All You Need to Know About Zoho Contracts
The contracts are legal documents that govern almost every penny that either comes in or leaves a business. If the businesses are equipped with the right contract management software for managing them then they can transform contracts from static documents into strategic assets. In a business landscape that changes so quickly with the evolution of technology, regulatory measures are coming up often.
Moreover, the global supply chains are only becoming complex and the marketing and sales models are becoming increasingly diverse. This is a state that has led to a need for digital contracts that can be easily accessed and amended. There is an increasing demand for a powerful CLM platform that allows you to manage and get the most out of your contracts.
A powerful contract lifecycle management software lets you automate and streamline contract processes and unlock the real potential within them. With a CLM such as Zoho Contracts, legal teams can save considerable time which can be invested in high-value tasks.
In this blog, we will have a detailed look at Zoho Contracts and the functions that this software offers.
What are Zoho Contracts?
Zoho Contracts is a simple solution for all the contract challenges. It helps in efficiently streamlining the Contract Lifecycle Management process with a feature-rich platform while achieving compliance at scale with reduced costs.
The implementation of CLM platforms like Zoho Contracts enables you to reduce contract cycle times, mitigate business risks, and improve contract governance. It is a complete contract solution that eliminates the need for multiple applications.
All business owners can stay on top of their business contracts no matter where they go. Zoho Contracts applications create a personalized mobile dashboard that offers insights into key contract metrics. The application also comes with features that are needed when you are away from your desk.
Other than offering efficiency in legal operations, the Zoho Contracts software facilitates better business outcomes. It addresses the below-mentioned aspects of legal operations.
Streamlining Contract Lifecycle
There are five stages included in the contract lifecycle that Zoho Contracts takes care of and they are mentioned below:
- Authoring: Zoho Contracts comes with an extensive library of predefined contract templates and an ability to create custom templates in Zoho Contracts which makes contract authoring a breeze. The contract type templates along with the clause library in Zoho Contracts bring a systematic approach to contract authoring. It helps in saving a lot of time at the authoring stage while ensuring that there is language consistency across all contracts. The document editor comes with advanced document assembly capabilities, collaborative editing features, fillable field features, contextual commenting, etc.
- Approvals: All contracts are legally binding documents so the content included in them must be clear, concise, and accurate. The approval process of contracts can improve compliance and reduce risks by making sure that stakeholders are aware of the scope of a contract before it is executed. Zoho Contracts can be used by admins to set up approval workflows both sequential and parallel and associate them with contract types. The approvers can add contextual comments in the documents and approve or reject them as well.
- Negotiations: As opposed to the traditional approach in which you send contracts back and forth as email attachments, Zoho Contracts helps you with controlled access to counterparty contacts with password-protected links. The counterparty contacts can collaborate with each other in real-time, suggest relevant changes that should be made to the document, make contextual comments, and set the visibility. This negotiation history tracking and comparing changes feature comes in as highly useful when there are various negotiation rounds.
- Execution: Zoho Contracts is a CLM system that comes pre-integrated with an e-signature software called Zoho Sign which makes this important step in the contract lifecycle extremely quick and effortless. The turnaround time for emailing, printing, signing, and faxing cycles can be eliminated or reduced considerably. You can sign and secure the legally binding electronic signatures within a few minutes. A signing order can also be specified that pans all across the signer group, organization signers, counterparty signers, other representatives, etc.
- Post-execution Management: The use of Zoho Contracts also supports the post-execution stages along with amendments, extensions, terminations, and renewals. The software comes embedded with a predefined letter template that is customizable for each of these stages. The conventional templates only offer a skeletal structure of the document in which all members can contextually edit the content and make it complete. On the other hand, Zoho Contracts enables a user to amend a contract by making changes in the contract as the amendment letter that gets generated automatically captures the current changes along with the entire contract history. This extreme reduction of any manual intervention in document generation makes the lifecycle management of post-execution contracts extremely simple and straightforward.
Creating Risk Proof Contracts
Zoho Contracts is excellent contract management software that can help in gaining access to predefined templates for commonly used contracts such as NDAs and MSAs. Templates can act as a guide rail for the contract authors. You can change the details as much as you need while authoring a contract. You can also create your own template.
Instant contract creation is also enabled with the use of Zoho Contracts as you can simply add the contract and counterparty information in a form for generating contracts with all the right details in place. The contracts can be created based on the templates which empower all members to create contracts while also ensuring that there is language consistency across all contracts.
Zoho Contract comes with a built-in document editor with all features in a powerful word processor called Zoho Writer. The cloud offering allows you to author contracts from wherever you may be. Lastly, the advanced clause picker enables contract authors to search for and insert a clause in a contract easily. All the clauses in predefined templates including the ones you add are available in the clause library.
