Contracts are the case where version confusion stops being embarrassing and becomes expensive. The document is supposed to change every round — that is what a negotiation is — so “which version did legal agree to” is a real question with a real answer, and a status column cannot hold it.
First
Muddling them is how a contract gets signed in a version legal never saw.
Approval is internal and about content: legal on the language, finance on payment terms and liability, and the person who has to deliver on whether the promises are keepable.
Signature is external and about execution. A signing tool proves a named person executed a particular document. It proves nothing about whether anybody inside your company read it first — and it will happily execute whatever file was uploaded to it.
Every contract that goes wrong internally goes wrong in the gap between those two: the approved version and the signed version are not the same document, and nobody notices because both steps completed.
The build
Rounds are history; the contract is the thing.
The instinct is a new item for each version. It buries the thread: four items called “MSA v1” through “MSA v4”, and the comments that matter split across all of them.
Status labels that survive contact with a negotiation: Drafting · With counterparty · Internal review · Approved to sign · Signed · Filed. Note that Approved to sign and Signed are separate, for the reason above.
The hard part
And nothing tells anybody that it did.
Legal approves v2 on Tuesday. The counterparty returns v3 on Thursday with two clauses changed. The board still shows legal’s approval, because a status column records a decision and has no opinion about the document underneath it.
Six weeks later somebody signs, and the question — asked in the worst possible circumstances — is whether legal ever saw the liability cap that is now in dispute.
The habit that prevents it: a new version resets the approval. Move the status back to Internal review whenever a file lands, every time, even for a typo. It will annoy people. It is cheaper than the alternative.
Scope
Worth knowing which one you are building.
Running the review on a board works well: it is people, deadlines and documents, which is what a board is for. Being the system of record for executed agreements is different — clause-level comparison, obligation tracking, renewal dates driving work across hundreds of contracts — and that is a contract management system, not a board.
Most companies need the first long before they need the second, and buying the second first is how you end up with an expensive tool nobody updates.
Questions
No, and keeping them separate is the point. Approval is internal and about the content — legal, finance and the budget holder agreeing the terms are acceptable. Signature is external and about execution. A signing tool records that a named person executed a document; it says nothing about whether anybody inside your company had read it first.
By never overwriting a file and putting the round in the filename — msa-v3-supplier-redline.pdf beside msa-v2-ours.pdf. monday keeps the upload dates, so the sequence survives; what it does not do is connect a version to the approval that was given for it.
Whoever the terms bind. Legal for the language, finance for the payment terms and liability caps, and the person who has to deliver whatever was promised — the third is skipped most often and is the one who finds the clause nobody can honour.
When you need clause-level comparison between versions, a searchable library of executed agreements, or renewal dates driving obligations across hundreds of contracts. A board is a good place to run the review and a poor place to be the archive of record.
What we built
Rather than depending on somebody remembering to move a status back.
Signoff records which version of each document was on the screen when somebody approved. When a file is replaced afterwards, the approval reopens and everyone who had already agreed is asked again — and their earlier decision is kept, struck through, as the record of what they actually saw.
Legal, finance and the delivery owner sit in stages rather than in one column, so “legal has agreed and finance has not looked” is a state the board can actually hold.
It is not a signing tool and not a contract management system. It is the internal agreement, and the evidence of which version it was given for.
Keep reading
Why no app can live on a subitem card, what a status column on the subitem board does and does not do, and how to get a sign-off recorded against one anyway.
One board, one status column, and one automation per transition.
Why a status column cannot represent “two of the three have agreed”, the native workaround and what it costs, and when to stop working around it.
Three approvals a month, free. Approve a draft, upload the next round, and see what happens to the approval.