Automated contract tracking: from draft to archive

More than 70% of companies have difficulty finding 10% or even more of their own contract documents.

And it’s not without a reason. 

Manual contract management is a nightmare. Drafts bounce around in email threads, nobody’s sure which version is final, and approvals stall because the right person hasn’t signed off yet.

By the time a contract is actually signed, weeks or even months may have slipped by.

And that’s just the start. Once signed, contracts often vanish into personal drives or forgotten folders, making it hard to track contract deadlines, renewals, or compliance obligations.

All this chaos comes at a cost.

Missed renewal dates can lock a company into bad terms. Lost contracts expose businesses to compliance risks. Slow approvals mean deals drag, cash gets delayed, and opportunities are missed.

In short, without proper tracking (preferrably automated), contracts turn into liabilities instead of business drivers, affecting not only security, but also profits.

What contract tracking really means?

In official words, contract tracking is the process of monitoring contracts throughout the entire contract lifecycle, so from draft creation, through internal reviews and approvals, to renewal, termination, or simply completing the contract and archiving the document. 

In simple words, it’s knowing where every agreement is, what stage it’s currently in, and what needs to happen next.

Instead of digging through inboxes, checking contract data, or guessing whether the latest version is final, proper tracking gives you:

• Clarity: a single place to see the status of every contract.
• Context: who worked on it, when, and what changes were made.
• Foresight: reminders for key dates like renewals, expirations, or compliance checks.

It’s an ongoing process that ensures contracts stay controlled, transparent, and useful throughout their entire lifespan.

You can complete it in various ways, from using a good e-signature platform to a contract tracking software (or rather using a Contract Management Software), or a whole Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) tool.

Contract tracking lifecycle stages and what to track

Speaking of the entire contract lifespan, let’s learn more about it before we move to effective contract tracking and the process that does that.

Because every contract moves through a few predictable stages.

We know what happens with each main contract stage.

Now, let’s take a closer look at what you should consider tracking in each of these phases for better contract management.

• Drafting & collaboration: at this stage, it’s essential to track who is working on the contract, which version is current, and which template or clauses are being used.

Role-based access ensures that only authorized team members can make edits, while version control prevents confusion over multiple drafts.

• Approval & signature: here, tracking focuses on the workflow itself.

Think about who has approved the document, who’s pending, and where delays are occurring. Monitoring stakeholder routing and automated notifications helps ensure nothing gets stuck in limbo and approvals move efficiently.

Contract automation and electronic signatures can help significantly in this particular stage of contract tracking, especially so if they’re combined together in one software.

• Tracking & archiving: once a contract is finalized, the focus shifts to long-term visibility.

Track key dates and milestones, such as renewals or expirations and maintain a searchable archive for quick document retrieval. You can also add dashboards to monitor overall contract health and compliance. To top it all off, automated alerts and reporting ensure critical obligations are never overlooked.

But how to do that all efficiently?

Well, as with most things, you need the right tools.

Contract tracking with Autenti: from draft to archive

And since no one likes juggling a dozen tools, let’s see how one specific piece of software can help you make contract tracking extremely efficient.

Autenti is an e-signature platform that makes it easy to upload contract drafts to, automate approvals, sign online (on desktop or any mobile device), verify identities, keep version control and audit trails in check, and also keep a clean document archive.

All on one platform that could be your very own contract tracking system.

Let’s walk through an example draft to archive contract tracking flow with Autenti to help seal the deal and show you just how easy contract tracking can be with the right tool.

Contract creation

Before you actually start contract monitoring, first, you have to write and upload the draft contract version into Autenti.

To do that, head to the ‘My documents’ section and choose ‘Create a document’. Then, simply drag and drop the draft contract version onto the screen or upload from your desktop, Google Drive, or One Drive.

💡With Autenti, you can upload multiple files to be combined into one, automatically by the tool. So if you have had a few scattered ideas at first, don’t worry, and connect them easily there.

Contract approval

Next, add the recipients of your documents by choosing the ‘Add recipient’ button.

Fill out each person’s basic details, like name, surname, email address (to which they’ll receive the document), and choose whether they’re a private person or an organization’s representative.

💡You can choose to add new recipients to an address book for an easier document sharing in the future.

Then, make sure to choose the right role for each recipient you’re adding.

With Autenti, you can choose the document recipients to be:

• Viewers: who can simply view the sent document, but don’t take any action (good for team members that need to stay in the loop, but are not required to approve/reject/review/sign the document to move it forward),
• Approvers: who review the sent document and either approve or reject the contract along with the possibility of them leaving an opinion on why they made a given decision,
• Signers: who need to sign the document to really seal it and make it legal (best for final contracts, not drafts).

So, for a draft contract, it’s best to choose appropriate team members to review the document and give their seal of approval (or not). Think the legal team reviewing important clauses, the sales team reviewing the details of a new deal, procurement reviewing vendor-related clauses, etc.

