{"audience":"people who manage contracts, vendors, and counterparty compliance","author":"Lextree","dateModified":"2026-10-27","datePublished":"2026-10-26","description":"A walkthrough of contract management in Lextree: the contracts registry, contract documents and dates, obligations, reminders, counterparty compliance, and adding your own contract types and fields.","durationMinutes":23,"language":"en","recording":{"captions":[],"defaultSource":"youtube","durationLabel":"","durationSeconds":0,"poster":"","sources":[{"id":"FQah84IiwUI","label":"YouTube","type":"youtube","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQah84IiwUI"}],"title":"Contract Management Basics in Lextree","transcript":{"markdown":"### 00:00:00\n\nLet's get started with contract management using Lextree, which is your system of record for all of your compliance needs\\. In this presentation, we'll learn about core contract management principles in Lextree\\. We'll talk about the contracts module, we'll show how to use it with the counterparties module, we'll set some notifications, reminders, calendar events, we'll attach files related to some contracts, and we'll do a little light administration where we just show how easy it is to customize Lextree to your needs\\. There are, however, some things we will not be covering that are really relevant to contract management, but outside of the scope of this brief overview\\. We will not talk about tasks and workflows\\. We won't talk about access controls, limiting who can see what in the product\\. We will not talk about user management, although there's a lot of user management capability in Lextree\\. We will not talk about reporting, and we won't talk about imports and exports\\.\n\n### 00:01:01\n\nLextree has all of these features and many more, but they're just outside the scope of this narrow focus on contract management\\. There are 21 modules in Lextree, but we want to focus on these two primarily\\. These are the core contract management modules, contracts, and counterparties\\. Depending on your situation, there are some other modules that might be really useful\\. There's a certifications module, there's a grants module\\. So if you're in a non\\-profit or in higher education, sometimes the grants module is really useful\\. Insurance for tracking both policies and certificates of insurance in a great deal of depth if you need, and a licenses and permits module if that's relevant particularly to your counterparties\\. Those are all other modules that there are other videos for\\. We're not going to focus on them, but I want you to know that in those situations, there's a lot of depth to Lextree that you can simply turn on\\. All the modules are included at every subscription plan with no effect on pricing whatsoever\\.\n\n### 00:02:01\n\nThen there are some advanced types of contracts that you can add in the employment module and the treasury module\\. The employment module does several things, but one of them is that it puts senior management agreements into a special bucket\\. Those often need to be protected\\. Things like employee stock purchase plans, those kinds of contracts that you may want to isolate from the general category of contracts could be in the employment module\\. Then in the treasury module, there's a lot of treasury function in there\\. But as it relates to contracts, there are credit facilities and lending sections\\. That treasury module may be useful if you have a lot of financing related contracts that you want to track specially\\. Those are all adjacent advanced modules around the contract management core of contracts and counterparties\\. We won't be talking about those modules, but I want you to know they exist\\. We will focus just on these two contracts and counterparties\\.\n\n### 00:03:03\n\nWith that introduction, let's take a look at Lextree\\. Here we are on our main contracts registry\\. We can go view the dashboard, but the contracts registry is our list of all of the contracts that we have\\. Now in your organization, you might have tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of contracts\\. It doesn't matter, the functionality in Lextree will support whatever scale of business you are managing\\. I can scroll through the registry here, of course\\. You'll notice that the first column here is pinned as I scroll\\. I can undo that or add additional items in here\\. For example, if I want to pin the auto\\-renewing column, I can just drag it over to the pinned area, and now auto\\-renewal is pinned over here on the left, and I can always put it back if I want\\. Then anytime you interact with the layout, Lextree will give you the opportunity to save\n\n### 00:04:01\n\nthat layout and make it yours, and you can reset it anytime you want to get back to the default layout of this particular screen\\. All of these columns are customizable, which means your layout might be different than what I'm showing here, but the values that are displayed and the columns that are displayed will depend on your configuration that's available in the settings area to administrators of Lextree in your organization\\. Let's select one\\. We can, of course, use these, by the way, to filter and find the contracts we're after\\. If you're looking for contracts that expire between two dates, you'll have an opportunity to enter those dates and then Lextree will filter for those\\. I can also search in here\\. If I know that it is copper something and I want to come look for this Precision Components with Copperline, this is a $5\\.4 million contract,\n\n### 00:05:00\n\nand we'll simply select that to go look at the details\\. This is the contract detail page that will show me everything about this Precision Components supply agreement and who the parties are to this\\. This is a three\\-party agreement listed over here on the right\\. Lextree can support any number of parties to your agreement\\. There's a simple way where you can just have a single party, the other party to this contract\\. But if you have multiple entities in your corporate family and you want to assign contracts to those different parties, you certainly can do that\\. All of the data that you're looking at here is fully customizable\\. The fact that we have this agreement section and that we have this term section and these governing terms, these are all sections that you can customize\\. Change them, throw them away, add more data, add your own sections, completely customizable\\. Down here, we have the parties to the agreement, and that's where you'll see this data coming from\\.