Contract Data Can Be Turned Into Business Insights
The feature of Dashboard lets you gain a high-level overview of your business at a glance while quickly making informed decisions. You can see the KPIs regarding your business health and growth at your fingertips.
Other than the Dashboard feature, the Reports feature also helps in gaining actionable insights across all aspects of the contract management system. You can check on things such as milestones, clauses, obligation, counterparty, performance, and other general contract attributes.
Enhancing Governance
Zoho Contracts is advanced contract management software that enables admins to make well-informed decisions by arriving at actionable business insights gleaned from a wide range of contract data. It comes with more than 30 standard reports across different aspects of contract management. And the personalized dashboard offers a high-level overview of business contracts at a glance.
Moreover, Zoho Contracts also allows activity tracking on three different levels including the contract level, user level, and stage level (approval, negotiation, signature). All kinds of activities performed by users on these levels are tracked chronologically. The stage level tracking presents the contract owner with information on whether the people involved in this stage have received the email notification, viewed the document, and performed the intended action along with time stamps.
The admins can structure the entire contract lifecycle process by configuring the clause library, contract letter templates, contract type templates, and approval workflows for contract types. The activity, access, and audit logs offer better visibility over organization-wide activities.
Reducing Business Risks
Adding suitable clauses such as limitations of liability and indemnity can eliminate all risks at an individual contract level and only a holistic contract management process designed with risk mitigation in mind can make a business truly risk ready. The use of Zoho Contracts comes with a peer review and approval workflow capability that offers better transparency over contract items to almost all the stakeholders involved. You can set up a clause library with legally approved languages and contract-type templates that act as a guide rail for contract authors. The governance settings give better control to the admins for the contract process while also improving compliance.
A critical risk factor for a business is to not fulfill contractual obligations. Any failure to comply with obligations can result in adverse regulatory and financial consequences and also leave the organization with damaged business relationships. A CLM system such as Zoho Contracts ensures that all obligations related to a contract can be tracked and managed from the contract obligations section. The contract owner can assign obligations to respective business owners and set reminders for them. Admins can also stay on top of these obligations with the help of obligation-based reports.
Promoting Cross-Functional Integrations
Contracts are considered dynamic documents that touch all parts of a business. The ever-increasing importance of the role of contracts necessitates cross-functional visibility and collaboration over them. The Zoho CRM integration allows sales professionals to initiate contracts from related sections of a deal record in CRM and track the contract’s status from CRM.
Most business development professionals report that any inefficiencies in the contracting process lead to slow revenue recognition. The main cause of this is sales and legal teams working in silos rather than together. The deals that were won and have been closed are often marked as complete after the sales agreement is signed which means that any inefficiency in the contract lifecycle management process of an organization impacts the revenue growth.
Any lack of transparency or difficulty in communication between the sales and legal teams result in long contract cycle times and it can even result in lost deals sometimes. With the Zoho CRM integration, you can establish a sort of transparency between the sales and contract processes while considerably improving the cycle times.
The integration can make the critical functional aspects of Zoho Contracts that are relevant for salespeople within the Zoho CRM. The sales cycle management offered by Zoho CRM and the contract lifecycle management offered by Zoho Contracts works together as the best contracting process for the sales team.
Much Better Control and Compliance
Zoho Contracts is highly functional contract lifecycle management software that keeps all stakeholders aware of potential risks and opportunities in a contract before it becomes active by adding them as approvers. You can design your own approval workflows both sequential and parallel. The approvers can also collaborate through the comment section.There is a central repository where all the contracts can be stored. There are search and filter options as well that enable much better visibility and accessibility. One can stay on top of all user activities in the CRM platform of Zoho Contracts. It is easy to view the history of all progress, changes, and suggestions made in one place.
With version control, all versions of a contract can be seen in chronological order. It is also possible to compare versions and restore any of the older versions simultaneously. There is another feature of Calendar View that offers a month view calendar display of all the contract schedules and reminders.
You can never miss any obligation or an opportunity for a renewal with the help of reminder alerts. Lastly, with User Roles and Permissions, you can assign roles for users in the organization. There are different access permissions for each role which enable better control over the contract lifecycle management software.
Conclusion
Zoho Contracts can empower organizations and individuals with better control over the contracts because of its impressive automated workflows. It has a wide portfolio of products and seamless integrations that make the workflow very easy to manage.
You can quickly set up Zoho Contracts with only a little support from a certified and experienced Zoho consultant. A professional will be able to introduce you to all features while also importing your key contracts.
Stay Tuned for more!
Cheers!
