2026-09-19

The contract dates that cost money: notice periods, auto-renewals and vehicle insurance

Organisations rarely lose money on a contract in the year they sign it. They lose it on the renewal nobody noticed: the office lease that rolled over for another year, the service contract that kept billing, the insurance that ran out on a Friday. All three have the same cause. The date that mattered was written in a contract in a drawer, and nobody's calendar knew about it.

The end date is not the date that matters

Most contracts that can be ended require notice. If a lease ends on 31 December and needs ninety days' notice, the date you must act by is early October, not December. That is the date to track: the end date minus the notice period. A register that stores only the end date warns you when it is already too late to do anything about it.

Three kinds of renewal

Fixed term: it simply ends. The risk is running out of a service you still need.
Auto-renewing: it rolls into a new term unless you give notice in time. This is the dangerous one, because doing nothing is a decision to pay for another period.
Open-ended: no end date at all, so the reminder becomes a periodic review: is this still worth what we pay?

What to record for every contract

the counterparty and a contact person;
what it covers: a vehicle, premises, a service;
the number and the type of contract;
the start date, the end date and the notice period, and which kind of renewal it is;
the amount and how often it is paid;
who in your organisation is responsible for it;
a copy of the signed document, attached to the record.

Vehicle insurance is a contract too

Compulsory motor liability insurance is required from owners of motor vehicles in Ukraine, and a policy that has lapsed is often discovered at the worst moment: at a traffic stop or after an accident. It is the contract with the most predictable deadline and the most expensive surprise, so it belongs in the same register as the leases and service agreements, with the same reminder.

How many reminders are enough

Two. The first comes early enough to do something: renegotiate, look for an alternative, send the notice. Sixty days before the date you have to act is a sensible default. The second comes close to the deadline to force a decision: ten days. More than that turns into noise, and noise is ignored. Both should count down to the date you must act, not to the end of the contract.

A worked example

An office lease ends on 31 December and needs ninety days' notice. The date to act is 2 October. Sixty days before it is 3 August, when there is still time to talk to the landlord or look at other premises. Ten days before it is 22 September, when the notice has to be drafted and signed. Miss the second reminder and the lease rolls into another year on the old terms.

Three habits that defeat a register

Storing only the end date. It warns you after the notice window has closed.
Keeping it on one person's laptop. It stops working the day that person is away.
Leaving the signed copy in a drawer. When the dispute comes, the register says a date and cannot show the clause.

Where a spreadsheet stops working

A spreadsheet holds the dates, but it warns nobody. It works until the one person who opens it goes on leave. In Depot 17 the contract register has three views, vehicles, premises and other, with the renewal type and the notice period on every contract. Two reminders go out by e-mail, sixty and ten days before the date you have to act, to the person responsible and to the account owners. The signed scan is attached to the record, an insurance contract keeps the vehicle's insurance date up to date, and a spreadsheet of existing contracts can be imported and is checked as a whole before anything is saved. See the contracts module and which plans include it.

This article is a practical summary, not legal or tax advice. Notice periods and renewal terms are set by each contract: read yours.