What to do 60 days before a contract renews

Sixty days is counted from the renewal date. If the contract needs 60 days' notice or more, today is already the last day to cancel, or it has passed. Look up the notice period before anything else.

Not sure where to find it? Notice periods, explained covers where to look and how to count.

• The contract. Renewal date, term length, notice period, and how notice must be given (a setting in the account, an email, a form or a letter).
• The cost. What you pay now, and what the renewal will cost. Some vendors raise prices at renewal and say so in advance; HubSpot, for example, commits to 30 days' notice of an increase. If you haven't heard, ask.
• The use. How many seats or licenses you pay for, and how many people actually used it in the last month or two. Many tools show this in their admin pages.
• The overlap. Whether another tool you already pay for does the same job.

The owner picks one of three answers:

• Renew as it is.
• Renegotiate: fewer seats, a lower tier, a better price, or a shorter term. Ask early: vendors need time, and you need their answer in writing before the last day to cancel.
• Cancel: plan the replacement, if any, and who moves the data.

Write the decision down, with who made it and when. If it needs approval under your company's rules, get it now, not in the last week.

• If you cancel: give notice the way the contract says, and keep the confirmation. Export the data you need, and note when access ends.
• If you renegotiate: get the new terms signed before the deadline. Without them, the old terms renew.
• If you renew: check who will receive the invoice, and that the card or account it bills still works.

For two common tools we wrote the cancel steps from the vendor's own documentation: HubSpot and Microsoft 365 for business.

• Check the invoice or the charge matches what you agreed, or that no charge arrived if you canceled.
• Update your records with the next renewal date and the new amount.
• Put the next renewal in front of the owner again, well ahead of its notice deadline.

• The deadline comes to you. With a notice period on the vendor, the alert arrives before the last day to cancel, not before the renewal. Admins choose how far ahead, from 1 to 30 days.
• The next 30 days at a glance. The dashboard lists what renews in the next 30 days, with each vendor's last day to cancel. On the Business plan, the monthly spend report emailed to the Admins also shows what renews next.
• The decision is recorded. Renew, Renegotiate or Cancel, with who decided and when, on the vendor itself.