Abhi
(Seasoned Zoho Authorized and Certified Partner)
Feel free to contact me if you have any queries
Email: abhishek(@)encaptechno(dot)com
Call: +1-416-405-8185
Topic Participants
Abhishek - Zoho Partner
realtor
Sathyakeerthi U
Gareth Westwood
Muthu Kumaran R
Zoho CRM Plus Resources
Zoho Books Resources
Zoho Subscriptions Resources
Zoho Projects Resources
Zoho Sprints Resources
Zoho Orchestly Resources
Zoho Creator Resources
Zoho WorkDrive Resources
Zoho Campaigns Resources
Zoho CRM Resources
Get Started. Write Away!
Writer is a powerful online word processor, designed for collaborative work.
Zoho CRM コンテンツ
-
オンラインヘルプ
-
Webセミナー
-
機能活用動画
-
よくある質問
-
Ebook
-
-
Zoho Campaigns
- Zoho サービスのWebセミナー
その他のサービス コンテンツ
ご検討中の方
Recent Topics
No Sales Returns on SO's with Dropped Shipped items + Inventory Items
We have encountered an issue in Zoho related to sales orders that include both dropshipped items and inventory items. Specifically, it is currently not possible to create sales returns for the company’s own inventory items from these sales orders. ThisPre-fill TO and CC fields for Email Templates
This would be a game changer to be able to set either specific email addresses or merge fields based on deal role titles into email templates. Please pass this along to *hopefully* add to future features of Zoho CRM.Pick list - Cannot save list "Special Characters not Allowed" error message
Bulk uploading values. All values are pretty standard - with the exception of a "-" (dash). Like: Industry - Prepared Food Is the simple dash a special character too? JanFlow with CRM
Hello, I have a simple flow that uses a web hook to enter data into a Sales Order. I have the web hook sending Flow data which has a PO field. If the PO has a special character like - or / or \ the task fails. How can I get the flow to be okay with theMaking the Resolution Tab Mandatory
Hello Everyone! This edition is here to show you how to make the Resolution mandatory when closing a ticket. The Ticket Resolution tab helps keep a record of the solution provided for the ticket query. The resolution can serve as a quick reference toNotificación de cumpleaños
Hola: Se puede enviar alguna alerta de felicitación al personal que cumple años, que se dispare solo? Si existe como se puede hacer? SaludosAutomation#25: Move Tickets to Unassigned When the Owner Is Offline
Hello Everyone, Welcome to this week's Community Series! 'Tis the holiday season—a time when work often takes a brief pause. The holiday spirit is in full swing at Zylker Techfix too, with employees taking some well-deserved time off. During this period,Callback URLs
I need to connect to an external service through an API that requires me to provide a Callback URL so that a status update can be sent back when the API request has been processed. Is there a way to do this in Creator without having to use a middlewareEmail signature not being included if user creates ticket / sends email
When I create a ticket (send email), the signature doesn't appear to be added to the ticket. Can you confirm if this is the case? It would obviously be useful to include the user's signature even when sending a client an email and not only on replieZoho Notebook window ignores taskbar
When maximized to full screen, the Zoho Notebook window ignores the presence of the taskbar and overlaps it. What could be the problem? Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon. Zoho Notebook 3.2.0URL for job opening
I would like to ask you to add this feature to the product: create an unique url for each job opening on Zoho Recruit, so that I can add a link to it when I post the opportunity in a mailing list or on a forum.Document images
We used to be able to rotate the images but this has now been removed ???VENDORS ARE NOT SYNCHED WITH CONTACTS IN CRM
Hello, While the ACCOUNTS and CONTACTS (Including the primary contact) are synced with the CONTACTS module in CRM, the vendor's CONTACTS are not synced with CRM - which basically forces the users to re-enter all vendor's contacts twice and then updateInvolved account types are not applicable when create journals
{ "journal_date": "2016-01-31", "reference_number": "20160131", "notes": "SimplePay Payroll", "line_items": [{ "account_id": "538624000000035003", "description": "Net Pay", "amount": 26690.09, "debit_or_credit": "credit" }, { "account_id": "538624000000000403", "description": "Gross", "amount": 32000, "debit_or_credit": "debit" }, { "account_id": "538624000000000427", "description": "CPP", "amount": 1295.64, "debit_or_credit": "debit" }, { "account_id": "538624000000000376", "description":KB Templates
* It would be nice if Zoho can provide users an option to create custom templates for KB articles. Also, it would be nice as well if the users can have an option to 1.) select a default template and 2.) declare default tag/tags, for KB articles created through Ticket's resolution.Zoho CRM Reports Module on Mobil App
I have the mobile app and the reports module doesn't appear in the sidebar for some reason. I saw a Youtube video where the user had the Reports module on mobile. Is there a setting to show it on mobile? Thanks.Contacts Don't Always Populate
I've noticed that some contacts can easily be added to an email when I type their name. Other times, a contact doesn't appear even though I KNOW it is in my contact list. It is possible the ones I loaded from a spreadsheet are not an issue and the onesZoho Projects Android app update - List view enhancement
Hello, everyone! In the latest android version(v3.9.15) of the Zoho Projects app update, we have enhanced the List view of tasks. We have also introduced a complete scroll of the tasks in the list view without scrolling the task fields(status, start date,On the US Data Centre rather than the UK but dont know how to migrate it
We have a new staff member with an external email address and cant add them to Zoho chat - we have been told its becuase we are in the UK but on a US Data centre - we therefore need to change it but no idea how to can anyone else as we are going roundZoho Sheet Custom function column showing Error #EVAL!
