Renewal and price review: what the decision maker looks at
The decision maker checks three things before a renewal is signed: whether the price increase is documented against a stated method, whether service levels held during the prior term, and whether walking away remains a real option. If any of the three is missing, the review stops until it is supplied. Everything else in the process follows from those three checks, not from the date the vendor proposes.
Renewal sits next to a wider set of technology-contract questions. One of them is how obligations move when the counterparty itself changes hands, and a separate area covers what happens once a contract touches tokenised infrastructure — see Tokenised rights and digital objects overview in detail for the broader map. The rest of this page stays with renewal and price review on their own terms.
What changes once the renewal window opens
A renewal window opens on a fixed date set by the existing contract, usually counted backward from expiry. Once it opens, silence starts to work against the party that stays quiet. A vendor that raises price without a documented method loses leverage in a dispute; a customer that lets the window close without a response loses the ability to renegotiate before the automatic-renewal term kicks in. The commercial terms do not change automatically — the clock does.
Price review is narrower than renewal. It can happen mid-term, under a clause that allows adjustment on a set trigger — an index, a cost pass-through, a volume threshold. Renewal, by contrast, resets the whole agreement. Confusing the two leads teams to negotiate the wrong document at the wrong stage.
Steps to take
- Pull the current contract and locate the renewal notice period, the price-review clause, and any cap on increases.
- Assemble the service-level record for the prior term — incident log, uptime report, response times against the agreed target.
- Draft the position on price: accept, counter with a cap, or request a shorter term while the counter is negotiated.
- Send the notice within the contractual window, in the form the contract requires — email alone is often not enough.
- Escalate internally if the other side does not respond within the notice period; a first read from a partner is available within minutes in business hours, and the escalation route is set out at How to reach a partner explained.
- Record the final position in writing before the renewal date, regardless of which side moves first.
Who decides and by when
Renewal decisions sit with whoever holds contract-signing authority on each side, not with the account team that manages the relationship day to day. Price review, where it is a contractual mechanism rather than a full renegotiation, is often delegated further down — to a procurement or finance function that checks the trigger against the agreed formula.
| Stage | Typical trigger | Who acts |
|---|---|---|
| Notice window opens | Fixed number of days before expiry, set by the contract | Either party, per the notice clause |
| Price position drafted | Vendor proposes an increase, or the review clause activates | Procurement or finance, with legal input |
| Service record reviewed | Renewal notice served | Operations or the account owner |
| Final position sent | Before the notice period closes | Contract-signing authority |
| Point of no return | Notice period lapses without a response | Automatic renewal or lapse applies, per the existing terms |
If your situation differs
If the contract auto-renews and no notice was sent in time, the existing terms roll over for another full term — check the lapse date before assuming there is still room to negotiate. If the vendor proposes a price increase with no reference to any method in the contract, the increase has no contractual basis and can be rejected outright, not merely countered. If your organisation is the one that wants to exit rather than renew, the exit route depends on whether the contract treats non-renewal as termination for convenience or as a separate, unstated event — that distinction changes the notice period required.
What this page does not cover
This page does not cover how to draft a price-review clause from scratch, and it does not cover renewal where the counterparty has already been replaced through a corporate change — that situation runs on a different timeline. It also does not tell you what a specific vendor's contract with your organisation permits; that requires reading the document itself.
Two adjacent questions come up often enough to flag here without answering them in full. One is what a renewal review can establish about a counterparty before a term is extended — see Counterparty in Poland and its limits in practice. The other is what a document search can and cannot confirm once a renewal is disputed, covered separately at Document in Denmark and the evidence.
Verified
Checked against current practice as of the publication date shown on this page. No statute, regulation, or case citation is used on this page by design — the procedure described here does not turn on a specific article number, and none is asserted.
Related reading
A closely related procedure covers what happens to a technology contract when the counterparty itself changes ownership mid-term — see Novation on a corporate change: what the decision maker for the equivalent checklist.
Next step
Renewal reviews often surface data questions that were never resolved at signing — for instance whether a children's product surfaced personal data that the original contract never addressed, a situation walked through at When children's data appears in the product explained.
A renewal is also the natural point to check whether an AI feature added since signing has quietly changed what the vendor does with your data — see When an AI feature changes the data flow and for what that costs to get wrong.
FAQ
How long does renewal and price review take in practice?
Where the contract sets a clear notice period, the review itself usually runs inside that window — often two to six weeks from first draft position to signed renewal, depending on how quickly the other side responds. A disputed price increase with no documented method takes longer, because the position has to be built before it can be sent.
Which documents are needed to start?
The current contract with its renewal and price clauses, the service-level record for the prior term, and any prior correspondence about pricing. Without the service-level record, the review has no basis for accepting or rejecting a price change tied to performance.
What happens if the other side does not respond?
Silence inside the notice period is not neutral. Depending on the contract, it either locks in automatic renewal on the existing terms or allows the contract to lapse — the two outcomes are opposite, and the notice clause decides which one applies. Escalating early, before the window closes, keeps both outcomes open longer.