Contract Lifecycle: Draft, Active, Expired, Superseded — and Who Gets to Push the Button
A contract steers prices, SLAs and evidence rules, so the moment it starts to count is a deliberate act with a name on it.
The account manager closed the deal on Thursday. The signed PDF arrives Monday. The first pickup is Wednesday. Somewhere in that week the contract has to go from “what we agreed” to “what the platform enforces” — and somebody has to be the one who said so. Every contract carries one of five statuses: Draft, Active, Expired, Terminated or Superseded. Each transition is its own button with its own conditions, role check and Activity line. None of them happen through Edit.
Activate
A new contract is a draft. It becomes the governing agreement when an admin, manager or commercial user presses Activate contract. The dialog first shows a readiness overview: dates, service lines, pricing, workflow, linked document, and for lease returns the lease details. Only one thing blocks: an end date on or before the start date, or already in the past. Missing services, tariff, workflow or document are warnings — acknowledged in the dialog and recorded with the activation in Activity, so “did anyone notice there was no tariff” has an answer. A start date in the future is allowed: the deal is closed, the term begins later.
Terminate
Terminate exists only on an active contract, for admin and manager. A reason of at least twelve characters is mandatory and lands in Activity. The date defaults to today, may be backdated to the start date — paperwork lags — and never lies in the future. Running collections or inbound orders are shown as counts; terminating stays possible and that work finishes under the terms it started with. Terminated is final.
Revert to draft
Revert to draft is on an active contract as long as no collections, inbound orders, settlements or evidence packages hang beneath it; a linked document does not count. Once real work exists the button disappears and only Terminate remains. Admin and manager only. A contract with history cannot pretend it was never active.
Expiry, renewal and the notice period
Every morning the platform handles active contracts whose end date has passed. With Auto-renew on and a renewal term in months filled in, the end date rolls forward by whole terms until it lies in the future again, the contract stays active, and admins and managers get an in-app message. Otherwise the contract becomes Expired and the same people are told. A contract without an end date never expires. With renewal notice days set, admins and managers get exactly one message that many days ahead — “renews on” when auto-renew can fire, otherwise “expires on”.
Renew is available on an active or expired contract for admin, manager and commercial: a new end date after today and after the current end date, an optional reason, same terms. It is the only way back out of Expired.
Create successor
New terms deserve a new contract, not an edited old one. Create successor on an active contract makes a fresh draft with its own number that copies services and tariffs, pricing, SLA, required certifications, lease details, evidence rule, workflow and renewal settings. Documents and notes stay with the original. The original remains in force until the successor is activated; then it becomes Superseded with a link forward. Work running under the original finishes under the old terms; new work picks the successor. One successor at a time.
The signed agreement
Documents in ReVend have no type, so the contract’s Documents section lets whoever may activate mark one linked document as the signed agreement; the activation dialog shows it by name. Under Settings > Core > Contracts, the switch Require a marked signed agreement before activation is off by default. Off, a missing agreement is a warning; on, activation is blocked until a linked document carries the mark — for a successor too, though not for renewing. The platform doesn’t verify signatures; it records which document is the deal and lets your organization decide whether that is a hard condition.
Who may do what
Creating, editing, activating, renewing and creating a successor belong to admin, manager and commercial — the people who close the deal. Terminating and reverting stay with admin and manager. Warehouse, operator, finance and viewer read contracts: no Edit, no Activate, no New Contract button, and a direct server call is refused and logged. Two people pressing Activate at the same second cannot both succeed.
What the pickers show
Where your team picks a contract for a new inbound order or collection, active contracts appear normally and drafts carry a “Draft” label — an ITAD often plans the first pickup while the signature is still in the post. Terminated, expired and superseded contracts never appear. On an existing order the linked contract name stays readable even after that contract ended. The past is legible; it just can’t be chosen again.