Hello I have a custom function in Zoho Sheet developed to convert a date time from one time zone to another. The custom function takes date and time columns and then using subHour( ) converts the time to PST time. However, though the custom function works,How to add a Data Updated As Of: dynamically in text?
I need to add a "Data Updated As Of" in the dashboard to show when was the last date the data was updated. I tried to create a widget but it does not look really good, see below. Is there a way I can do this through the text widget and update it automaticallyCreate Your Own Issue Management System
Effective issue management is a cornerstone of project success. Every bug or issue, no matter how small, needs to be tracked and resolved in time to maintain project momentum. In this post, we’ll explore how an issue management system in Zoho ProjectsResource utlisation
Dear Team, We use the excel for the weekly predicted people utilization how the resource are allocated , is there any way that i can use any of the zoho products.Ask the experts - A live Q & A discussion on Zoho Recruit
We are delighted to come back with another edition of Ask the Experts community series. This edition, we'll be focusing on everything about Zoho Recruit. The topics will focus on the features that are used/asked by the majority of users and also basedBug - OTP (email) and No Duplicates
Scenario: Form with an email field, Validation: "No Duplicates" (because I want to ensure 1 entry per email). Embedded form into website (JS option). Enabled email based OTP. 1st test (via my website) - entered my email address - sent OTP - entered pin,Personal Facebook page posting instead of Business Page
I have a Facebook page that is associated with my Personal Profile and I am the Admin of that Page. I would like to schedule and Post to my Personal Page not the Business Page. Each time I try to connect to the "Page" it takes me to the Business Page. Is there a way of connecting to my personal page?Fixed asset management
I want to know if there is any individual module for fixed assets managementRecording depreciation of fixed assets as a percentage of residual value
In India, fixed assets are depreciated as a percentage of their residual value at the beginning of each fiscal year. I went through the documentation for creating recurring journal entries, but could only find ways to depreciate by a fixed rupee amountFunction #28: Automatically calculate Customer Loyalty points
Hello everyone, and welcome back to our series! Today, we're excited to share a workflow designed to streamline the management of loyalty points. Many businesses offer incentives or rewards in the form of loyalty points to their customers as a way toFunction #6: Calculate Commissions for paid invoices
Zoho Books helps you automate the process of calculating and recording commissions paid to sales persons using custom functions. We've written a script that computes the commission amount based on the percentage of commission you enter and creates anHow to Add Product SKU in Invoice?
How to Add Product SKU in Invoice?Tracking movement between departments
I've been developing a reporting system in Zoho and one of the groups I want to develop a report on primarily moves tickets from department to another. Is there a way to set up the reporting on Zoho (or Zoho Reports) that can tell me the number of ticketsZoho CRM Calendar View
Hello Zoho team, We need desperately a calendar view next to list, kandan and other views. I think it should be easy to implement as you already have the logic from Projects and also from Kanban View in CRM. In calendar view when we set it up - we chooseCall transcrition working for ringcentral?
I don't see anything about what telephony providers can be used. The Zoho support person A said that RingCentral isn't supported. Zoho support person B said that it works, just make sure the call recording link works. Excellent instructions here: CallWhat is syntax to call creator function (or trigger a creator workflow) from CRM deluge?
What is syntax to call creator function (or trigger a creator workflow) from CRM deluge?WhatsApp and Zoho Creator Integration
How we have integrate WhatsApp App with Zoho Creator without using external application ?Improve Creator Calendar Report
Please can you improve the Creator Calendar Report General There is no way to highlight certain days, for example weekends or public holidays. There is no way to hide certain days, for example weekends. There is no way to modify the day header, it justImportant updates to Zoho CRM's email deliverability
Last modified on: Jul 24, 2024 These enhancements are released for all users across all data centers. Modified on: Oct 30, 2023 Organisations that are in the Enterprise and above editions of Zoho CRM, and have not authenticated their email-sending domainsCustom modules not showing in developer console
I'm trying to create a custom summing function for a custom module I made in my CRM. When I go to create the function, my module isnt showing up. Do I need to share the custom moldule with my developer console or something of the like?Chart with Filtered Data vs Unfiltered Data
I am looking to create a chart view that displays the full data set vs a subset of the data filtered by user filter. However I do not seem to find any method by which to exclude a plot from the applied filter or any other method by which to display theNext Page