\n\n### 00:06:00\n\nThere are two internal parties, Cascadia Holdings Inc\\. and Great NewCo, which are both signatories to this contract\\. Then the counterparty, the other party in this equation is Copperline Manufacturing\\. That's who we're buying these things from, and we have information about each of those parties\\. We can, of course, select these and go see that detail\\. Down here, we have all of the documents about this contract\\. This is an important principle in Lextree\\. Many people think of contracts as a single document, but in reality, contracts are a legal relationship between you and another party, and there's actually a collection of documents that make up that relationship\\. In this example, we have the original agreement, we have an amendment, we have some statements of work, we have another amendment, some side letters, change orders, notices, all of those documents over the full lifecycle of this relationship are stored in Lextree in the contract documents area\\.\n\n### 00:07:00\n\nNow, everything in Lextree is based on a principle that things can be as simple as you want, or as complete as you need\\. This is an example of it being complete\\. If you need lots of documents related to a single contract, there's a very easy place for them\\. If, however, you just want to put all of your documents into a place, you could just come to the attachments area and attach those files, and it's very easy to attach files in this area\\. All we do is select new, and we can give it a name, a description if we want, and then we select the plus, and we can pick as many of these documents as we want, and simply drag them onto the attachments area, and they'll be uploaded and saved at the top level\\. If this level of detail is not important to you with this data about each individual document, you can just drop a collection of them onto the attachments area\\. Both are equally good,\n\n### 00:08:00\n\nand if you decide that you don't want this simple arrangement, you simply delete those, and now you're back to this approach here of, each document is special, has its own effective date, and its own impact on the contract\\. Now, because of this relationship between the main contract record and the individual contract documents, we allow you to do some special things\\. You'll notice, for example, that the effective date and the expiration date have these view documents links, and that's because those dates are coming from these documents\\. What do I mean by that? If we select this amendment here, now we're looking at the amendment\\. Here's the main contract, but we're looking at this particular amendment\\. What this amendment did is it set the effective date for the contract to March 1st, 2027\\. This is the effective date of the amendment itself, but it had the effect of setting the contract expiration,\n\n### 00:09:00\n\nso maybe it got moved out or moved in to a new date, and that date automatically updates the expiration date of the main contract record\\. Now that we're back on the main contract record, we can see that we have this March 1st, 2027 date as the expiration of the contract\\. But that might not have been the original date based on the first agreement we signed back in April of 2024\\. That set the expiration date of March 31st, so the amendment cut a month off of the agreement\\. Down here, you'll have obligations\\. These are the requirements for the contract itself\\. This is definitely an advanced feature, so these are the individual obligations that you might care about in the contract\\. As a general rule, this is useful for provisions that are important to you strategically\\.\n\n### 00:10:02\n\nNow, the title of the obligation is up to you, the nature of it, these types, are configurable for you as well\\. But importantly, what Lextree allows you to do is to track, does this obligation apply to you or to the counterparty or to both of you? This is important when you're allocating risks and rights and responsibilities under a contract to know where the responsibilities lie, so that you can track and monitor those over the lifecycle of the agreement\\. But again, this is an advanced feature\\. It's not necessary to use contract management in Lextree, but it certainly is a benefit when compliance with the details matters and has a financial impact or a risk for you, that you want to make sure that you stay on top of\\. Almost every record in Lextree has four standard features that are available to you\\. You can create a calendar event or notification related to that record,\n\n### 00:11:02\n\nyou can attach documents or files to that contract, and you can create a workflow which is a task with a checklist of items that need to get done so that you can collaborate with your colleagues to get work done\\. Fourth, there is a timeline, which is a visual history of activity in the contract\\. For example, we can add an event manually if we want, by saying this was superseded and we will get an event like this\\. Now, in many cases, these timeline events are automatically driven and updated by events in the record by Lextree\\. But you can also add them manually as you just saw there\\. We can remove this superseded event and save\\. To add a calendar event, so this is a notification that we talked about adding to this contract\\.