The renewal you found out about too late
A hairdresser on the high street has had a weekly general waste lift with you for three years. The contract ran for a fixed term with a notice period. Nobody in your office looked at it as the end date approached, because nobody knew the end date without opening the signed PDF. The first you hear of it is a cancellation email: a competitor walked in, offered a lower rate for a new term, and she signed.
It is one account. But your book is made of hundreds of accounts like it, each small, each with its own start date, term and price. Some renew automatically. Some roll onto a rolling monthly arrangement. Some were signed on an old template with different notice terms. Your sales person has a spreadsheet of the larger accounts and a vague idea about the rest.
Why small accounts get no attention
The terms that matter at renewal were captured once, at signing, and never turned into data. The billing system knows the monthly charge. The signed agreement knows the end date and notice period. Nobody links them.
- Contract end dates and notice periods live in PDFs or paper files, not in any system that sends reminders.
- Price reviews are done in a batch once a year, rather than when each contract comes up.
- Several contract templates have been used over the years, with different terms.
- Sales attention goes to large accounts, while small ones renew or leave unnoticed.
- A cancellation is often the first sign that a renewal was due.
What your contracts say and whether an automatic renewal clause applies are matters for your own terms and adviser. The practical problem is that nobody can see the dates.
What quiet renewals cost
Each lost small account takes its monthly revenue with it and leaves a container to recover. Across a year, a steady trickle of these adds up to a real gap, and a sales person then spends time winning new accounts to replace customers who would have stayed if someone had called them.
There is a pricing cost as well. Accounts that roll over without review stay on rates set years ago, while your disposal and fuel costs have moved. Those are often the accounts that earn you the least for the work involved.
How we put every renewal on one list
What we build turns contract terms into data and gives each renewal an owner and a date.
- We extract start date, term, notice period, renewal type and price from your signed agreements. Where they are PDFs, we use document extraction with a person checking each result, and flag the ones that need a closer look.
- The extracted terms are linked to the customer account in your billing or waste software, so the renewal list shows what each customer actually pays and how many lifts they get.
- Each contract enters a renewal pipeline a set time before its notice date, with the account assigned to a person.
- The system prepares a renewal offer from your current price list and the customer's collection pattern, which the person can adjust before it is sent.
- Offers are sent by email with an online acceptance step, and reminders follow on a schedule you set.
- Outcomes are recorded: renewed, renewed at a new price, moved to a rolling arrangement, or lost with a reason. Lost reasons are reported monthly.
| Pipeline stage | Who acts | What they see |
|---|---|---|
| Coming up | Account owner | Terms, current price, lift history |
| Offer drafted | Account owner | Suggested price, editable |
| Offer sent | System | Reminders on schedule |
| Accepted | Office | New terms pushed to billing |
| Lost | Manager | Reason and container recovery task |
A Monday with the renewal list
Your sales person opens the renewal list on Monday and sees the accounts reaching their review point this month. The hairdresser is on it, with her contract end date, her current rate and a year of lifts showing she never misses a collection. The drafted offer uses this year's price list. He adjusts it slightly, sends it, and calls her the next day to talk it through.
A café on the list has been paying an old rate for years. The drafted offer shows the gap clearly, and the owner of the business decides how far to move it. Nothing renews or lapses without somebody having looked at it.
Is renewal tracking a blind spot for you?
- You find out a contract was ending when the customer cancels.
- End dates and notice periods live in signed PDFs, not in a system.
- Price reviews happen once a year for everyone, whatever their contract date.
- Small accounts get no renewal contact at all.
- You cannot say why the accounts you lost last quarter left.