What changes when contracts move to the cloud
Most growing companies already keep contracts in the cloud, just not in one place. The signed PDFs sit in a shared drive, in email attachments, in an e-signature account and on a few laptops. Cloud based contract management software replaces that scatter with one system that understands the documents.
- One archive. Every agreement in one repository with folders, tags, counterparties, owners and full-text search.
- Structured data. Key terms such as the effective date, term, notice period and payment terms become fields you can filter and report on.
- Alerts that run without anyone. Notice deadlines are computed and the owner is emailed at 90, 60, 30 and 7 days, whether or not anybody opened the system that week.
- Access by role. People see the folders they need, not the whole archive.
- No servers to run. Updates, backups and availability are the vendor's job.
That list is the upside. The rest of this article is about the questions that decide whether a particular vendor deserves your archive.
Security questions to ask before you upload
Contracts carry prices, personal data, liability terms and sometimes trade secrets. Ask every vendor the same questions and keep the written answers.
- Encryption. Are documents encrypted in transit and at rest? At AgreementSoftware, both are true.
- AI training. Are uploaded contracts used to train AI models, the vendor's own or a third party's? We do not train AI models on your contracts.
- Access inside the vendor. Who at the vendor can see your documents, under what conditions, and is that access logged?
- Authentication. Is single sign-on available for your identity provider, and is user provisioning supported? On our Enterprise plan, SSO (SAML) and SCIM are included.
- Audit log. Can you see who opened, changed, approved or exported a contract? The audit log is part of the Plus plan and above, and audit log export is part of Enterprise.
- Documentation for your own customers. If your customers send you security questionnaires, will the vendor support you in answering them? Enterprise includes DPA and security review support.
Our security page describes how we handle each of these points. Read any vendor's security page with one question in mind: which statements are specific, and which are general promises.
Sensitive categories need a conversation first
Some contracts carry data with specific legal rules attached. If your contracts contain protected health information, talk to us about your requirements before uploading. Our healthcare contract management software page covers the payer, supplier and staffing agreements that providers typically store.
Decide who sees what before the move, not after
The most common mistake in a migration is uploading everything into one open folder and planning to tidy permissions later. Later rarely comes. Design the structure first.
- Folders by contract type or department. Vendor contracts, customer agreements, employment and contractors, real estate, corporate.
- Permissions per folder. HR contracts visible to HR and the executives; customer contracts visible to sales and finance; everything visible to the admin. Roles and permissions per folder are part of the Plus plan and above.
- One owner per contract. The owner receives alerts and answers questions about that agreement.
- Tags for cross-cutting views. For example, tags for "data processing", "exclusivity" or "price review" that apply across folders.
Write the structure down on one page before the first upload. It takes an hour and saves weeks of moving files around.
Check the exit before you check in
The best time to test leaving a vendor is before you join. A cloud system that holds your contracts but makes exporting them hard is a system that holds you as well.
- Can you export every document in its original format?
- Can you export the structured data (fields, owners, dates, tags) as CSV?
- Are version histories and signed PDFs with their audit certificates included?
- Is export self-service, or does it need a support request?
Our position is simple: your contracts stay yours. Export everything, any time. CSV export is part of every plan, starting with Starter.
How to move the archive without losing anything
A migration for a company of 20 to 1 000 people is a project of days, not months, if it follows a clear order.
- Collect. Pull every signed contract from inboxes, drives and the e-signature account into one staging folder. Include amendments and side letters.
- Deduplicate. Keep the signed version; keep drafts only where the signed copy is missing, and mark them clearly.
- Upload by folder. Upload PDF and DOCX files into the folder structure you designed. Full-text search is available as documents are processed.
- Let extraction fill the fields. Parties, effective date, term, auto-renewal, notice period, termination, payment terms, liability cap and governing law are extracted with the source sentence shown.
- Verify the high-value contracts first. Check the extracted dates on your largest contracts against the source sentence, and correct any field in one click.
- Assign owners. Every contract gets one named owner, so alerts reach a person.
- Check the dashboard. Look at what renews this quarter and which notice deadlines are closest.
A worked illustration of planning: an archive of 400 contracts fits within Starter's 500 stored contracts, but extracting all of them in one month needs more than Starter's 50 extractions. Plus includes 300 extractions per month, Pro includes 1 500. You can spread extraction over several months on a smaller plan, prioritising the contracts with renewals coming up, or start on a larger plan for the migration month. For large archives, Enterprise includes dedicated onboarding and archive migration. Plan details are on the pricing page.
Scanned documents
Older contracts are often scanned images. Check that the vendor reads scanned PDFs, and spot-check those extractions more carefully, because scan quality affects every reading tool. Our article on contract analysis software explains where to double-check.
The first month after the move
The archive is only useful if the habits around it change too. Three things make the difference in the first month.
- Retire the old locations. Make the shared drive folder read-only, and tell people where contracts live now. Two archives quickly become two versions of the truth.
- Route new contracts through the system from day one. New drafts start from templates, and signature happens inside the system, so the executed copy is filed automatically. Every contract signed elsewhere is another file someone has to remember to upload.
- Watch the first alerts land. When the first 90 day alerts reach owners, check that they reach the right people and that owners know what to do with them. A short note from the admin explaining what an alert means saves a lot of confused replies.
After a month, run a quick audit: pick ten contracts at random and check that each has an owner, the right folder and confirmed dates. Anything missing points to a gap in the migration that is still easy to fix.
Integrations that matter for a cloud contract system
- Storage. If drafts start in Google Drive or OneDrive, check that the system connects to them. Pro includes Google Drive and OneDrive.
- CRM. Sales agreements often start from a deal. Pro includes Salesforce and HubSpot.
- Notifications. Slack and email notifications are included from Plus, as is an iCal feed of deadlines for your calendar.
- API and webhooks. If you plan your own reporting, check for a REST API and webhooks, both part of Pro.
The contract repository software page shows how the archive looks once the move is finished, and the features page lists everything the platform does.