# Catch contract auto-renewals before the notice deadline

> Every month we read your signed contracts, find the ones about to auto-renew, and warn you before your window to renegotiate closes.

- Workflow type: agent
- Services: Documenso, Google Calendar, Gmail, Slack Bot
- Categories: Operations, Finance
- Published: 2026-08-07

## What it does

- Checks your signed contract archive once a month and picks out the agreements coming up on their annual renewal.
- Reads each signed PDF to find the renewal date, any automatic renewal clause, and how much notice you have to give to cancel or renegotiate, and skips anything with no renewal wording instead of guessing.
- Puts reminders in your calendar on the notice deadline itself and two weeks earlier, so the decision lands while you can still act on it.
- Emails the account owner a briefing on each contract and posts the full month's renewal list to your team channel.

## What you'll need

- A Documenso account holding your signed contracts
- A Google account for Calendar and Gmail
- A Slack workspace where the bot can post to the channel you choose
- The email address of the person who should get the monthly briefing

## Prompt

On the first Monday of every month at 8am, run a renewal radar across my signed contract archive in Documenso, so that no agreement quietly auto-renews before we have had the chance to decide whether we want it to.

Start with the Find Envelopes operation in Documenso and pull every envelope with status COMPLETED and type DOCUMENT. Page through all of the results rather than stopping at the first page. Drafts, templates, pending and cancelled envelopes are not signed obligations, so leave them out.

Narrow that list to the envelopes completed roughly 10 to 13 months ago. Most commercial agreements run on annual terms, so that window is what catches contracts approaching their renewal. Apply this as ordinary date filtering on the completion date of each envelope.

For each remaining envelope, use Download Envelope Item to fetch the signed PDF and read it properly. Find the renewal or expiry date, whether there is an automatic renewal or evergreen clause, and the notice period required to cancel or renegotiate, for example a term that says either party may terminate on 60 days written notice before the end of the initial term. From those, work out the notice deadline: the last calendar date on which we can still give valid notice.

If a contract contains no renewal, expiry or termination language at all, skip it and move on. Do not guess, estimate or infer a renewal date that is not written in the document. Reporting nothing for a contract is the correct outcome; inventing a date is not. Keep a count of how many contracts you skipped for this reason so it can go at the end of the summary.

For every contract whose notice deadline falls inside the next 90 days, create two events with the Google Calendar Create Event operation. Put the first on the notice deadline itself and the second two weeks earlier as an early warning. Title each one with the counterparty and the decision that is due, for example "Northwind Ltd: renew or give notice by 16 Dec". In the event description, quote the exact clause the deadline came from and name the source document, so whoever opens the invite can verify it in seconds instead of going hunting for the contract.

Then send the account owner a briefing using the Gmail Send a Message operation. For each contract, cover the counterparty, the original contract value, the renewal terms including the new term length and any price uplift or escalation, the notice period, and the exact date after which we lose the right to renegotiate. Quote the clause language behind each conclusion and name the document it came from, so none of it has to be taken on trust.

Finally, post the full month's renewal list to Slack using the Slack Bot Send a Message operation. Include every contract reviewed this month that has a real renewal or expiry date, ordered by how soon the notice deadline falls, and clearly flag the ones inside the 90 day window. Close with the number of contracts skipped for having no renewal language. If nothing is approaching this month, say so plainly rather than posting an empty list.

## How to customize

- Change the lookback window if your agreements are not annual, for example 22 to 25 months for two year terms.
- Adjust the 90 day alert threshold, or move the early warning from two weeks out to a month before the deadline.
- Send the briefing to a different owner, or post the monthly list to a different Slack channel.

## Example output

Monthly renewal radar: 3 contracts approaching a notice deadline

1. Northwind Ltd, Managed IT Services
   Original value: 48,000 per year
   Auto-renews 14 Feb for a further 12 months
   Notice deadline: 16 Dec (60 days written notice) - 41 days away
   Clause: "This Agreement shall renew automatically for successive periods of twelve (12) months unless either party gives not less than sixty (60) days written notice prior to the end of the then-current term."

2. Aperture Logistics, Warehousing SLA
   Original value: 12,500 per quarter
   Auto-renews 3 Mar with a 4% annual uplift
   Notice deadline: 2 Jan (90 days written notice) - 58 days away

3. Cobalt Software, Platform Licence
   Original value: 9,000 per year
   Term ends 21 Mar, no auto-renewal, renegotiation optional
   Decision date: 21 Mar - 136 days away

Skipped: 4 completed contracts contained no renewal or expiry language.

## FAQ

### What happens if a contract does not mention renewal at all?

It gets skipped. A renewal date is only reported when the wording is genuinely in the signed document, because an invented deadline is far worse than no deadline. Those contracts simply do not appear in the month's list.

### Why does it only look at contracts signed 10 to 13 months ago?

Most commercial agreements run for twelve months, so that window catches the ones approaching their first renewal. If your contracts run on two year or multi year terms, you can widen or shift the window.

### Does it cancel or renew anything automatically?

No. It only surfaces the deadline and the terms. Every decision to renew, renegotiate or give notice stays with a person.

### How do I know the renewal date it found is correct?

Each calendar invite and the email briefing quote the exact clause the date came from and name the source document, so you can check it against the contract in a few seconds.

### Will it work on scanned contracts?

It reads the text of the signed PDF, so clean digital documents work best. Anything it cannot read confidently is skipped rather than guessed at, so it is worth spot checking older scanned agreements yourself.

Use this prompt in General Input: https://www.generalinput.com/prompts/catch-contract-auto-renewals-before-the-notice-deadline