Zoho Contracts for approval and renewals: how the setup works
Zoho Contracts for approval and renewals works in two parts. Zoho Contracts carries each contract from draft through approval and signature. Zoho CRM then reminds the right person before the contract end date. The two connect through the Zoho CRM integration, which needs the Professional or Premium plan of Zoho Contracts.
Contract lifecycle management (CLM) is software that manages a contract through its whole lifecycle and connects to other applications through built-in integrations and APIs. Zoho Contracts is Zoho's CLM product. Our Zoho Contracts overview for UK firms covers what the product includes.
This guide follows one route end to end. You decide who approves each contract type and in what order people sign. You pick the plan that supports that route. You then build a renewal reminder in Zoho CRM that flags deals whose contracts expire in 30 days and gives each one an owner and a follow-up task.
The reminder part comes from a published Zoho CRM solution. Zoho rates it as high complexity and estimates 60 minutes to implement. It runs on the Enterprise edition of Zoho CRM and above, so check your edition before you plan the work.
Why contracts expire unnoticed when the process is manual
Contracts expire unnoticed because a manual process has no built-in prompt before the end date. Zoho's own guide to contract management lists "missing out on renewal opportunities due to lack of automated email and in-app notifications" as a typical risk. Nobody owns the date, so nobody acts on it.
The tools are usually scattered too. According to the Zoho Contracts guide to contract management, a business typically uses six applications for its contracting process. Drafts sit in one place, approvals in email, signed copies in a shared drive and renewal dates in someone's calendar.
Zoho's guide names several other manual risks:
- Long authoring and review cycles.
- Drafting errors that slip through review.
- Slow negotiation over email.
- Slow signing through "long email-print-sign-fax cycles".
Contracts are also not only a legal matter. Zoho notes that sales, procurement, finance and HR all get involved. When each team keeps its own copy, nobody sees the whole picture. The same guide states plainly that poor contract management can lead to significant financial losses. Storing contracts in one place for quick access and better governance is the first fix.
The contract lifecycle stages Zoho Contracts covers
Contract management is the process a company follows to manage its contracts, including the stages each contract passes through. Zoho lists those stages as authoring, approval, negotiation, signature, and amendments and renewals. Zoho Contracts handles each one in a single record.
Here is what each stage means inside Zoho Contracts:
- Authoring: you write the contract in an inbuilt editor powered by Zoho Writer.
- Document assembly: the system chooses the applicable clauses and suitable languages based on the contract type's configuration.
- Approval: named colleagues approve or reject the contract before it leaves the business.
- Negotiation: counterparty contacts receive the contract through password-protected links and need no Zoho account to collaborate.
- Signature: a signing workflow sets the order in which signer groups receive the contract.
- Amendments and renewals: changes and renewals stay attached to the same contract record.
The signing workflow uses three signer groups: Organization Signers, Counterparty Signers, and Other Representatives such as witnesses. You decide whether your side signs first or the counterparty does.
Zoho Contracts also offers a gain or loss calculation for terminated contracts. It applies to contracts with a sell or buy intent. That matters when a renewal fails and finance needs to see what the termination cost.
Zoho Contracts plans: which one supports approvals, CRM and renewals
The Professional plan is the lowest Zoho Contracts plan that includes the Zoho CRM integration and obligation reminders. Zoho Contracts comes in four plans: Free, Standard, Professional and Premium. The table below compares the features this guide relies on, taken from the Zoho Contracts plan comparison.
| Feature | Free | Standard | Professional | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Documents for signature | 5 a month, one sender | 25 per user a month | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Zoho CRM integration | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Obligation tracking and reminders | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Recurring obligations | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Docusign integration | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Admin audit, user access and download logs | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| ChatGPT integration | No | No | No | Yes |
The Free plan is free for 3 users. It suits a trial of the authoring and signing stages. Only one of those users can send contracts for signature, and the limit is five documents a month.
The CRM integration lets salespeople start contract requests from Zoho CRM and track their status there. If your renewals start from a deal, that feature decides the plan. Obligation reminders cover duties inside a contract, such as a recurring delivery or report. Prices change, so read them on the vendor's pricing page when you decide.
Lite user licences for people who only approve contracts
A lite user licence covers someone who only needs to approve or reject a contract, or collaborate in one. Lite users do not get the full feature set of Zoho Contracts. That makes the lite licence the right fit for a director or finance manager who signs off but never drafts.
You cannot run Zoho Contracts on lite licences alone. Zoho's plan page states that you need at least one primary user licence to buy additional lite user licences. In practice your contract owners, often legal or sales operations, hold primary licences. Approvers hold lite licences.
The people on the other side of the contract need no licence at all. Counterparty contacts receive the document through password-protected links. They can read and collaborate without a Zoho account.
Before you buy, list every person who touches a contract and mark their role:
- Drafts or manages contracts: primary licence.
- Only approves, rejects or comments: lite licence.
- Works for the counterparty: no licence, access by link.
This list also becomes your approval route in the next step. A name that appears as an approver without a licence is a gap you want to find now, not when a contract is waiting.
Setting the approval and signing order before the first contract goes out
Set the approval route and signing order for each contract type before anyone sends a live contract. A contract type here means a category such as a customer services agreement, a supplier agreement or an employment contract. Each type can carry its own clauses through document assembly, its own approvers and its own signing order.
Work through three decisions for each contract type:
- Who must approve before the contract leaves the business, and in what order.
- Which clauses and languages the type should assemble by default.
- Which signer group signs first: Organization Signers, Counterparty Signers or Other Representatives such as witnesses.
