Companies that manage contracts without digital contract tracking rely on manual, outdated methods to stay organized. These processes are inefficient, cause human error, and lack scalability.
Contract tracking software is a faster, more efficient way to handle and track contracts throughout an entire workflow.
How to Manage and Track Contracts
It’s essential for your organization to know how to track contracts and other paperwork you send. An ideal contract tracking system accounts for every step of the process.
Here are some best practices for how to track contracts and streamline esignatures using digital signature software.
- Create contract templates: Without guidelines, staff are likely to make a mistake or send a message to customers that you might not approve of. Create contract templates ahead of time, and you can save time and reduce errors.
- Event notifications: Your contract tracking software should make it possible to monitor the status of a document—delivered, opened, signed, or returned.
- Reviewing signed documents: Contract tracking doesn’t end once a document is signed. Your company needs to be able to recall important documents at any time. Using a contract tracking system makes it easier to find what you’re looking for.
Real-World Contract Tracking Use Cases
Your company’s documents are important. You don’t want sales to stall or to violate compliance by mishandling or losing track of signed paperwork.
The practice of contract tracking gives your organization guidance and tools to know where a customer is in the signing process and where to find essential documents. Some of the most common types of contracts that require close monitoring include:
- Sales and Client Agreements: Companies use contract tracking most often for customer and client agreements. Many businesses can’t move forward with a sale without signed paperwork and deposit or down payment.
- Employee Contracts: HR departments are often required by law to collect onboarding paperwork, distribute company policy updates, or send other documents to employees. It’s important that any HR paperwork or documents with sensitive staff information on them are properly tracked and stored.
The Pain Points of Traditional Contract Tracking
Companies that use traditional methods like paper contracts and filing systems are holding themselves back but even a bad digital storage setup can cause issues.
Has your company experienced any of the following problems due to poor contract tracking?
Disorganized processes
No matter what your business uses for contract tracking and storage, your process should include one shared space to access contract templates, send contracts for signature, or recall signed documents.
Companies without a contract tracking system become disorganized, with contracts scattered across emails, shared drives, or different physical locations.
Signing Delays
Many companies rely on a signed contract, work order, or other documents to secure a customer’s sale. If these papers don’t get signed, deals won’t move forward and your company loses money.
Manual contract tracking relies on staff to remember to reach out about an unsigned contract or an unopened service agreement. If your employees forget, your company will experience delays.
Poor Collaboration
When your company doesn’t put an emphasis on an organized contract tracking process, teamwork suffers. Businesses with poor collaboration experience difficulties tracking a contract’s status or knowing who is responsible during each step.
Compliance Risks
Many organizations must follow HIPAA regulations or other rules to protect sensitive personal and financial information. Any paperwork that contains private data needs to be handled properly.
Without the right contract management tools and documented procedures, companies risk exposing this information and violating compliance.
Key Benefits of eSignature Contract Tracking
Handling paper contracts and tracking through manual processes is difficult, time consuming, and causes logistical problems for remote business or companies with several locations or departments.
Contract tracking software and clear internal processes are essential for better back office processes and customer satisfaction.
Better Organization
A good contract tracking system should have functionality to view contract templates and recall esignatures on contracts all in one place. Look for software that ensures your documents can be stored, sent, and recalled reliably.
Improved Teamwork
Better back end contract tracking means every employee can stay informed. Automated notifications and shared access to reporting make it simple for whole teams to know the status of a deal or reconcile payments related to a recent contract.
Enhanced Security and Compliance
Using a contract tracking software enables companies to follow compliance rules and give customers more security. Look for features that enhance security, like encryption, tokenization, dual authentication, and HIPAA compliance.
Faster Turnaround Times
When all of your staff members have a simple way to follow a contract through its lifecycle, they work faster. With a solid contract tracking system, employees don’t need to spend so much time worrying whether a contract was signed or reminding people to pay.
Digital contracts also save customer time. Don’t require people to print, sign, and scan in a contract just to send it back to you. Signature requests through email or SMS make it easier than ever to sign and pay in minutes.
Scalability
As a company grows, the increased profit is your main goal—but a larger company can come with unexpected issues, like needing more staff for customer follow ups or paying for extra software logins.
Contract tracking software can help you scale your business through automation features and sending messages in bulk, to lighten the workload of a growing team.
Contract Tracking With PDCflow
PDCflow’s contract and payment software makes contract tracking easier than ever before. Our all-in-one platform is flexible, secure, and easy-to-use—both for staff sending esignature requests and customers completing them.
PDCflow offers many features to simplify the way your company creates, sends, tracks, and stores contracts.
- Unlimited template creation: Most companies use different types of contracts, requests or workflows, depending on the situation. PDCflow lets your company create an unlimited number of templates designed to deliver documents, request signatures and payments, ask for photo or file uploads, etc.
- Event notifications: Our software lets staff sign up for automatic notifications, so individuals and group emails receive updates at each stage. This way, every department stays informed.
- Request reminders: Not every customer will open your message right away. Set an automatic reminder to go out to recipients before your messages expire, so you can follow up on unsigned contracts without manual intervention.
- Audit reporting: It’s essential that signed contracts are accessible later. Our audit trail includes the signed document, multi-factor authentication, geolocation, date/time stamp, and the delivery method you used. These details create a full picture of the transaction.
- Admin permissions: PDCflow’s flexible, customizable software makes it easy to control staff access to templates and reporting. This way, employees in different groups, departments, or physical locations only have to see the information that matters to them, for easier contract tracking and management.
- Extensive reporting: Workflows that include a signed document and payment together can get complicated. Sometimes it’s hard to sync up information about a payment with the corresponding contract. PDCflow’s customizable reporting makes it easy to look at an overview of your company’s activities, drill down for details, or build custom reports.
- Reliable security: PDCflow cares about security. Our email and SMS messages are HIPAA compliant, and sensitive payment information goes through encryption and tokenization. This lets you track your contracts confidently, knowing they are being sent, seen, and signed by the intended recipient.
Does your company need a better contract tracking system? Fill out the form below and check out how PDCflow’s tools give you an all-in-one platform to track contracts, payments, documents, and more.
Request a Demo:
Want to know more about PDCflow Software?
Press ▶️ to watch our explainer video
ONE-STEP PROCESS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR -
Hannah Huerta, Marketing Specialist
Hannah Huerta is a Marketing Specialist at PDCflow. She creates content for the accounts receivable and payment industry.
Related Articles
