Obligations Management

Background to Obligations Management

Contracts typically contain a number of obligations that clients have agreed to with their counterparties, and keeping track of these obligations usually involves a spreadsheet compiled by their legal counsel. This approach is expensive, time-consuming and analogue.

With the new obligation management feature in Query, users can easily keep track of the various obligations they have across their contracts. After uploading their contracts to Query, our machine learning algorithm will automatically tag relevant clauses as obligations. From there, users can add important details such as tasks, reminders, responsible persons, obligation types, and notes related to each obligation.

Every obligation will then be visible on the obligation dashboard, which provides a comprehensive overview of obligations to enable easy navigation. Users can easily track key tasks related to each obligation, ensuring that they never miss important deadlines and stay compliant.

With this feature, users can also maintain an audit trail of all their obligations. Unlike a static spreadsheet, this feature allows for notifications to be sent to the responsible person, which can help ensure that compliance problems do not occur due to missed deadlines or incomplete tasks. Additionally, users can easily reference the original document to understand where obligations came from and what has been done to stay compliant in the past.

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How to use Obligations Management

You can create an obligation for certain clauses within Query. To create an obligation for a clause:

1. Go the the contract view
2. Click on the obligations tab on the right hand side
3. Click on “Create the obligation”
4. Fill all fields about the obligation: Name, Priority, Responsible Person, etc
5. If needed, create a reminder for the obligation:

• Enter the event date. This is the important date for which you need to be reminded, such as the contract’s expiration date or auto-renewal date.
• Select the reminder type to give the recipients some context as to why they’re receiving the reminder.
• Set the timing for the reminder. This timing is set relative to the event date. For example, if you need to be reminded to take action 60 days before the event date, set the timing to be 60 days and before. Reminders can be set to be sent out before, on or even after the event date.
• Set whether the reminder repeats on a regular basis. This is useful for actions that need to be taken based on events that repeat continuously, such as annual auto-renewals, quarterly reporting requirements, and bi-annual pricing updates.

To view your obligations, you can use the obligations dashboard. To access it, go to the main Query page and click on 'Obligations' on the left-hand side. Inside the obligation dashboard, you will have the ability to view information about all of your obligations. To do so, simply click on the relevant obligation and you’ll be able to view key information including tasks, reminders, responsible persons, obligation types, and notes for each obligation.