The Contract Approval Process: 6 Stages & How to Expedite

For many organizations, contract approvals are a recurring source of delays. Whether closing a sales deal, finalizing a vendor agreement, or executing a partnership, getting a contract across the finish line often takes longer than expected. These delays, often a result of manual contract management, affect not just legal departments but also impact sales operations, finance, procurement, and IT.

ByIn fact, legal teams are sometimes bypassed altogether, viewed as bottlenecks instead of strategic partners, especially when time-sensitive agreements fall below threshold values or when internal workflows are ambiguous. Delays don’t always stem from legal review—they often begin earlier, when teams lack clarity on who needs to approve what, and in what order.

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In this article, we discuss the full contract approval process, identify common roadblocks, and offer actionable strategies to accelerate the contract cycle.

We’re also highlighting the potential of self-service tools like DocJuris to empower non-legal teams and keep things moving without sacrificing compliance or accuracy.

Main takeaways from this article:

• Contract approvals typically follow these stages: initiation (identifying the need for a contract,  gathering relevant context, and submitting an intake request), screening, redlining, drafting, internal review, negotiation, and final sign-off (pre-signature), followed by contract execution (post-signature).
• Major slowdowns stem from inconsistent templates, overloaded legal and procurement teams, low visibility into status, and error‑prone redlining.
• Digital intake forms, AI‑powered playbooks, and automated routing let business units tackle routine contracts while sending only high‑risk items to legal counsel.
• Parallel reviews, auto‑generated change logs, and real‑time dashboards surface bottlenecks, shorten cycle times, and maintain an auditable trail for compliance.
• DocJuris's contract management software bundles these capabilities, empowering sales ops, finance, procurement, and IT to finalize agreements in minutes, without sacrificing legal oversight.

What is the contract approval process?

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The contract approval process refers to the structured workflow of reviewing, negotiating, and signing contracts. While the process may vary depending on the business or contract type, its purpose remains the same: ensuring legal accuracy, managing risk, and aligning all involved parties before finalizing a binding agreement. 

Traditionally, contract approvals are handled manually—passed between departments via email, edited in static Word documents, and tracked in spreadsheets. This fragmented approach often leads to lost version control, delays from unclear ownership, and increased legal risk due to overlooked terms or inconsistent language.

A digital contract approval process centralizes all contract-related activities in one platform. Teams collaborate in real time, approvals are routed automatically based on predefined criteria, and version history is tracked with complete visibility. Tools like DocJuris further enhance this process by layering in AI-powered redlining, screening, and negotiation insights—helping teams move faster without sacrificing accuracy or compliance.

Who is involved in a typical contract approval workflow?

Contract approvals are rarely managed by one person. A well-defined contract approval workflow involves collaboration between various departments, each with specific responsibilities:

• IT or InfoSec (Information Security) for vendor contracts: For software or vendor-related agreements, IT or InfoSec assesses data privacy, integration compatibility, cybersecurity clauses, and service-level agreements.
• Internal team: Whichever internal team was sent the contract (sales, legal ops, etc.) reviews the contract to identify whether Legal needs to be involved (if the contract is greater than $10,000).
• Legal teams: Legal ensures all clauses align with internal risk policies and external compliance requirements. They’re also responsible for final reviews, risk flagging, and legal redlines.
• Procurement: When the contract involves purchasing goods or services, procurement reviews terms related to pricing, delivery, warranties, and vendor obligations. Often the hidden players in the negotiation process, procurement teams are the driving force for managing ERP spend and ensure no contract overlap.
• Finance: The finance department reviews payment terms, credit risks, and budget allocations, especially for high-value or recurring contracts.  Finance teams provide the final ‘sign-off’ for approved contract transactions.

The six stages of the contract approval process

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Here’s a breakdown of the typical contract approval workflow and where delays often happen:

1. Contract initiation

The review and approval process starts when a contract is requested. This can be triggered by a new sale, vendor onboarding, partnership, or renewal. It involves collecting key details like contract type, business terms, and involved parties.

2. Preliminary reviews (IT, InfoSec, and requestor’s team)

Before drafting or legal review begins, the contract goes through several internal vetting steps:

• IT validates the vendor's domain and company integrity, including certifications like SOC 2, ISO 27001, and data storage practices.
• Information Security (InfoSec) reviews how data will be used, shared, and secured—especially if AI or sensitive data handling is involved.
• The requesting business unit performs a self-review to determine whether the contract meets the internal threshold (e.g., over $10,000) that would require legal team involvement.

3. Drafting and and first-pass redlining

If legal is required, the team will use internal templates or prior contracts to generate a draft. With DocJuris, business users can also initiate first-pass screening and redlines, using playbook-driven tools and clause comparisons to align the draft with company standards—before legal steps in.

4. Internal stakeholder review

Once the draft is ready, it's routed to cross-functional stakeholders:

Procurement evaluates whether similar tools or vendors already exist in the ERP ecosystem and validates alignment with budget, renewals, integrations, and current tech stack. Often, procurement leads the actual vendor negotiation process in collaboration with the finance team.

Finance reviews the total cost, payment terms, and ensures the contract aligns with budget approval workflows.