\n\n### 00:12:04\n\nAll we have to do is open the calendar, select new, and there are really two options here\\. We can just add a calendar event, give it a title and a description\\. We can pick a date for that, and that event will flow through to the calendar that is visible throughout the application\\. We can assign recipients about who is going to get that reminder, and on the enterprise plan, we can add external mail recipients, and they will get a notification sometime before that\\. So that's a simple calendar event, we're just adding one off for a particular purpose\\. The more interesting way to set a reminder is to use a calendar event template\\. The available templates will appear here, they are selectable\\. They are fully customizable by an administrator in your organization for Lextree\\.\n\n### 00:13:01\n\nThey can also be fully automated\\. So in this example, I'm going to manually create it, but this could have been automatically generated when there was an expiration date set up\\. So here we are, we've automatically created a title, and we can add to this\\. We want to say this is an all\\-day event and it ends on the same day, but it could be a multi\\-day event if we want\\. We have automatically populated who the reminders are for, and we have the number of days in advance that we want to get this notification, and we'll just remove some of these long\\-dated reminders and click Save\\. Now, if we go forward, you'll see that we have this reminder here set for March 1st of next year, and that event will also appear on the calendar if we want\\. The next module for us to look at is the Counterparties module\\.\n\n### 00:14:01\n\nThe Counterparties module is where you can keep track of all of your vendors and suppliers independent of a particular contract\\. So in the Counterparty registry are all of those suppliers and vendors, and the same features are available to you here to sort and filter and whatnot\\. So if we search for copper, we'll find Copperline Manufacturing, which is our vendor here\\. Notice that the sections that are available to us are different than they are in the contract\\. These are also fully customizable and available to you, including the fields that are in them\\. So if you don't want this compliance requirements field, you can delete it and it will be gone from your Counterparties details\\. Lextree includes a lot of detail about the Counterparty\\. So when you are managing insurance for them and you want to\n\n### 00:15:00\n\ntrack their coverage for different types of policies and activity they're doing for you, all of those coverage requirements are stored and collected here, including the amounts, the aggregate limits\\. Again, this level of detail may not be relevant for all of your Counterparties, but when it matters and that's a strategic vendor, then you definitely want to have this level of tracking for those insurance requirements\\. Same with tax documents, W\\-9s for each year and notice that you can have the full history over time\\. So it's an important principle in Lextree that there's a system of record that you can go back in time and look at, not only that there was a compliance obligation, but that it was satisfied in the past\\. So if there are business licenses that this Counterparty needs to carry, they can be displayed and managed here\\. If there are professional licenses required for the work they perform, so they're an engineer or maybe they're in\n\n### 00:16:00\n\nhealthcare and their continuing education certifications are important, then you can track and manage all of those as an example\\. Certifications for specific activities or practices, and then attestations\\. So if you're in an area where the vendor needs to promise that they are in compliance with some aspect of their business with you, and that's a review that you perform on a regular basis, you can add new attestations, and yes, each of these can be selected and you can go into the details\\. So now I'm looking at the details of this particular attestation, and we can store the documents, confirm that it was signed, and record the details\\. So again, that might be more depth than you need in some cases, but when you do need it, know that it is available in Lextree in the Counterparties module\\. Like the contracts, there's a calendar available to you, there are attachments available, and you can create workflows\\.\n\n### 00:17:01\n\nSo when I said these events flow through to the calendar, what I'm referring to here is the central calendar that pulls together all of your dates and obligations that matter for your records throughout Lextree\\. So you'll notice we have these here and we can, of course, see those details, edit them, or jump right to it if we need to see what this calendar event is all about\\. So we've done four of the five things we wanted to do in Lextree\\. We looked at the Contracts module, we looked at the Counterparties module, we attached some documents, we set an alert or notification on a contract expiration, and now we want to do that fifth thing\\. We want to go and make a few changes as an administrator to the configuration of Lextree\\. So you can customize almost every aspect of Lextree to your needs\\.