Google Sheets is a sensible starting point for tracking contracts. But as your business grows, its limitations become real problems — and a missed renewal is an expensive way to find out.
The typical setup is familiar: a shared spreadsheet with columns for supplier name, contract value, renewal date, and perhaps a notice period and assigned owner. Everyone has access, renewal dates are visible, and it feels like a reasonable solution — especially at the start.
For a small business with a handful of contracts, this works reasonably well. The problem is that it works until it suddenly doesn't. And by the time it fails, the failure is usually a missed renewal, an unexpected auto-renewal charge, or a lapsed insurance policy.
Google Sheets cannot proactively send you an email when a contract is approaching renewal. You can build conditional formatting to highlight upcoming dates, but someone has to open the spreadsheet and look. That's the exact behaviour that doesn't happen reliably in a busy business.
Google Sheets has version history, but it won't tell you who changed a renewal date, what the previous value was, or why a change was made. For regulated businesses, professional services firms, or anyone managing contracts on behalf of clients, this is a significant compliance gap.
Shared spreadsheets get accidentally edited. Dates get overwritten. Formulas get broken by someone pasting data. There's no protection against this without significant sheet locking — which then makes the spreadsheet harder to use.
Someone needs to keep the spreadsheet current. After every renewal, every price change, every contract modification — the spreadsheet needs to be updated manually. When that person is busy (or leaves the business), the spreadsheet gradually becomes unreliable.
A spreadsheet shows every contract as an equal row. There's no automatic surfacing of what's urgent, what's expiring this month, or what needs a decision this week — unless someone builds and maintains complex conditional logic.
Google Sheets is a reasonable choice if:
If any of those conditions change — more contracts, a busier team, compliance requirements, or a team member change — the spreadsheet approach starts to show its limits.
MyRenewals is built specifically for contract renewal tracking. It does everything a spreadsheet does, plus the things a spreadsheet can't.
Import your existing Google Sheets data via CSV and be running in minutes. Free plan available — no card required.
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