Latest29 September 2026
How do you find every automatic renewal your business has signed?
From the payments, not the contracts folder: recurring debits find the agreements nobody filed and nobody remembers.
Insights
One question per post, answered in the first line. Everything here is about how documents are organised, not about what any document means.
Archive
Everything else
15.09.2026
Inventory
Which supplier terms has your business already accepted?
Almost certainly more than you think, because the documents a business receives never go through the process the documents it issues do.
01.09.2026
Registers
What goes in a contract register, and who keeps it?
Counterparty, document and version, both dates, the notice window, annualised value, an owner by role, and where the executed copy lives.
18.08.2026
Governance
When did your minute book last match reality?
Almost certainly at the last event somebody paid an accountant to lodge, which is not the same as the last event that happened.
11.08.2026
Integration
What happens to two sets of contracts after an acquisition?
Nothing, usually, which is the problem. Both sets stay live, nobody decides which governs, and the question resurfaces at the next transaction.
28.07.2026
Retention
How long should a business keep its commercial documents?
Longer than you think for some classes and far shorter than you are keeping them for most, and the point of a schedule is that nobody has to decide case by case.
14.07.2026
Ownership
Who owns the work your contractors produced?
Not automatically the business that paid for it: ownership passes only if the paperwork says so, and for most contractors there is no paperwork.
23.06.2026
Employment
What employment documents has each of your staff actually been issued?
Whatever the person hiring had open at the time, unless you keep an issue log recording what each person was sent and when.
02.06.2026
Transactions
What should a data room contain before a business sale starts?
A standard index populated as far as you can honestly go, assembled before anyone asks, because the alternative is assembling it under deadline.
05.05.2026
Registers
Which commercial lease dates belong in your calendar, and how far ahead?
Option exercise windows, rent review dates, bank guarantee expiries and make-good triggers. Each with a lead time long enough to actually act on.
14.04.2026
Approvals
Who in your business is allowed to sign a contract?
Whoever your approval matrix says, and if you do not have one the honest answer is whoever was in the room.
24.03.2026
Variations
What is a contract variation register, and does a small business need one?
It is a single list of every departure from your standard terms that you have agreed to, and you need one as soon as you have agreed to two.
03.03.2026
Versioning
How do you know which version of your terms a customer signed?
Only if the version is printed inside the document, because the file name and the folder it sits in will both have changed by the time anyone asks.
17.02.2026
Inventory
How many sets of terms and conditions is your business actually using?
More than you think, and the number is discoverable in an afternoon by searching sent mail rather than the shared drive.
03.02.2026
Ownership
Who owns your contract templates when the person who wrote them leaves?
Almost always nobody, which is why the templates stop changing the day that person leaves and start being copied instead.
Free, instant, ungated
How is your document layer actually running?
Twelve questions about filing, versioning, ownership and approvals. It takes about four minutes, the result appears on this page, and no contact details are needed to see it.