A building services company with forty staff outsources its IT support for 2,400 euros a month. The contract says top-priority incidents are picked up within four hours, and that the provider credits 5% of the monthly fee for every month in which it manages this in fewer than 95% of cases. Over the past year the provider missed that target in six months. Nobody noticed, because nobody compared the ticket report with the contract. Each credit had to be claimed within thirty days of the month ending. All six deadlines have passed.
The money is not really the point here. The point is that the company paid for a year of service it did not receive, and will walk into the next renewal with nothing to show for it.
The contract is filed, and so are the promises in it
Loio found that 71% of contracts are never checked for compliance or deviations after signing (Loio, Contract Management Statistics & Trends 2026). That is rarely a choice. A contract is negotiated by one person, usually in procurement or management, and then used by someone else: the office manager who approves invoices, the team lead who calls the supplier when something breaks. That second person has typically never read the contract, so they have no idea what was promised.
World Commerce & Contracting puts the average loss from weak contract management at 9.2% of annual revenue. Some of that comes from renewals nobody saw coming. A good part comes from commitments that were agreed and then never collected.
Where it usually goes wrong
The price on the invoice. The contract sets an hourly rate, a unit price or a fixed monthly fee. The invoice shows something else, because the supplier's system still uses last year's price list, or because a temporary discount lapsed without anyone saying so. If invoices are only checked for "roughly the same as last month", this slips through. Three-way matching compares the invoice with the purchase order and the goods received. For service contracts without purchase orders, a lighter version works fine: once a quarter, hold one invoice up against the rate schedule in the contract.
Discounts and rebates you have to ask for. Many volume discounts are not deducted on the invoice but paid out afterwards, and only on request. An office supplies vendor offering a 2% rebate on the full year's spend once it passes 50,000 euros owes you 1,600 euros on a spend of 80,000. But only if someone asks within the agreed window. The supplier will not remind you.
Service levels. A service level agreement is worth something only if someone measures performance against the target. Most suppliers do send a monthly report, but it gets read like a newsletter rather than checked. If the contract includes service credits, look first at the claim period. It is often short, and credits you do not claim in time are gone. Our service credits clause template shows how the wording usually works.
Documents the supplier is meant to provide. A copy of the liability insurance policy, a valid ISO certificate, an annual report on how personal data is processed. The contract requires it, the supplier sends it once at the start, and nobody asks again. You find out that a policy lapsed when there is a claim. What you write into an insurance obligation clause also decides what you can ask for later.
One hour a quarter
You do not need to check every invoice against every contract. Pick the ten contracts with the highest annual value and go through them once a quarter, asking the same four questions each time:
- Do the prices on the latest invoice match the rate schedule?
- Is there a discount or rebate due, given what you have spent so far this year?
- Did the supplier hit the service levels in its own reports, and is a credit due?
- Are the required documents still valid, or has something expired since the last check?
Write down what you find, including when everything is in order. After four quarters you have a supplier evaluation built on facts rather than impressions, which is exactly what you want in hand when the renewal comes up. The first round takes longest, because you have to dig out the rate schedule and find the claim deadlines. From the second round on, those details sit in your contract register and each contract takes a few minutes.
When the numbers do not match
Start with a normal conversation, figures in hand. Most deviations are administrative and get corrected without argument: the wrong price list, a forgotten rebate.
Do it promptly and in writing, though. Under Dutch law, Article 6:89 of the Civil Code says you lose the right to rely on a defect in performance if you do not complain within a reasonable time after you discovered it, or should reasonably have discovered it. That second part is the catch. If the supplier's own monthly report showed the target was missed, it is hard to argue later that you did not know. Our entry on notice of defect explains how that duty works in practice.
If a supplier keeps falling short, a formal notice of default only makes sense once talking has failed. More often the better use of the evidence is the next negotiation. A supplier that missed the agreed response time for six months has a weak case for a price increase.
Start with five
Ten contracts a quarter is a good rhythm, but five is enough for the first round. Take your five largest service contracts, find the rate schedule, the discount terms, the SLA and the list of documents the supplier owes you, and put the claim deadlines in your calendar. That is an afternoon's work, and it usually pays for itself on the first contract.
The check fits around the rest of the year. Summer is a good time to clean up the contract portfolio, autumn is when you build next year's budget from your contracts, and in between you make sure you are getting what you pay for. That last step is the one most companies skip, even though it is the only one that brings money straight back.