What are bulk actions for contracts? Learn to manage contracts at scale

Contract bulk actions are automated processes whereby legal teams and those they enable can complete contract-related tasks en masse in just a few clicks. With the help of the right contract tools, users can create, upload, send, approve and sign hundreds of contracts in seconds.

But what are the different types of bulk actions available for contracts, and why should you choose a contract management tool that offers them? Discover everything you need to know about bulk actions and how they can remove bottlenecks in this Juro deep dive.

Through features like bulk actions, Juro’s contract automation software reduces the time spent on contract admin by 75%. If you need an all-in-one contract platform that will scale as fast as your business, hit the button below - otherwise, keep reading.

What are bulk actions for contracts?

Also known as mass actions, bulk actions for contracts enable users to complete certain contract-related tasks at scale, saving them time and resources. Typically, these tasks are manual and administrative in nature, making them painful for already busy legal teams to complete individually.

Using bulk action features eliminates the need to complete repetitive tasks like editing, uploading, and signing contracts over and over again. Bulk actions empower those managing contracts to quickly and efficiently create, edit, approve, send and sign legal agreements en masse.

What are the different types of bulk actions for contracts?

1. Mass generate / upload

Bulk generation and upload features allow legal teams and those they enable to create and upload contracts on a large scale in just a few clicks.

Bulk upload enables users to upload and import multiple documents or contracts in one action, rather than uploading each contract individually. Meanwhile, bulk generation allows users to quickly create large volumes of contracts from scratch using a template.

This functionality means that importing, exporting, and writing contracts at scale is no longer a tedious process, and contracts can be generated in large volumes without needing a high legal headcount.

2. Mass send

Bulk send features enable users to send large volumes of contracts to recipients in seconds, prompting them to either review, approve or sign an agreement. This replaces the process of manually emailing individual copies of contracts to counterparties and colleagues, which can be a time-consuming process when carried out at scale.

Even when bulk sending contracts using contract management software, users can still personalize messages and customize requests, meaning contracts don’t lose their personal touch in the process.

3. Mass approval

Bulk approval functionality enables contract approvers to approve or reject large quantities of contract review requests in one go, rather than reviewing and approving each one individually.

This makes contract approval workflows far more efficient for legal counsel, quality assurance executives, and other managers that are responsible for approving contracts.  More often than not, these individuals are already pushed for time but need to approve contracts for them to progress to signing. Allowing them to mass approve these eliminates delays in the contract lifecycle and helps to get contracts to the signing stage faster.

4. Mass sign

Bulk signing is the process of adding an electronic signature to multiple documents in one go, using one single action. In a contract workflow that uses wet signature, this would usually require that the signatory individually sign each contract one by one.

By contrast, bulk signing functionality means that signatures can be applied to large volumes of agreements in one go, usually using an automated signing solution.

This is ideal for simple contracts that are typically sent and signed in large quantities, as it eliminates the need for a signatory to manually sign each contract or document individually.

5. Mass archive

Bulk archive, or mass archive, is a feature that allows users to file large volumes of contracts away in an archive tab without needing to individually achieve each contract.

Instead, users can select which contracts they want to archive, or archive all contracts with certain attributes (e.g contract values, expiration dates ect) in just a few clicks.

This feature means that legal and business teams can locate contracts with ease, and group and store them in large quantities for a specific purpose. It also ensures that the contract data is well-organized, and that high levels of legal hygiene are maintained.

6. Mass duplicate

Some advanced contract management software will also allow users to duplicate contracts en mass, too. This means that legal teams and those they enable can quickly create duplicates of multiple contracts at the same time, instead of having to duplicate each contract separately.

This is a useful feature for when businesses need to send out lots of very similar contracts. For instance, if a company planned to send out option agreements for all of their employees, they could mass duplicate the contract and just vary the name smartfield details to make it more personal.

7. Mass move

It can be painful having to manually move contracts from one folder to another, so mass move features are also useful. Also known as bulk move, mass move functionality enables users to filter and select a large group of contracts and move these into a different location in one go.

This means that contracts in a contract repository can be organized and categorized in seconds, making it easier to view and query important contract data.

What are the advantages of bulk actions in contracts?

The purpose of a bulk action feature is to make certain parts of the contract workflow more efficient by enabling contract stakeholders to complete certain actions across multiple contracts simultaneously, rather than replicating and repeating the same action numerous times.

