Contracts & Compliance

How it works

The mechanics of this kit, plainly — what runs and when, where the data lands, and what you look at.

• Renewal watch runs mondays · 9am and keeps the Contracts dashboard fresh. Mondays — recomputes every notice date, lists what has to be decided, and flags what the register cannot answer.
• What is captured lands in the Contract register record, which lives at Data/Contract Register in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• The Contracts dashboard reads from the record and shows, at a glance: every contract on the register · what has to be decided · on the register · where each one stands · contracts per party · notice periods · terms across the year · risk flags · the register · how this board works.

The wiring, in one breath: Contract capture writes to Contract register · Contract register shown by Contracts · Contracts kept fresh by Renewal watch · Renewal watch run by Hawthorn · Hawthorn holds Contract capture.

Getting the most from it

A kit earns its place when it changes what you look at and what you say, not when it is installed. This is the rhythm that makes it pay.

• Seed the register in one sitting and stop when you get bored. Hawthorn offers the territory first — software and services, suppliers, premises, insurance, finance, customer agreements, contractors, partnerships, confidentiality — and then takes them one at a time. Three contracts is a working register; the ones you forgot can join later, and the board is honest either way.
• Read What has to be decided on Monday morning, after the Renewal watch has been through the register. It is soonest first and it is the only panel that asks anything of you — a contract on it is a decision to make this week, not a thing to worry about. Everything else on the board is context.
• Treat Give notice by as arithmetic, not as gospel. It is the term end minus the notice period, and Hawthorn says so every time — so before you act on one, open the contract and check it. Where either figure is missing, no date is shown at all and the contract appears under Risk flags instead, which is exactly where an unanswerable question belongs.
• Drop the contract itself into your vault when you have it. Contract capture reads the parties, the term, the renewal behaviour and the notice period straight off it, records where the copy lives, and you never have to find the PDF again to answer "how much notice do we owe them?"
• Say changes the way you would say them to a colleague — "we resigned the cleaning contract, runs to next March, sixty days' notice now" — and the row moves. That is the correction that keeps the board true between Mondays.
• Tell Hawthorn the standing facts once: how much warning you want before a notice date, what you call each supplier, which contracts never matter. If renewal notices arrive by email, say so and switch that check on by name — nothing outside your own records is read until you do.

Make it yours

Nothing here is fixed. The pieces are ordinary agents, routines, records and dashboards, so anything you know about shaping those applies. Retire whatever earns nothing.

Things people usually change first

Say any of these in chat, or edit them on the kit’s page in the app.

• How much warning you want before a notice date — ninety days out of the box, said once as a standing rule or set per contract.
• What each contract and each counterparty is called: the name on the register is the word Hawthorn uses back.
• Whether the Monday watch reads email for renewal notices at all. It does not until you name that check, and it only ever looks for notices from the parties already on your register.
• When the watch runs, or pausing it and keeping the register by hand — the arithmetic is redone whenever you mention a contract either way.
• What happens to a contract that ends: mark it retired and the row stays with its history, off the counts and off the board's live panels.

Your first run

Installing starts a short setup conversation — not a form. Answer roughly, correct later.

1. Adding the Kit leads with "Meet Hawthorn" rather than a first sweep, because the contracts you are bound by live in your head and in a folder — not in any account this Kit can read. Hawthorn opens with one multi-select panel offering the whole territory, so the contract you would not have thought of gets its chance, and then takes the ones you pick one at a time: what you call it, who it is with, roughly when the term ends, whether it renews on its own, how much notice it needs.
2. Each contract is written to the Contract register as it is agreed, not batched at the end, so stopping after three leaves you with a working register. Anything you are unsure of is left blank rather than guessed — an undated contract shows as undated, which is honest, and shows up under Risk flags rather than counting as fine.
3. Until the register has its first row there is nothing to watch, so the Renewal watch skips its Monday run and leaves one card in your 1Presence inbox in Hawthorn's voice, offering that same conversation. The kit page and the board quietly offer it too, and all three stop the moment a contract is on the register.
4. From then on the watch runs on Monday mornings: it recomputes every notice date from the term and the notice period, works out where each contract stands against your warning window, redraws the board, and raises a card only when a notice date has come inside that window, has just passed, or a term has ended.
5. Out of the box the Kit reads nothing outside your own records. Tell Hawthorn that renewal notices arrive by email and switch that check on by name, and the Monday watch will read exactly what you named — and nothing else.

Watch the first pass, then tell it what you would have done differently — that correction teaches it more than any setup could.

The essentials

Learning, preferences and run costs work the same in every kit — so they are covered once, in the Kits guide.

Living with a Kit — the Kits guide →

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