At Svennis we agree the approval route for each contract type with the client in writing before anyone opens the settings, because routes designed on screen tend to copy old email habits rather than the actual authority to sign. The written route then becomes the test script for go-live.
Keep the clause library under review after launch. Zoho's guide points out that new government regulations often change the language in business contracts. When your standard wording changes, update the contract type once rather than editing every draft by hand.
Renewal reminders in Zoho CRM: the 30-day worked example
The renewal reminder flags every deal whose contract ends in 30 days and gives it an owner and a follow-up task. It comes from Zoho's published solution, follow-up deals for contract renewals before their expiry. It relies on two fields in Deals: Contract End Date and Renewal Status. If your deals lack them, add them first.
Build it in this order:
- Create a custom list view in Deals with the criteria
<Contract End Date> <Due in Days> = 30. Copy its numeric ID from the URL of the custom view page. - Create a Zoho OAuth connection with the scope
ZohoCRM.mass_update.deals.UPDATE. - Write a Deluge function that sends a POST request to
https://www.zohoapis.com/crm/v6/Deals/actions/mass_updatefor the deals in that view, setting Renewal Status to In Progress. - Go to Setup > Automation > Schedules > +Create New Schedule and run the function each day.
- Create a workflow rule that triggers when Renewal Status in Deals is updated to In Progress. Add an instant action that assigns an owner and creates a follow-up task.
Run the schedule daily because the view matches deals exactly 30 days out. A deal ending on 30 June appears in the view on 31 May only. A weekly run would miss six days in every seven.
When the schedule runs, the deal's status changes, the workflow fires, and the owner sees a task a month before expiry.
Permissions, edition and testing for the CRM renewal schedule
The renewal schedule needs the Enterprise edition of Zoho CRM or above, plus two specific permissions. Check both before you book the work. Zoho rates the solution as high complexity and estimates 60 minutes to implement, which assumes the person building it already has the right access.
The permissions split the work between two parts of Zoho CRM:
- Manage Extensibility: lets a user create connections and write custom functions.
- Manage Automation: lets a user create and update schedules.
Often one administrator holds both. If your organisation separates them, the connection and function get built first and the schedule afterwards, by a different person.
Zoho recommends that you test the schedule in a sandbox before deploying it in production. A sandbox is a copy of your CRM where changes do not touch live records. Test with a handful of dummy deals whose Contract End Date falls exactly 30 days ahead. Confirm the status changes, the owner is assigned and the task appears.
The same pattern works beyond deals. Zoho notes that you can use the code for another module, such as invoices, by changing the module name and other parameters. That suits firms whose renewals live on invoices rather than deals.
Go-live checklist for contract approvals and renewal reminders
Use this checklist to confirm every part of the setup before your first live contract and first scheduled run. Each row names where the item lives and what to verify.
| Item | Where it lives | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Plan | Zoho Contracts | Professional or Premium if you need the Zoho CRM integration |
| Licences | Zoho Contracts | At least one primary user; lite licences for approvers only |
| Contract types | Zoho Contracts | Clauses, approvers and signing order set for each type |
| Deal fields | Zoho CRM, Deals | Contract End Date and Renewal Status exist and are filled in |
| Custom view | Zoho CRM, Deals | Criteria set to 30 days; numeric ID noted |
| Connection | Zoho CRM | Scope ZohoCRM.mass_update.deals.UPDATE granted |
| Schedule | Setup > Automation > Schedules | Runs daily; tested in sandbox first |
| Workflow rule | Zoho CRM | Fires on Renewal Status In Progress; assigns owner and task |
The deal fields row catches the most common gap. A reminder can only fire for a deal that has a Contract End Date. Before go-live, filter Deals for open agreements with an empty end date and fill them in. Otherwise the schedule runs correctly and still misses the contracts you care about.
What contract approvals and renewals in Zoho mean for a UK company
For a UK company, the main local questions are signature type, data centre and audit trail. Zoho Contracts offers Qualified Electronic Signatures (QES) via Swisscom, but only for users in Europe data centres. A QES is the highest assurance level of electronic signature. Check which data centre your Zoho organisation uses before you promise a counterparty that signature type.
Some signing options do not apply to you at all. Aadhaar eSign is available only for users in the India data centre and consumes credits from a Sign Credits add-on. You can ignore it when you compare plans.
The audit trail matters when a contract dispute or an internal review arises. Admin audit logs, user access logs and download logs come only with the Professional and Premium plans. If your board or auditors ask who opened or downloaded a contract, those logs answer the question.
Keep wording current as rules change. Zoho's guide notes that new government regulations often change contract language. Assign one person to update the clause library when your legal adviser changes standard terms.
Some UK firms renew subscriptions rather than signed agreements. If that describes your business, our page on Zoho Billing for UK subscription businesses covers that side of renewals.
Next steps: from contract inventory to a tested renewal reminder
Start with an inventory of your live contracts, then build the setup in the order this guide follows. Each step depends on the one before it.
- List every live contract with its counterparty, owner and end date.
- Group the contracts into types and write down the approval route and signing order for each.
- Mark each person as primary user, lite user or counterparty.
- Choose the Zoho Contracts plan, using the CRM integration and audit logs as the deciding features.
- Confirm your Zoho CRM edition is Enterprise or above and that someone holds Manage Extensibility and Manage Automation.
- Build the 30-day view, connection, function, schedule and workflow rule in a sandbox, then test with dummy deals.
- Fill in missing Contract End Dates on live deals before the first production run.
If you want to see what Zoho Contracts includes before you start, read our Zoho Contracts page for UK businesses. If you would rather have the CRM schedule built for you, our guide to what a Zoho partner does explains how that kind of engagement works.