To track contract obligations, go through each contract and list what you have promised to do, by when and how often, then give each obligation an owner and a reminder ahead of its due date. Track what the other side has promised too, so you notice when a supplier misses a delivery or a service level. The list is easy to start. The work is in keeping it tied to the people who do the work and updating it when contracts change.
What counts as an obligation
An obligation is anything a contract requires someone to do, or not do. Most fall into a few groups:
- Payments: fees, deposits, rent, late payment interest, price reviews.
- Deliveries and services: what you deliver to a client, or what a supplier delivers to you, and the service levels that come with it.
- Reporting: monthly status reports, usage figures, yearly financial statements, compliance certificates.
- Insurance and documents: keeping a policy in force and sending proof of it every year.
- Notices: telling the other side about a breach, a change of ownership, a new subcontractor or a delay, often within a set number of days.
- Approvals: getting consent before replacing key staff, assigning the contract or using a subcontractor.
- Restrictions: confidentiality, non-solicitation of staff, exclusivity. These have no due date but apply for a set time, sometimes years after the contract ends.
- At the end of the contract: returning equipment, deleting data, handing over files.
Your obligations and theirs
In a vendor contract, most of the obligations to watch are the vendor’s: deliver on time, meet the service levels, keep your data confidential, give notice before a price increase. Your own are usually payment, giving notice in time and sometimes a minimum purchase volume. Tracking the vendor’s obligations is what lets you claim a service credit or push back on a price increase that came without proper notice.
In a client contract, it is the other way around. Most obligations are yours: deliver the work, send reports, keep insurance, get approval before changing the team. Missing one can mean a withheld payment, a penalty or a client who does not renew.
Step 1: Find the obligations in each contract
Read each contract with these questions in mind, and note the clause number for every answer:
- What do we have to deliver, pay or send, and by when?
- What do we have to do regularly, every month, quarter or year?
- What do we have to do if something happens, such as an incident, a delay or a change in our team?
- What do we need permission for?
- What are we not allowed to do, and for how long?
- What does the other side have to do for us?
Look beyond the main text. Service levels, reporting duties and price lists often sit in appendices, and later amendments or letters can add or change obligations.
Step 2: Record them in one list
Keep one list across all contracts rather than notes inside each file. For every obligation:
- Contract and counterparty.
- What has to be done, in plain words, with the clause number.
- Who it falls on: you or the other side.
- Owner: the person who does it, or who checks that the other side has.
- Due date or schedule: a fixed date, a repeating schedule such as “by the 10th of every month”, or a trigger such as “within 72 hours of a security incident”.
- Status: open, done or overdue, with a note or a link to the evidence.
Obligations that start with “if” or “when” have no date until the event happens. Keep them on the list anyway, so the owner knows to act when it does. Not every contract deadline has a date covers how to handle them.
Step 3: Give each obligation an owner
The person who signed a contract is rarely the person who does the work. A sales lead signs the client contract and a project manager delivers it. The owner signs the lease and the office manager deals with the landlord. Make sure the owner of each obligation knows it exists and has read the clause behind it.
When someone changes role or leaves, go through their obligations and hand each one over by name. Hand over a contract without losing the details has a checklist for that.
Step 4: Set reminders and check what was done
Remind the owner ahead of each due date, with enough time to do the work: a week for a report, a month or more for an insurance certificate from a broker. For repeating obligations, set the next reminder as soon as one is done.
Record when each obligation was met and how, such as the report sent or the certificate uploaded. If a client or an auditor asks, you can show it. Once a month, look at what is overdue and what is coming up, and check that the other side has met its obligations to you.
Keep the list current
- Add obligations when a contract is signed, not when the first one is missed.
- Check amendments and letters for new or changed obligations.
- Remove obligations when a contract ends, but keep the ones that last beyond it, such as confidentiality.
- Review the list when your team changes.
When a spreadsheet is no longer enough
A spreadsheet works for a few contracts with a few obligations each. It gets harder when contracts have dozens of obligations, repeating schedules have to be rolled forward by hand, and reminders depend on someone creating calendar entries. The contract tracking template covers dates and renewals, not obligations.
ContractSorted reads each contract, including its appendices, and proposes the obligations it finds, each with the clause it comes from. You choose an owner and confirm the date or schedule, or keep an obligation as reference only. Owners get an email a week before, on the due date and once it is overdue, plus a weekly digest. When one is marked done, the next one in a repeating schedule is set up, and obligations that depend on an event are kept on watch until you report that it happened. Letters and amendments you add to a contract are checked for changes to its obligations, which you confirm before they take effect.