Creating and Managing Agreements

Agreements are the heart of StretchContracts. Every contract — signed or not — lives as a structured record you can search, report on, and act on. This article covers creating an agreement, editing its details, and managing it over its life.

What's in an agreement record

Each agreement captures:

• Title — a human-readable name (e.g. "Acme Corp — Master Services Agreement 2026").
• Type — NDA, MSA, SOW, retainer, contractor, consulting, service, employment, SaaS, vendor, proposal, or custom.
• Status — where it sits in the pipeline (draft, internal review, sent, approved, active, renewed, expired, cancelled, archived).
• Owner — the person responsible for the agreement.
• Value and currency — the commercial value, tracked precisely; the default currency is CAD and can be changed per agreement.
• Key dates — start date, end date, and renewal date. These drive renewal metrics and risk scoring.
• Approval notes — free-text notes for reviewers.
• Body — the contract text itself, either drafted from a template or entered directly.
• Metadata — additional attributes such as auto-renew and notice period (days), which feed renewal-risk intelligence.
• Contract key — a stable identifier the system generates automatically from the type (for example msa-1a2b3c4d5e).

Create a new agreement

1. Open Agreements and choose New agreement (or start from a template — see Drafting from the Template Library).
2. Enter a clear title.
3. Choose the type. This sets the contract-key prefix and how the agreement is grouped.
4. Set the status — usually draft for a new record.
5. Enter the value and confirm the currency.
6. Set the start date, end date, and — importantly — the renewal date if the agreement can renew.
7. Record the owner and any approval notes.
8. Save. StretchContracts issues a contract key and the agreement appears in your list and recent-agreements panel.

Edit an agreement

Open any agreement and update its fields. Common edits:

1. Advance the status as the agreement progresses (draft → internal review → approved → active).
2. Adjust dates after a renewal or extension.
3. Update the value if the commercial terms change.
4. Add metadata such as marking auto-renew = true and setting a notice period so renewal intelligence can warn you before the notice window closes.

Every save records who made the change, so you keep an ownership trail.

Organize and find agreements

Use your agreements list to filter by status and type, and sort by most recently updated (the default) to keep current work at the top. The recent-agreements panel on the dashboard is a fast way back into the last eight agreements you touched.

Archive an agreement

When an agreement is no longer active — it lapsed, was superseded, or was created in error — archive it. Archiving is a soft-delete: the record is set to archived with a timestamp and removed from active lists and metrics, but preserved for audit. There's no destructive delete, so you never lose history.

A realistic example

Dev, a finance lead, is onboarding a new cloud vendor. He creates an agreement titled "Northwind Cloud — SaaS Subscription 2026," type saas, status draft, value $48,000 CAD, start date the first of next month, end date one year out, and renewal date 30 days before the end. In the metadata he marks auto-renew = true and notice period = 30 days. Once procurement approves, he moves it to internal review, then approved, and after signature to active. Because he set auto-renew and the notice period, StretchContracts will flag the agreement on the auto-renew watchlist as the notice window approaches — giving Dev time to renegotiate or cancel.

Tips

• Always set a renewal date when one applies. It's the single most valuable field for staying ahead of your book.
• Record auto-renew and notice period in metadata. These power the auto-renew watchlist that catches contracts about to renew silently.
• Name agreements consistently. A convention like "Counterparty — Type — Year" makes lists scannable.
• Set the owner. Renewal and approval work needs a clear responsible person.

Troubleshooting

My agreement won't save with the type I typed. Only the recognized types are stored as-is; anything else becomes custom. Pick from the standard list if you need a specific type.

The value looks off by a factor. Values are tracked precisely in the smallest currency unit internally. Enter the amount in the field as shown; if it displays unexpectedly, re-enter it and save.

I archived the wrong agreement. It isn't gone — it's in archived status. Change the status back (for example to active) to restore it to your working lists.