The renewal you found out about from the customer
A housing association emails to say they are tendering their lift maintenance, and your contract ends in eight weeks. You check the file. The contract was signed three years ago with a notice clause that passed last month. The price review you meant to raise last year never happened, so you have been servicing their lifts at the original rate while parts and labour costs moved on.
Elsewhere in the portfolio, a small office landlord's contract has rolled over automatically for the fourth year, still on the old visit frequency for a lift that now gets far more use because a gym moved in downstairs.
The dates are in PDFs nobody reopens
Lift maintenance contracts are not uniform. Some are your own standard terms, some are the customer's, and some are framework agreements with their own schedules. Each has different start dates, lengths, notice periods, price review mechanisms and service levels.
- Key dates live in the signed PDF, not in any system that sends reminders.
- Price review clauses are written differently in each contract.
- The account manager who negotiated the contract may have moved on.
- Contracts are sometimes per site, sometimes per portfolio, and lifts move between them.
- Renewal preparation needs data from several places: visits, call-outs, repairs and complaints.
Without a single view, renewals are handled when someone remembers, and someone usually remembers too late.
What drifting renewals cost
Missed price reviews are the most obvious cost: you carry rising costs on a fixed rate. Less obvious is the loss of the conversation itself. A renewal is your best chance to show a customer what you have done for them, to adjust visit frequencies to how their lifts are really used, and to raise modernisation or obsolescence where it matters. When the renewal arrives as a tender notice, you are one bidder among several instead of the incumbent with a clear record.
It also costs staff time. Pulling together a renewal pack by hand, from spreadsheets and job exports, can take days for a large customer.
A tracker that reads your contracts and warns you in time
We build a contract renewals tracker that holds the terms that matter, sends reminders to named people and assembles the evidence for each review.
- Your existing signed contracts are read, with document extraction pulling out start date, term, notice period, renewal mechanism and price review wording. Someone in your team checks each one before it is saved.
- Each contract is linked to the lifts it covers in your job system, so the tracker always knows which lifts belong to which agreement.
- Reminders go to the account manager and a deputy at points you choose ahead of each notice date and review date.
- When a review is coming, a pack is generated for that contract: visits completed per lift, call-outs and entrapments, repairs quoted and won, open defects and any flagged obsolescence.
- Price review notes and outcomes are recorded against the contract, so next year's review starts from what was agreed.
| Contract detail | Where it sits now | In the tracker |
|---|---|---|
| Notice period | Clause in a signed PDF | Date with reminders |
| Price review | Wording in the terms | Next review date and history |
| Lifts covered | Schedule at the back of the contract | Linked lift records |
| Performance history | Several reports and exports | Generated review pack |
We do not interpret your contracts for you. The tracker records what the contract says, as your team confirms it, and your managers or advisers decide what to do.
Renewals become planned meetings
Account managers see their renewals months ahead on one screen. Review packs are generated from the records and shared with the customer ahead of the meeting. Price reviews happen when the contract allows, with the history of what was agreed last time to hand.
For the owner, the tracker gives a clear view of contract value coming up for renewal each quarter, which makes planning staff and cash far less of a guess.
Signs your renewals need attention
- You have learned about a renewal from a customer's tender notice.
- Price reviews are skipped because nobody noticed the date.
- Contracts roll over on out-of-date visit frequencies.
- Renewal packs take days to put together.
- Contract terms are only known to the person who signed them.