💡You can choose for every recipient to authorize their document access with an SMS code for more contract security.

Editing

After the initial draft has been reviewed, it’ll most likely be rejected with appropriate changes requested.

💡You can also complete the editing/reviewing process in a shared Google Doc or a Microsoft Word document if that’s easier for your team/customer/vendor.

At that point, apply all the applicable adjustments and once you all decide on the final contract version, repeat the document uploading process in Autenti with one small change.

Signing

For approved documents, mark all recipients receiving the document via email as signers. So that they all receive a link to e-sign the document.

💡With Autenti you can choose the type of e-signature needed for the shared document, from simple e-signatures (SES) to qualified signatures (QES).

Signing electronically takes just about a few minutes and can be done via any device with access to the internet. Making it much more convenient and much more secure than traditional wet ink signatures.

Archiving

Finally, after both parties sign the document electronically, you can move them to Autenti’s archive for easy access in the future. Essentially creating your very own contract repository.

The archive is easily searchable and completely secure. You can filter archived documents by tags and search by typing out names/contract details in the search bar.

Additional features 

But with Autenti, contract tracking is not just taking a document from A to B.

With it, you can simplify contract tracking as much as possible.

Additional features for better contract tracking in Autenti are:

• Complete audit trails that make it possible to check who signed which document with exactly what IP address, type of signature, device, and more,
• Full contract and signature security following international regulations, from eIDAS to ISO and GDPR,
• Automated reminder notifications to help nudge team members and other contract party to take a needed action, like reviewing a document or signing,
• Automated business process workflows built specifically for your contract management process,
• Online identity verification with various methods, from ID photos to video conferences,
• Contract status to easily track where each contract is currently at in the process, from waiting for signature, to withdrawn, rejected, approved, and more,
• Shared labels that you can add to contracts and allow access to other people in your organization that may not be actively involved in the signing process, but could be useful for each contract review, but also approving, or signing a given document in the case of someone else’s absence. That way, appropriate employees have access to any document they need to, even if just in case of emergencies.
  
  

Save up to 90% of your time managing contracts

With Autenti, you can save up to 90% of your time managing and tracking important contracts.

Instead of juggling a dozen tools that either master contract lifecycle management with robust dashboards, but fail to live up the signing or archiving part, switch to the platform that does all contract tracking in one place.

With Autenti, you’ll always know where your document got stuck and you’ll automate the process to move it faster than ever before.

Like TZMO Group that reduced their contract processing time up to 90%, going from signing international contracts in the span of 2-3 weeks to just 30 hours. 

For the whole process.

Instead of mailing the documents, waiting for traditional signatures, and relying on the post office, they now use that time to focus on things that actually matter to the business.

“​​Automation has freed up time for essential activities like sales, rather than handling paper documentation, which involved printing, dispatching, scanning, receiving, and incurring logistics costs for courier and postal services.”

Dr Paweł Ochrymiuk, Corporate Governance and Legal Manager at TZMO

Try Autenti completely free for 14 days straight.

Common pain points solved by automation in contract tracking

Manual contract management comes with a long list of headaches, obviously.

From things like:

• Drafts getting lost in email threads or shared drives, leaving teams unsure which version is current.
• Bottlenecks appearing when approvals stall because the right person hasn’t seen the document, slowing down deals and internal processes.
• Missed deadlines, whether it’s for signing, renewals, or compliance, causing unnecessary risk and financial exposure.
• Auto-renewal traps locking the company into unfavorable terms simply because a contract wasn’t flagged in time,
• Contract negotiation requiring you to re-invent the wheel every time because you’re not learning from existing processes.

Automation addresses all of these issues. At once.

Centralized storage eliminates lost drafts, workflow management keeps approvals moving, and reminders or dashboards ensure no deadline or renewal slips through the cracks.

By removing these pain points, you can gain complete clarity, speed, and control over the entire contract lifecycle so that your contracts are actual business opportunities and not blockers.

Meaning, you can actually analyze and learn from your existing contracts to improve any related process in the future.

Contracts shouldn’t be blockers

The journey from drafting to archiving a contract is often filled with inefficiencies.

Manual contract management leaves teams hunting for lost documents, navigating endless email threads, and struggling with blocked approvals—all of which can slow business, create compliance risks, and, most-painfully of them all, cost money.

By the time a contract is signed, weeks or even months can slip by, and once it’s filed away, it can easily disappear, leaving critical deadlines and contract renewals untracked.

Automated contract tracking changes the game.

At its core, it’s about visibility, control, and foresight. Knowing exactly where every contract is, what stage it’s in, and what actions are needed next.

Tools like Autenti make this process simple and secure.

With e-signatures, automated contract workflows, audit trails, identity verification, and a searchable archive all in one platform, teams can streamline the approval process, secure documents, and monitor key deadlines without juggling multiple systems. 

So, make your processes easier and automate contract tracking with Autenti today.

Try Autenti as your contract tracking solution free for 14 days.