5. Negotiation and redlining with external parties

Procurement or legal teams work with the vendor or partner to negotiate terms. This stage may involve multiple redline rounds, clause revisions, and reviews to align both parties. DocJuris supports real-time collaboration, playbook-driven markup, and negotiation analytics to streamline this step.

6. Final approvals and signature

Once negotiations are complete, the contract is routed for final internal approvals, often including legal, finance, and executive stakeholders based on contract value and risk level. After approval, the contract is signed—electronically or physically—and stored in the organization’s contract repository.

Throughout this process, delays often occur in the “gray areas” of ownership—when it’s unclear which team or person the contract is sitting with. This is where DocJuris analytics plays a key role, providing visibility into workflow handoffs, bottlenecks, and negotiation friction points. By identifying where contracts are stalling, DocJuris helps teams accelerate turnaround time and regain control over the approval process.

Common roadblocks in contract approval and how to combat them

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Understanding where delays arise is essential to eliminating them. Here are some of the most frequent friction points and ways to address them:

Manual contract handoffs

Manually emailing contracts between departments leads to version confusion and missed updates. Adopting centralized platforms like DocJuris reduces reliance on email by providing a single source of truth for collaboration.

Lack of standardized templates or playbooks

Without predefined clause libraries or playbooks, contract terms are reviewed from scratch each time. This slows things down and also increases risk. AI-powered tools can apply consistent redlines and reduce back-and-forth.

Overloaded in-house legal department

Legal teams often face a backlog of contracts requiring review. With self-service tools and conditional automation, other departments can handle low-risk contracts independently, reserving legal resources for high-risk agreements.

Poor visibility into contract status

Without dashboards or real-time tracking, stakeholders are left guessing the contract’s status. This results in constant follow-ups. Automated workflows with built-in notifications eliminate this ambiguity.

Human error in redlining and contract review

Manually redlining contracts using different tools (Word, PDF, email) increases the chance of mistakes. AI-assisted contract review platforms reduce these risks by applying rules consistently and flagging anomalies.

Improving and automating the contract approval process: key strategies

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To address these challenges, organizations must rethink how contracts are managed from start to finish. The following tactics offer practical ways to accelerate approvals without compromising control.

1. Standardize the intake process

Ad‑hoc email requests invite omissions, inconsistencies, and missed deadlines. Replace them with a structured, digital intake form that captures contract type, business owner, counterparty, value, key dates, and any non‑standard requirements at the outset.

When every request arrives in a uniform format, Contract Admins can triage quickly, route accurately, and avoid costly “back‑for‑more‑information” loops.

2. Use AI-powered playbooks for consistent redlines

Static clause libraries help, but they still demand manual comparison with each new draft. AI playbooks, like those in DocJuris, apply your organization’s fallback positions automatically, strike out prohibited language, and highlight deviations for rapid review.

Business users gain the confidence to handle straightforward agreements on their own, while legal stays in control of risk thresholds and escalations.

3. Automate routing based on contract thresholds

Configure workflows so low‑value, low‑risk contracts flow to a fast‑track path, while high‑stakes agreements trigger additional approvals. Criteria can include dollar amount, jurisdiction, data‑privacy exposure, or exclusivity clauses.

Automated routing prevents “rubber‑stamping” by senior counsel on every document, yet guarantees that sensitive contracts never bypass legal scrutiny.

4. Enable parallel reviews and real-time collaboration

Modern collaboration platforms let sales, finance, procurement, and IT comment in the same workspace at once—seeing one another’s notes and resolving conflicts on the spot.

Version control is maintained automatically, so no one wastes time reconciling divergent drafts or chasing “the latest copy.” Cycle times often shrink from weeks to days.

5. Auto-generate amendments, exception summaries, and audit trails

When a redline session closes, the system should output a change log, an exception summary against the playbook, and (if needed) an amendment ready for signature.

These components give approvers a “single‑glance” view of what changed and why, while the immutable audit trail protects the organization during future disputes or regulatory inquiries.

6. Track progress and measure bottlenecks

Dashboards that display real‑time status (e.g., “with Finance—2 days”) turn anecdotal complaints into actionable data.

Metrics such as average approval time by contract type, queue length per department, and percentage of agreements on the fast‑track reveal exactly where to intervene. Continuous improvement becomes evidence‑based rather than guesswork.

7. Integrate with existing tools

A contract platform gains traction only if it fits the daily flow of its users. Native connections to Salesforce, Microsoft 365, Slack, DocuSign, and  Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems eliminate duplicate data entry and reduce context‑switching. Approvals happen where people already work, while the contract record remains synchronized across all systems of record.

Review and markup contracts in minutes with DocJuris

At DocJuris, we’ve built a contract management solution that addresses the problems discussed throughout this article. No more waiting around for the legal department to complete reviews and approve contracts. Our platform allows departments like sales ops, finance, procurement, and IT to handle the bulk of their contract work post contract requests on their own—all securely and efficiently.

With our AI-powered playbooks and an easy-to-use interface, DocJuris allows teams to collaborate in real time, redline contracts, and compare versions. By including an audit trail, automated routing, and built-in clause libraries, you can streamline your processes and reduce friction, accelerate deal velocity, and adhere to compliance requirements.

Request a demo today to see our platform in action and learn how you can automate your contract approval process.