities

In Ironclad CLM, entities serve as a single, unified hub for all the organizations or counterparties you engage with, such as companies, contractors, educational institutions, and other collaborators. This enables quick contract creation and provides insights about your counterparties. You can easily understand your overall relationship with a company and find recently signed contracts.

When creating an obligation, it is linked to a record within Ironclad. If the workflow/record has an entity assigned to it, the obligation is automatically associated with that entity.

Note: The Entity field is now auto-filled from the parent contract.

In the Entities Dashboard, you can select an entity and navigate to the Obligations tab to view all obligations tied to contracts linked to that entity. Obligation permissions follow the associated contract’s permissions. Obligation permissions are inherited from the associated workflows/records.

How Do I Get Started?

To get started, first decide which obligation details your team needs to capture, then set up obligation properties and obligation types in Data Manager, and finally create obligations manually or extract them from contracts. After your setup is in place, you can create obligations, manage obligations from the Obligations dashboard, and, if you use entities, review them by counterparty from the related entity record.