Definition: Contract Form

What is a contract form?

A contract form is a short document consolidating the basic information needed to understand the contract.

It is intended to centralise the essential information needed to have an overall view and to take control of the contract.

Depending on the contract management processes and the nature of the information, contract records can be created and enriched manually or automatically following the drafting of your document.

The contract sheets provide a first level of information when you search within your contract library.

Benefits of the contract form

We have daily exchanges with many in-house lawyers, contract managers or operational staff who often tell us about their contractual problems. Here are a few examples of problems encountered and the solutions made possible thanks to the contract sheets to gain clarity and enrich your contract library.

Problem 1: Manual entry of contract forms

Assumption: The business person creates the contract from a contract library but does not complete the contract form.

When contracts are created from static Word or Excel templates made available to operational teams, some legal teams often struggle to retrieve the contract files.

Indeed, whether it is due to a lack of time, organization or forgetfulness, this granting of independence via a contract library can also lead to a loss of visibility and information.

💡 Good to know: It is indeed bad practice for each operational to keep their version of a contract stored locally on their PC

• Contract data is not centralised, which does not allow finance, legal or other teams to have access to contract data to manage the contract
• Reusing the same model several months later is a legal and financial risk as the model may turn out to be obsolete.

Solution : Automated document generation via a Contract management software. The information contained in your contract form is collected automatically from your document generationform.

Problem 2: Lack of centralized storage and scattered information

Assumption: Contractual information is scattered and lost in different files.

As a result of this practice, information can be lost through departures or internal mobility, especially when these files are stored locally. Indeed, 71% of companies fail to locate at least 10% of their contracts.

Solutions: Archiving of all contractual data in a dedicated space

Problem 3: Heterogeneous structuring of contract forms

Hypothesis: Information is not very readable and is organised differently for different employees.

Indeed, structuring knowledge is a process that involves adhering to certain beneficial standards that have many advantages. Benchmarks provide clarity and save time. Feel free to create templates for similarly structured contract sheets.

Solution:

Example of an automated contract form