No matter what line of business you or your company are in, there is no doubt that you will be dealing with a lot of contracts on a daily basis. You’ll need to write up any new contracts whenever you take on new full-time employees and start new freelancers on short-term projects. Not only that, though, but you will also need to have contracts in place whenever you start work for a new client. These documents are extremely important as they can help to define the relationship between both parties, so it follows that looking after and storing them correctly is of the utmost importance.
Unfortunately, though, not every company takes their contract management seriously. As a result, their contracts can quickly become disorganized and get into a bit of a mess. This can make referring back to them a bit of a nightmare. That’s not the only issue that some companies have, though. Read on to find out more about the common pitfalls of content management!
No Clarity
One thing that can cause a problem right from day one is a lack of clarity in the contract. The document needs to be very clear about the scope of the work that is expected from your employee or freelancer, or yourself from your client. It should also describe the compensation associated with the work and the terms of bringing the contract itself to an end.
Poor Storage
Once you’ve written up and signed a contract, it’s important that you keep it stored somewhere properly. Don’t just stuff it into a drawer and forget about it! You might even want to bind all of your contracts together so that you know where they all are. To learn more about that, you can check online. It’s also a good idea to digitize your contracts and save a soft copy of them on the cloud. That way, you always have a copy available even if the hard copy ends up destroyed somehow.
Forgetting To Renew Contracts
Every contract needs to have an expiry date. This is even the case for permanent contracts. It doesn’t mean that the relationship bound by the contract will come to an end once the document has expired. You will simply need to write up a new one to take its place. More often than not, a contract will be valid for a year before it needs to be renewed.
Neglecting The Contract Once In Place
Once you have a contract that is signed, you should refer back to it whenever you need to. It should contain a lot of information that you can use to help you clarify your relationship with the other party mentioned in it. It will also prove to be very important when it comes to handling disputes between you and the other party.
As you can see, there are quite a few things that could potentially go wrong with a company’s contract management. If you are careful, though, you won’t have anything to worry about!
