A contract management system requirements checklist is a scored list of what your business needs from contract software, from storage and drafting to approvals, alerts and integrations, so you can compare CLM vendors on your own priorities instead of their feature counts.
Updated 13 Oct 2026 · Reviewed by the Spendflo procurement team
Set the priority filter to the depth you need, then score each vendor against the rows that remain. Open a requirement to see who should own it, the demo test that proves it and the red flag that should drop the vendor.
Get the contract management system requirements checklist as an Excel tracker with owners, status drop-downs and a progress score.
It is the shortlist of capabilities your team agrees a CLM or contract management system must have, ranked by priority and written as tests, so every vendor demo is judged against the same rows rather than the slickest feature tour.
Legal ops or procurement usually owns it, with legal, finance, IT and security each adding the rows they will be held to. Written before the first demo, it stops the decision drifting towards whichever vendor showed the most AI features.
Who owns contracts in your company changes the list. A legal-led team writing sales contracts needs authoring and CRM sync; a procurement-led team buying software needs intake, approvals and renewal alerts on supplier paper. The priority filter lets you cut the list to fit.
This checklist is a starting point, not legal advice. Confirm security, retention and regulatory rows with your own legal and security teams.
Five capability areas carry most of the weight, and two more decide whether the tool goes live on time and at the price you expected.
| Area | What it must prove | Groups in the checklist |
|---|---|---|
| Centralised repository and data | One place for every contract, searchable, with terms pulled out automatically | Repository and data |
| Authoring, drafting and negotiation | Drafts come from approved templates and redlines stay in one record | Authoring; Negotiation |
| Workflows and approvals | Contracts route to the right approvers and on to signature without chasing | Workflows, approvals and signature |
| Tracking, alerts and compliance | Dates and obligations reach an owner, access is controlled and logged | Obligations and renewals; Security |
| Integrations and analytics | Contract data flows to CRM and ERP, and dashboards show bottlenecks | Integrations and analytics |
| Intake | Requests arrive in a structured form before anyone drafts | Intake and requests |
| Vendor, pricing and migration | Your legacy contracts move in, and the price holds after year one | Vendor, pricing and migration |
Give each requirement a priority, score each vendor from 0 to 3 in the demo, then multiply. A vendor that misses any must-have drops out, however high its total.
| Score | Meaning in the demo |
|---|---|
| 3 | Shown working on your own contract, no workaround |
| 2 | Shown working with configuration the vendor can name and date |
| 1 | Possible with a workaround, partner tool or services work |
| 0 | Not available, or only on the roadmap |
Large legal or procurement team replacing a legacy CLM.
Weight Must x3, Should x2, Could x1
Mid-sized team moving off shared drives and email.
Skip the Could-have rows
Small team that mainly needs a repository and renewal alerts.
Any zero is a fail
These are the questions most feature lists skip. Send them before the demo and ask for a document behind each answer.
Download the contract management system requirements checklist so every owner can work their own rows in Excel or Google Sheets, with status and dates.
The checklist becomes a requirements document once you add your context and who signs off. Keep it short enough that vendors answer every row.
| Section | What to write | Sample wording |
|---|---|---|
| Background | Contract volumes, types and where they live today | We hold about 1,200 supplier contracts across shared drives and email. |
| Problems to solve | The three to five failures that triggered the project | Renewals are found after the notice date has passed. |
| Users and owners | Teams that request, draft, approve and report | Procurement owns supplier contracts; legal owns sales paper. |
| Requirements | The rows above with your priority on each | Must: renewal alerts to a named owner 90 days before notice. |
| Integrations | Systems the tool must read from or write to | Should: supplier records sync from NetSuite. |
| Commercials | Budget range, term and pricing model you accept | Three-year term with a capped annual uplift. |
| Decision process | Who scores, who decides and by when | Scores agreed by legal, procurement and IT by 30 November. |
The figures in the sample wording are illustrative. Replace them with your own volumes and dates before you send the document.
The same checklist reads differently depending on whose contracts dominate. Mark the groups that matter most to your team before you set priorities.
| Group | Legal-led (sell-side, own paper) | Procurement-led (buy-side, supplier paper) |
|---|---|---|
| Intake and requests | Useful | Essential: every purchase starts here |
| Authoring and templates | Essential | Useful for NDAs and DPAs |
| Negotiation and redlining | Essential | Playbook checks on supplier drafts |
| Approvals | Legal and sales sign-off | Budget, security and finance sign-off by value |
| Renewals and alerts | Useful | Essential: auto-renewals drive spend |
| Integrations | CRM first | ERP and supplier records first |
Some buy-side teams pair a legal-led CLM with a procurement tool rather than forcing one system to do both jobs.
Each step ends with something written down, so the final choice can be traced back to the requirements.
Name owners from legal, procurement, finance, IT and security.
Write down current contract processes and where they fail.
Mark each row Must, Should or Could have.
Run the demo test per row on your own contracts.
Check references, confirm pricing, then choose and record why.
Here is part of a completed evaluation for one shortlisted CLM vendor, with the two failed rows and the decision they led to. The companies and figures are illustrative.
| Check | Owner | Evidence received | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single repository for all contracts | Legal ops | Legacy and draft found in one search | Done |
| Full-text search with OCR | Legal ops | Scanned 2019 lease returned by clause phrase | Done |
| Approval routing by value and risk | Legal ops | Rule built live in the demo | Done |
| Renewal alerts to named owners | Procurement | Alert went to uploader only | Flagged |
| SSO, MFA and SCIM | IT | SCIM documentation received | Done |
| Migration scoped and priced | Legal ops | Quote covers 500 contracts, not 1,200 | Flagged |
+ 29 more requirements scored, evidence attached
All 50 requirements with priority, a 0 to 3 score for three vendors and a weighted total. Free, no credit card.
FreeNo credit cardWork email only
| # | Check | Owner | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Single repository for active, legacy and pending contracts | Legal ops | Done |
| 2 | Several intake routes: bulk upload, email and API | IT | In progress |
| 3 | Metadata fields configurable without code | Legal ops | Flagged |
| 4 | AI extraction of parties, dates, terms and obligations | Legal ops | Done |
A contract management system is software that stores contracts in one place and manages them from request and drafting through approval, signature, renewal and expiry. The checklist above lists what to test before you choose one.
The five steps are usually request, drafting and negotiation, approval and signature, managing obligations, and renewal or close-out. A good system should support each one, which is why the requirements checklist has a group for every step.
A contract needs an offer, acceptance, consideration, capacity of the parties and a lawful purpose. A contract management system does not create these, but its templates and approval rules help make sure each one is in place before signature.
There is no fixed legal list, but most buy-side teams need the master agreement, order forms, statements of work, NDAs, DPAs, SLAs, amendments, renewal notices and termination letters in one place. Your system should link each of them to the parent contract, a requirement covered in the download.
You can download this contract management system requirements checklist free as an Excel file, a Google Sheet or a PDF. The template includes the priority filter, scoring columns for three vendors and the vendor questions.
Cover the buy side of contract management
Spendflo is not a full CLM suite. It covers buy-side contracts: intake and approvals for supplier requests, the Contracts Agent to pull key terms and flag risky clauses, and renewal tracking before notice dates. Spendflo has handled 15,000+ agreements.
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