Contract Timeline

When a counterparty returns their markup after two weeks of silence, you need to rebuild context fast: what was discussed, who approved what, and where things left off. Digging through email threads and shared drives wastes time and risks missing something.

The contract timeline gives you a single chronological feed of everything that has happened on a contract. Every status change, approval decision, signature event, note, and message is recorded in one place, so regaining context takes less time.

Open any contract to see its record. The contract record has four tabs across the top and a sidebar with key details.

• (a) Timeline - the chronological event feed (this article)
• (b) Document - all document versions, negotiation rounds, and the ability to compare changes between rounds
• (c) Properties - structured data on the contract: effective date, expiry date, total contract value, governing law, auto-renewal status, and any custom properties your organization has configured. These come with global defaults but can be customized per contract.
• (d) Reminders - scheduled notifications for renewal deadlines, obligation milestones, or review dates

Above the timeline feed, three action buttons let you add context to the contract. Each one creates a timeline event visible to everyone with access to the contract.

Click Add Note to leave an internal comment on the contract. Notes are visible to anyone who can access the contract record. Use them to record decisions (“Agreed to accept their liability cap because deal value is below threshold”), flag issues, or provide context for the next person who opens this contract.

Notes support formatted text and file attachments (up to 10 files, 80 MB each).

Click Send Message to email someone directly from the contract. The message, its recipients, and any attachments are recorded on the timeline, giving your team full visibility into the conversation.

Recipients can reply directly to the email, and their responses appear on the timeline automatically (via the contract’s dedicated Pactly email address in the reply-to header).

For the full guide on composing messages, using templates, handling attachments, and tracking replies, see Send Messages to External Parties.

Click Send Form to send a form sequence to one or more recipients. This is useful when you need additional information before progressing a contract, such as a compliance questionnaire or supplementary data collection during the approval process.

Most events are captured automatically as they happen: status changes when a contract advances, approval decisions when an approver responds, signature events from your e-signature provider. Notes and messages are the main events you create manually.

For emails, Pactly captures incoming messages when they are sent to or CC the contract’s dedicated email address. If someone communicates about the contract through a separate email thread outside of Pactly, you can forward it to the contract’s email address or add a note summarizing the exchange.

Click a concept to learn more 5 concepts

Status Changes Approvals Signatures Notes & Emails Rounds & Access

Every transition is logged: Draft to In Negotiation, Pending Approval to Pending Signature, and so on. The timeline shows the previous status, the new status, and who triggered the change.

When approvers are assigned, the timeline records who was added and the approval mode (sequential or parallel). Each approval decision (approved or rejected) appears as its own event with the approver name, timestamp, and any comments. Reassignments and unblocks are also tracked.

Signature events include: signers assigned, request sent, signature completed, signature declined, and signature cancelled. For integrations with DocuSign, Adobe Sign, or SignWell, envelope status changes are tracked as well.

Notes are internal comments visible to your team. Messages are emails sent from the contract record, tracked on the timeline with the recipient list and any attachments. Both notes and emails can be pinned to the top of the timeline for visibility.

Each exchange of a document during negotiation creates a round on the timeline, showing which party was involved and the document version. Changes to contract ownership, requester, group access, and user authorizations are also recorded, so you always know who had access and when.

Notes and emails have action buttons along the right edge of the item. These let you manage individual items without leaving the timeline view.

Notes and emails can be pinned to keep them visible at the top of the timeline. This is useful for critical context that anyone opening the contract should see immediately, such as a key decision rationale or an important instruction from the counterparty.

To pin an item, hover over it and click the pin icon. Pinned items appear highlighted with a yellow left border and stay at the top regardless of chronological order. Click the pin icon again to unpin.

Deleting a timeline item removes it from the feed but does not undo the underlying action. The deletion itself is recorded on the timeline as a separate event, so there is always a record of what was removed and by whom.

Timeline items can be hidden from specific roles. This is useful when the contract record is shared broadly but certain communications contain sensitive information, such as internal legal strategy discussions, privileged notes, or commercially sensitive emails, that should not be visible to everyone who has access to the contract.

To control visibility, hover over a timeline item and click the visibility icon. You can select which custom roles should not see the item. The item remains on the timeline for users with unrestricted access but is hidden from the selected roles.

As timelines grow longer on complex negotiations, scrolling through dozens of events to find a specific detail becomes impractical. The Assist feature (available in the bottom-right corner of the app) lets you ask questions about the contract, including its timeline history.

For example, you can ask Assist “What was the last approval decision on this contract?” or “When was the last round received from the counterparty?” instead of scrolling through the timeline manually. See Using AI Chat for more on Assist capabilities.

• Add notes during negotiation, not after. When you make a concession or accept non-standard terms, record the reasoning immediately. A note like “Accepted 12-month limitation period because contract value is under $50K” saves hours of context-rebuilding later.
• Check the timeline before asking colleagues. Before pinging someone about a contract’s status, check the timeline first, or ask Assist to summarize recent activity.
• Pin critical decisions. If a contract has a non-obvious approval path or an important caveat, pin a note explaining it. The next person who opens the contract will see it immediately.
• Use Send Message for traceable communication. When you communicate with counterparties through Send Message, the exchange is tracked on the timeline. If you use your regular email client instead, you will need to CC the contract’s Pactly email address or forward the thread to keep the timeline complete.

• Track Contract Progress - Negotiation rounds, document comparison, and the contract sidebar
• Manage Contract Properties - Editing metadata on the Properties tab
• Setting Up Reminders - Configuring post-execution reminders on the Reminders tab
• Send Messages to External Parties - Detailed guide on the Send Message feature
• Status Reference - Every contract status and how contracts transition between them