Out of office checklist: How to prepare your contracts before going on holiday

You've blocked your calendar, set your out-of-office, and mentally checked out already. But before you leave, there's one thing most legal, finance and procurement professionals skip: a proper check on their contracts. It takes time, but missing it can cost a lot more.

The problem with contracts and summer holidays

Contracts don't pause while you're away. Renewal windows keep running. Approval requests keep landing. Deadlines don't move because half the team is on a beach somewhere.

The issues that surface after a summer break are almost always the same: a notice period nobody acted on, a contract stuck waiting for a signature that never came, an obligation due in week 3 that nobody picked up. Not dramatic failures. Just slow, avoidable problems that pile up because nobody checked before leaving.

A quick review before you go fixes most of this.

Renewals and deadlines: check what's expiring while you're gone

Start with the contracts that have active deadlines in the next 60 days. Renewals, notice periods, termination windows. These are the highest-risk items because missing them often means you're locked in for another year, or out of a contract you wanted to keep.

Ask yourself:

• Which contracts renew in the next 60 days?
• Are any notice periods already running?
• Have renewal dates been logged somewhere your colleague can find them?
• Does anyone on the team know which renewal decisions need to happen in your absence?

If the answer to any of these is "I'm not sure," that's your first priority.

Approvals and signing: clear the queue before you leave

A contract stuck in an approval flow is a contract going nowhere. In summer, when people are in and out of the office, these queues get longer, not shorter.

Before you go:

• Push through any contracts currently waiting for your approval.
• Check which contracts are waiting for a signature from the other party. Flag them for a colleague.
• Confirm who has the authority to approve contracts while you're out, and make sure they actually know it.
• If you're the signing authority for urgent contracts, arrange delegation or make sure the process is covered.

Ten minutes of clarity now saves a week of "who was supposed to handle this?" when you're back.

Obligations and tasks: don't let commitments fall through

Signed contracts contain obligations that keep running after the ink is dry. Service levels, certificate renewals, insurance updates, reporting deadlines, payment milestones. These don't stop because it's July.

Check:

• Which obligations are due in the next 4 weeks?
• Are they assigned to someone who will actually be present?
• Are there service levels or reporting requirements the other party expects during your absence?

If an obligation is assigned to you personally and you're the only one who knows about it, that's a gap. Fix it before you leave.

Access and ownership: make sure someone can act

This one gets missed most often. You've done the review, you know what's coming up, but your colleague can't find anything because contracts are stored locally or scattered across three different folders.

Before you set your out-of-office:

• Make sure a colleague has access to the contracts you manage.
• Confirm that files are stored centrally, not only on your local drive or in your personal inbox.
• Assign a clear owner for each active contract while you're out. Not "the team" — a specific person.

Key clauses and terms: check the hidden deadlines

This section catches the issues that are easiest to miss. Commercial contracts often contain clauses with their own internal deadlines or those that don't show up as a renewal date but still require action.

Go through your active contracts and check:

• Are there discounts or rebates with a validity period expiring soon?
• Are any price indexation clauses triggered by an upcoming date?
• Are you close to hitting or missing a volume commitment?
• Are there price revision windows that require action before you leave?

These are the clauses that cost money when nobody notices them in time. Finance and procurement professionals in particular: this is worth 30 minutes of your time before you go.

Before you set your out-of-office

The final step is a quick briefing. Not a formal handover document, just enough for the person covering you to act if something comes up.

• Tell your cover the top 3 contract risks for the next 4 weeks.
• Make sure your out-of-office message is clear about who handles contract questions.
• Confirm your return date in any active contract threads where the other party might need a decision.

Your pre-holiday checklist

We've turned everything above into a one-page checklist you can run through in under two hours, so you can leave the office for a peaceful vacation. The checklist is free to download, no form, no gatekeeping.

👉🏼 Download the out of office contract checklist

Next year, you won't need this checklist

Every item on that checklist is something a contract management tool like Contractify tracks automatically.

Renewal dates with notice period alerts. Approval flows with status tracking. Obligations assigned to specific people with due dates. Contract access is controlled per user. Commercial terms registered and searchable.

The reason this checklist exists is that most teams manage contracts manually, across inboxes, spreadsheets and shared drives. That works until it doesn't. And summer is usually when it doesn't.

Contractify gives legal, finance and procurement teams one place to manage contracts from start to finish. You see what's coming up, who's responsible, and what needs to happen, without running a manual check before every holiday.

If you don't want to run through a checklist every June, a 20-minute demo of Contractify is a good place to start 👇🏼