There are a few advantages of this, such as that legal teams and those they enable can:

1. Save time on contracts

One advantage of bulk actions for contracts is that they prevent contracts delays and ensure that contracts don’t lose momentum whilst waiting for stakeholders to create, approve, send and sign them.

Bulk actions make high contract volumes more manageable and ensure that there’s a fast and efficient way to tackle legal agreements in a scaling business.

By reducing the time spent on manual tasks in the contract workflow, in-house legal teams can return to the high-value work they’re trained to do and waste less time on approving and signing standard agreements.

"We’re saving at least three and a half hours per contract now, thanks to Juro"
- Clio Anderson Garwood, Senior Legal Counsel, Paddle

2. Create a scalable contract workflow

By opting for contract automation software that allows you to complete contract-related actions at scale, you can ensure that your contract workflow is future-proof and ready to manage increasing contract volumes as your business grows.

Bulk actions empower legal and commercial teams to quickly generate, approve, send and sign standard contracts, which enables the business to capture revenue quickly and efficiently.

This efficiency is critical to the success of fast-growing businesses, as they’ll need to be prepared to scale their contract workflow, and fast.

“Before Juro, we needed to review 100 per cent of customer contracts. Now that we can lock contract fields with Juro, that number has dropped to 12 per cent” - Victoria Sörving, Chief Legal Officer, Funnel

3. Reduce costs

By finding a way to minimise the resources and time required to complete certain actions at scale, companies can reduce the need to hire more people to manage this workload.

In turn, this reduces the costs for businesses and empowers them to scale quickly and manage more contracts without needing to increase legal and business headcount excessively, which can be an expensive endeavor.

“There’s no greater ROI than the fact that by enabling our teams to self-serve, Juro reduced our need to hire a second lawyer" - Sophie Salisbury, Head of Legal, Appear Here

4. Empower commercial teams to self-serve

Bulk actions make managing large contract volumes more straightforward for business teams like sales, finance, and procurement.

This is because bulk actions enable them to quickly generate, import, and export contracts at scale, rather than having to draft each contract individually, which would require a lot of input from legal.

This encourages a self-serve workflow, which allows legal teams to concentrate on the high-value work that demands their attention the most.

"Our teams love Juro because it’s easy to use. Sales rank it as one of their top tools they can’t work without" - Victoria Sörving, Chief Legal Officer, Funnel

Who uses bulk actions for contracts?

All contract stakeholders can benefit from the bulk action features that come with certain contract tools, as bulk actions enable users to streamline and scale the tasks required to get all types of business contracts across the line.

Depending on what types of contracts a company uses their bulk actions for, and which bulk action features they use, the following teams will usually find bulk actions advantageous:

• Legal teams
• Sales teams
• Finance teams
• People teams
• Procurement teams

For example, mass approval features enable legal and finance teams to quickly approve large volumes of contracts in just a few clicks. Meanwhile, mass generation features can enable commercial teams to quickly self-serve on hundreds of contracts with ease.

How do bulk actions work for contracts in Juro?

Juro’s contract automation software offers legal and business teams the ability to manage large contract volumes with ease, with features that allow users to download, export, create, approve, duplicate, send and sign contracts at scale in seconds.

Let's look at the example of mass-signing contracts in Juro.

How to mass sign contracts in Juro

To mass sign or mass approve contracts in Juro, all you have to do is filter contracts in your contract dashboard to either include ‘to sign’ or ‘to approve’. Once you’ve done this, you’ll be shown a long list of contracts that require action.

From here, you can either select each contract that you want to sign or approve by ticking it in the left-hand column, or you can select all, which will apply the action to all of the contracts listed.

You can even add additional filters to your query to ensure that you only mass sign signatures under a certain contract value, or that have already received approval.

Once you've selected the contracts that need signing, select 'Sign' and draw your signature. This signature will automatically be added to all of the contracts you've selected, enabling you to mass-sign them.

It really is that easy.

“We completed two weeks of work in a day, thanks to Juro’s mass signing feature" - Luke Hextall, People Operations, Gopuff

Want to find out more about Juro's bulk actions?

To find out more about how Juro's mass actions work, or to see them in action, fill in the form below to book a personalized demo.