Contracts are important in any business relationship, ensuring clarity and accountability between parties. Managing contracts effectively, though, requires more than just signing. From creation to closure, contract management involves several critical steps that can delay the completion of your deal if not handled well.
What is contract management?
Contract management is the process of overseeing contracts from creation to completion, ensuring clarity, compliance, and accountability between parties. Using contract management software like BoldSign streamlines this process, reducing errors and saving time. Effective contract management solutions help businesses manage agreements efficiently, whether for partnerships, vendors, or clients, by automating tasks and organizing workflows.
What are the 5 stages of contract management?
The contract management steps include creation, collaboration, approval, monitoring, and storage. These stages ensure contracts are legally sound, mutually agreed upon, and properly executed. By leveraging contract management systems, businesses can simplify each step, making the process faster and more secure.
Below, we explore these five essential stages and how BoldSign, a leading eSignature software, enhances them for businesses of all sizes, including contract management for small and large businesses, including contract management for small businesses.
1. Contract creation
Effective contract management begins with a solid foundation—a legally sound contract with all essential terms defined and signer information in place. Manual contract drafting can cause you to introduce textual errors, delay your contract timeline, and often incur more costs, all of which can lead to legal vulnerabilities.
Using contract management software can help you resolve these problems. BoldSign transforms contract creation from a tedious process into an efficient, error-proof workflow by offering:
- Drag-and-drop fields: Easily upload contracts and place signature and date fields wherever you need them.
- Reusable templates: Save and reuse standardized contract templates, eliminating repetitive drafting while allowing quick edits for specific cases.
- Brand customization: Apply your company’s branding and attach custom legal terms for signers to accept.
How it works
- Upload or select a template: Start from scratch or use an existing contract template.
- Customize fields: Drag signature, initial, and date fields where needed.
- Add branding: Enhance the signer experience with your brand’s logo and colors.
- Edit the terms and conditions: Make any necessary updates to the terms and conditions of the contract.
- Send for signing: Send the signature request directly from the platform.
BoldSign ensures contracts are created accurately and consistently in minutes by streamlining drafting, templating, and compliance, making it ideal for contract management for small businesses.
2. Collaboration
The collaboration stage transforms contracts from drafts into final agreements, but traditional methods can create friction through endless email threads and disjointed communication. These increase the risk of miscommunication or mistakes in the terms of the contract.
BoldSign makes contract completion effortless with built-in collaboration features in its contract management solutions, such as:
- Real-time document editing: Instantly incorporate proposed changes.
- Tracked updates: Never miss an update from either party.
- Private messaging: Have confidential discussions about the terms of your contracts.
- Admin oversight: Customize the viewing permissions of your team and account administrators.
This integrated approach keeps negotiations organized, transparent, and efficient, whether clarifying terms privately via in-platform messages or making live edits to documents. By centralizing communication and revisions, BoldSign ensures all parties reach consensus faster while maintaining a clear audit trail of every change.
3. Approval
Contracts often get stuck in the approval stage—waiting for stakeholder reviews or managing documents that need signatures from multiple parties, for example. These delays create operational inefficiencies and can impact business opportunities when contracts aren’t executed promptly.
BoldSign streamlines the approval stage by automating contract management, routing the contract to the right people in the right order with automated notification to keep things moving. Built-in audit trails provide a clear record of who reviewed and approved what. BoldSign’s e-signature capabilities also mean approvers can sign off digitally from anywhere, eliminating delays caused by manual processes.
4. Monitoring
The next stage of contract management is monitoring, where the focus is on overseeing the contract’s ongoing work and ensuring it stays on track with timely deliverables.
BoldSign makes monitoring straightforward with user-friendly features. The platform’s automated reminders and notifications keep you informed to make sure you never miss critical deadlines like document signing due dates. You can also set manual reminders for added flexibility, allowing you to customize alerts for specific tasks as needed.
Team and account admins can easily check the status of active contracts through the Team Documents page, which gives a clear view of progress at any time. BoldSign offers a centralized dashboard that lets you review all relevant documents in one place, simplifying the task of staying updated.
5. Storage
Effective contract management systems don’t end at signing. Secure storage and systematic organization ensure easy access, compliance, and audit readiness.
Secure contract storage
Once a contract is executed, it must be stored safely to prevent loss and unauthorized access. Traditional methods like physical filing cabinets or disorganized digital folders are inefficient and lack security. BoldSign eliminates these risks with:
- Centralized storage: Contracts are automatically saved on the platform and accessible via the Documents page.
- Cloud integration: Seamlessly sync with repositories like Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive for backup and accessibility.
- Role-based access: Only authorized admins can retrieve contracts.
Document organization
Storing contracts is only half the battle—finding them quickly is equally critical. Manual organization leads to missed deadlines, duplicated work, and lost agreements.
BoldSign enhances organization with:
- Custom tags: Tag contracts by type, department, or priority for instant filtering.
- Smart search: Locate contracts in seconds, even across large document libraries.
- Dashboard management: View, sort, and track all agreements in one place without manual effort.
Paper-based contracts vs. BoldSign contract management
Below is a detailed comparison of how BoldSign streamlines contract approvals compared to legacy paper methods.
| Paper-based process | BoldSign e-signature platform | |
|---|---|---|
| Workflow | Manual, via email, postal mail, and meeting in person | Automated routing with predefined approval steps |
| Review time | Could take days or weeks and is often prone to delays | Only takes hours or a few days with automated reminders and tracking |
| Signatures | Wet ink signatures, scanning, or physical handling | Secure digital signatures from any device |
| Tracking | Requires manual follow-ups | Real-time progress dashboard |
| Security | Unencrypted and puts you at risk of losses or damages | Bank-level encryption; compliance with eIDAS, the E-Sign Act, and UETA |
| Audit trail | Paper trails that are easily lost or altered | Automated, tamper-proof digital records |
| Cost | High printing, shipping, and storage costs | Lower costs without requiring paper, shipping, or manual labor |
| Accessibility | Limited to physical presence | Anywhere, anytime on web or mobile |
Cost comparison
Switching from paper-based methods to the BoldSign Growth plan saves about 79% annually for one user managing 50 signature requests per month.
| Paper-based | BoldSign at $5/month per user | Savings | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subscription | $0 | $60/year | – |
| Printing ($0.50/doc) | $300 | $0 | $300 |
| Shipping ($5/doc) | $3,000 | $0 | $3,000 |
| Storage ($1/doc) | $600 | $0 | $600 |
| Labor ($10/doc) | $6,000 | $2,000 | $4,000 |
| Total Annual Cost | $9,900 | $2,060 | $7,840 (79% savings) |
Contract management is a dynamic process that demands attention at every turn. Success hinges on efficiency, clarity, and oversight.
Conclusion
BoldSign provides powerful, intuitive features that streamline each of the contract management steps, from crafting templates to tracking contracts. With BoldSign, you’re not just managing contracts—you’re optimizing them, saving time, and strengthening client connections along the way. Whether you’re handling one agreement or many, BoldSign gives you the edge to stay ahead.
Take the first step toward smarter contract management—sign up for a free trial of BoldSign today and see the difference for yourself!
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