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The executed contract and its approval trail come back as a query
A contract moves through a dozen redlines and a signature, and the versions scatter across email, a shared drive, and someone's downloads folder. We put the contract, its revisions, and its signatures on one record under an enforced lifecycle, so the executed version and who approved it are a query instead of a search.
A folder of drafts cannot tell you which version was signed
A contract moves through redlines, a countersignature, and a final PDF, and each step lands somewhere different: a negotiation thread in email, a near-final draft on the shared drive, the signed copy in the inbox of whoever closed it. Months later, confirming which version is the executed one means trusting that the file named final really was.
Nothing in that arrangement stops an unapproved draft going out for signature, or an amendment saved next to the original with no link between them. The lifecycle a contract is supposed to follow lives in habit, not in software.
The contract runs an enforced, signed lifecycle on one record
We put the contract on a single record and enforce its lifecycle in code: draft, in-review, approved, executed. Each revision is captured as it happens, signatures are taken with re-authentication, and the same person does not both approve and sign their own agreement.
An amendment attaches to the contract it changes rather than starting a loose new file, so the record carries the original, every revision, and the executed version together. The version you open is the one in force.
Who approved what, and when, comes back as a query
Because every draft, approval, and signature is a record produced as the contract moves, the approval trail is not something anyone reconstructs later. Ask who signed the current master services agreement, on what date, against which approved draft, and the answer is a query against the record.
When counsel or an auditor asks for the executed version and its history, you return the record, not a search of three inboxes.
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Tell us where your executed contracts live today and we scope the build, or email hello@mcintoshsystems.com.