How to use Wrike’s contract management template
Wrike’s contract management template is customized to manage all stages of a typical contract life cycle, from the request through approvals to renewals. Manage contracts and their related appendices in a centralized data repository. A unified process replaces haphazard manual tracking with automated accountability.
Consider this template a checklist for managing all your contracts, whether requests come in from your team or other departments. Let’s review how it works.
Step 1: New incoming contract requests
New contract requests get submitted using the ‘Contract Request’ form. The requester fills out the client name, contract subject, requirements, length, estimated contract value, date submitted, and preferred draft completion date so your team has the necessary detail to get the contract process started.
Once the form is submitted, a project is created in the ‘New Contract Requests’ folder. Answers from the request form auto-populate the custom fields and descriptions within the new project so all pertinent details are in one place.
Within the created project are six steps listed as tasks for completing the contract: preparation, draft, internal review, legal review, signing, and pre-renewal outreach. It’s best that you complete each task in order so that no detail, review, or approval gets missed along the way. Once you’ve completed every stage, you can cross-tag tasks to the ‘Active Contracts’ folder for easier organization. Note: All tasks will have the default Wrike workflow.
Projects use the included custom workflow and can be used to signify status updates.
Step 2: View all contracts at a glance
An important part of managing contracts is being able to track those in flux at a glance.
The ‘Contract Stages’ dashboard – available by clicking the link under ‘Tools’ in the top-left of the navigation panel – lets you see all contracts’ statuses in one view. Completed contracts are not included in the dashboard, but can be referenced in the ‘Active Contracts’ folder at left.
The contract tracking template also comes with a personal dashboard within the dedicated Contract Management area of your Wrike workspace based on tasks and filters assigned to the current user. The personal dashboard helps provide a kickoff for individuals working on the project or contract task because they can see what work is due today and this week along with overdue items.
Step 3: Contract reporting
When managing contracts, reporting on the status of requests, existing, and terminated contracts is just as important as progressing contracts to an ‘Active’ state. Wrike’s contract management template comes with a pre-built report to help you track your contracts – available by clicking More > Reports > Contracts.
Here, you’ll see a list of contracts and customers filtered by contract status. The columns display key values such as contract end dates, the draft completion date, estimated contract value, contract value, and contract length (annual renewal, short term, one-time, etc.). This centralized view gives your team a glance at all the critical details of contracts in flight without having to dig through separate contract folders or multiple channels (email, Slack, etc.).
The included report provides a clean space to gather high-level critical contract data. You can also add custom fields such as ‘Contract Value’ to the report to get a more granular view.
You can customize this template checklist to fit your organization’s needs — for example, changing the stage names and/or order of the stages. Admins can also change the workflow names.