Contracts filed by
who you signed with

Almost every contract question starts with a name: what did we agree with Northwind, can we end the Brightline deal, who signed for Keller & Moss. Folders by year or by contract type force you to search three places for one answer. A folder per counterparty answers it in one.

Name the folder with the legal entity on the signature page, not the brand people use in conversation. “Brightline Software, Inc.” and “Brightline UK Ltd” are different parties with different contracts, and mixing them is how a UK order ends up read against a US master agreement.

Lead with the effective date in year-month-day form, then the document type, then a short label for the subject. A folder sorted by name then reads like the life of the deal: the agreement, the first change, the next order, the latest change.

Pick effective date or signature date and use it everywhere; they often differ by weeks. Number amendments and orders the way the documents number themselves, so “Amendment 2” in the file name matches “Amendment No. 2” on the page and nobody has to guess which came first.

Most commercial relationships are a family of documents. A master services agreement (MSA) sets the general terms, statements of work or order forms add the specifics of each purchase, and amendments change the master. Many MSAs include an “order of precedence” clause that says which one wins if they conflict, so keep that clause easy to find.

Two situations cause the most confusion. When a counterparty is acquired or renames itself, there is usually an assignment or name-change letter; file it in the existing folder and note the new name rather than starting a fresh one. When an affiliate signs its own order under your master agreement, file it under the entity that signed and keep a short note pointing to the master.

Small teams often run on a contract register: a spreadsheet with counterparty, effective date, owner and a link to the file, kept up by a paralegal or office manager. The register is only as good as the last person who updated it, and links break when files move.

Larger teams buy contract lifecycle software, which works well but needs setup, templates and someone to own it. Plenty of companies sit in between, with signed PDFs scattered across e-signature downloads and shared drives. Filex fits there: you upload the PDFs you already have and it reads the parties and files them, with no fields to fill in first.

Filex files and reads contracts. It does not review them, suggest edits, judge whether a clause is enforceable, or decide which document wins when two conflict. When it answers a question it points to the page it read, and the legal judgment stays with you or your lawyer.

It does not send documents for signature or collect them from the other side. Faint faxed copies and pen changes initialled in the margin are easy to misread, so open those after filing and confirm the folder and the name.