\n\n### 00:18:07\n\nTo show you what I mean by that, we're going to make two small changes that have a significant impact on the entire product\\. So the first thing I want to draw your attention to is we're looking at this individual contract record and you'll see Contract Type is Purchase Agreement\\. There are only four fields here, Contract Type, Contract Category, Description, and Contract Value\\. So Type and four fields\\. Those are the two things I want you to pay attention to\\. We're going to come to Settings\\. Now, I can do this because this user that's logged in has administrative privileges\\. If someone's not an administrator, they wouldn't see the settings and be able to make this change\\. So we're going to take off our Contract Management hat for just a moment and use our administrative responsibilities or rights to make some changes\\. We'll come to Settings and Field Settings,\n\n### 00:19:02\n\nand everything in our version of Lextree is available to be customized\\. We're going to come to the Contract Registry, and these are all of the fields\\. Notice the same sections, Agreement, Term\\. These are the same things we were just working with a moment ago\\. Up here, we can add a new field or a new section\\. Before I do that, we're going to come to Contract Type and select Edit\\. This is all of the information about that one field\\. Notice it already has several types listed here, and I want to add a new option called Supply, and we're going to save that change\\. We added a new contract type called the Supply Contract\\. The second change I want to make is to add a brand new field that does not exist\\.\n\n### 00:20:02\n\nI select New\\. Custom fields can be typed, which means you can say what kind of field it is, and in our case, we're going to say a Yes, No field, and we're going to ask, is this a strategic contract or not? We can decide where that field goes\\. I'm going to put it in the Agreement section, because I pointed out that there were four fields in that earlier, and we're adding now a fifth field to that section\\. We can give it a default value if we want or leave it blank, and we'll save\\. Here's the field in our settings\\. We very quickly made two simple changes\\. We updated the contract types, and we added this new Strategic field\\.\n\n### 00:21:01\n\nNow, let's go back as a user and see those changes in effect\\. Now that we're on the contract record, there are two things I want to point out\\. We have contract type and we have our new strategic field, which is blank\\. I want to edit this Copperline Agreement, and I want to change the type to use our new supply type, and I want to say that this is a strategic contract\\. We come to Edit, and Contract Type is right here, and there's our new type, Supply, and here's our new field, Strategic\\. We'll say yes and save\\. We've updated our contract type, and we've said this is strategic\\. When we come back to our main registry, our strategic field is now complete, and the contract type is Supply\\.\n\n### 00:22:04\n\nWe made two very important changes quickly as an admin, and every user got the benefit of using those fields\\. Now, it may be that you add a new field and you want to update a lot of contracts quickly with that new field\\. If you are an administrator, you can make a bulk change like that by coming to Data Tools and the Contracts Registry, Manage\\. We're going to select several of these\\. You could pick any number of them that you want\\. We will edit\\. We're going to choose our new strategic field that we customized and we're going to set it to yes\\. So it's very easy to both create custom fields and then make bulk changes based on those fields if you want\\. Those were the five things we said we wanted to cover\\.\n\n### 00:23:02\n\nWe used the Contracts module, we used the Counterparties module, we set notifications, we attached files, and we configured those modules to meet our needs\\. Very easy, powerful features\\. We're just scratching the surface on contract management\\. We hope you enjoy using your system of record for all of your compliance needs\\. We look forward to hearing from you\\.","url":"https://lextree.ai/presentations/contract-management-start/#recording-transcript"}},"slides":[{"ctas":[{"label":"Explore contract management","url":"https://lextree.ai/solutions/contract-management/"}],"id":"opening","layout":"cover","markdown":"# Get Started with Contract Management\n\nHow to capture and control your contracts with Lextree, your system of record for compliance.","notes":"Contracts create many of the rights and obligations your business has to track: payment terms, renewal and expiration dates, insurance requirements, notice periods. Lextree keeps your contracts in the same system of record as the rest of your compliance data and documents. The parties, dates, and files behind each agreement sit together, and anyone with access can find them.\n\nThis walkthrough covers the parts of Lextree a contract manager uses every day.","position":1,"title":"Get Started with Contract Management","url":"https://lextree.ai/presentations/contract-management-start/#opening"},{"ctas":[],"id":"topics","layout":"agenda","markdown":"## Learn key contract management principles\n\n- [ ] Use the Contracts module\n- [ ] Use the Counterparties module\n- [ ] Set notifications\n- [ ] Attach files\n- [ ] Configure modules to your needs","notes":"The walkthrough covers five tasks. It starts in the Contracts module, where each agreement is recorded with its parties, terms, and documents. It then moves to the Counterparties module, which holds what you know about each vendor and supplier apart from any single contract.\n\nAlong the way, it attaches files to a contract and sets reminders and calendar events for its key dates. It ends with an administrator adding a contract type and a custom field, which shows how quickly Lextree can be fitted to the way your organization works.","position":2,"title":"Learn key contract management principles","url":"https://lextree.ai/presentations/contract-management-start/#topics"},{"ctas":[],"id":"out-of-scope","layout":"agenda","markdown":"## Covered in other videos\n\n- [ ] Tasks and workflows\n- [ ] Access controls\n- [ ] User management\n- [ ] Reports\n- [ ] Imports and exports","notes":"Several features matter to contract management but fall outside this overview: tasks and workflows, access controls that limit who can see which records, user management, reports, and imports and exports. Lextree includes all of them, and each has its own video and help documentation.","position":3,"title":"Covered in other videos","url":"https://lextree.ai/presentations/contract-management-start/#out-of-scope"},{"ctas":[],"id":"all-modules","layout":"content","markdown":"## 21 modules\n\nLextree modules, all highlighted: Assets, Authority, Certifications, Contracts, Counterparties, Employment, Entity Ownership, Environment, Health \u0026 Safety, Financial Statements, Governance, Grants, Insurance, Intellectual Property, Legal Entities, Licenses \u0026 Permits, Matters, Policies, Real Estate, Taxes, Treasury, Trusts.","notes":"Lextree has 21 modules, and each one covers a single area of compliance. Contract management draws on only a few of them. The next slides narrow the set to the modules a contract team is most likely to use.","position":4,"title":"21 modules","url":"https://lextree.ai/presentations/contract-management-start/#all-modules"},{"ctas":[],"id":"core-modules-1","layout":"content","markdown":"## Core modules\n\nLextree modules, highlighted: Contracts, Counterparties. All 21 modules are shown; the others are grayed.","notes":"Two modules form the core of contract management. Contracts holds each agreement with its parties, key dates, terms, obligations, and the documents that make up the relationship. Counterparties holds the vendors, suppliers, and other parties you contract with, along with the compliance records you collect from them. Most contract teams can start with these two modules alone.","position":5,"title":"Core modules","url":"https://lextree.ai/presentations/contract-management-start/#core-modules-1"},{"ctas":[],"id":"special-modules","layout":"content","markdown":"## Special situations\n\nLextree modules, highlighted: Certifications, Contracts, Counterparties, Grants, Insurance, Licenses \u0026 Permits. All 21 modules are shown; the others are grayed.","notes":"Four more modules add depth when your situation calls for it. Grants suits nonprofits and colleges and universities that manage grant agreements. Insurance tracks both policies and certificates of insurance in detail. Certifications and Licenses and Permits record the credentials your counterparties must hold.\n\nEach of these modules has its own video. Every module is included in every subscription plan, so turning one on does not change what you pay.","position":6,"title":"Special situations","url":"https://lextree.ai/presentations/contract-management-start/#special-modules"},{"ctas":[],"id":"advanced-modules","layout":"content","markdown":"## Advanced types\n\nLextree modules, highlighted: Certifications, Contracts, Counterparties, Employment, Grants, Insurance, Licenses \u0026 Permits, Treasury. All 21 modules are shown; the others are grayed.","notes":"Two more modules handle contracts that need separate treatment. Employment keeps senior management agreements and plans such as employee stock purchase plans apart from the general contract registry, because these agreements often need extra protection. Treasury holds credit facilities and lending agreements, which helps when you have many financing contracts to track on their own.","position":7,"title":"Advanced types","url":"https://lextree.ai/presentations/contract-management-start/#advanced-modules"},{"ctas":[],"id":"core-modules-2","layout":"content","markdown":"## Core modules\n\nLextree modules, highlighted: Contracts, Counterparties. All 21 modules are shown; the others are grayed.","notes":"The rest of the walkthrough stays with Contracts and Counterparties and moves into Lextree itself. Two ideas run through the demonstration.\n\nFirst, Lextree treats a contract as a relationship, not a single document. The original agreement, its amendments, statements of work, side letters, change orders, and notices all belong to one contract record. When an amendment changes the expiration date, the main record updates to match, and a link shows which document set the date.\n\nSecond, each feature can be as simple or as complete as you need. A team that only wants its files in one place can drop them onto a contract's attachments. A team that needs more can record each document with its own effective date, list each obligation with the party responsible for it, and track a counterparty's insurance, W-9s, licenses, and attestations year by year.\n\nIn the recording, the contracts registry starts at 3:08 and a three-party supply agreement at 5:04. Reminders from a calendar event template start at 11:59, and a counterparty's compliance records at 14:50. At 17:58, an administrator adds a contract type and a custom field.","position":8,"title":"Core modules","url":"https://lextree.ai/presentations/contract-management-start/#core-modules-2"}],"takeaways":["Find any contract in the registry by searching, filtering, or pinning the columns you need.","Keep the original agreement, amendments, SOWs, side letters, and notices on one contract record, and let amendments update its key dates.","Set reminders from calendar event templates so expiration and renewal dates reach the right people in advance.","Track each counterparty's insurance, W-9s, licenses, certifications, and attestations, with the history kept over time.","As an administrator, add a contract type or a custom field, and bulk-update existing records to use it."],"title":"Get started with contract management","url":"https://lextree.ai/presentations/contract-management-start/","version":1}