What should you ask for before renewing an agency contract?

Picture a 22-person accountancy practice in Leeds. The case is made up and describes no client. On 15 March an email arrives from its marketing agency with renewal paperwork attached: the same monthly fee, for twelve months from 1 July. The contract ends on 30 June and clause 14 asks for ninety days' notice, which fell on 1 April. The managing partner reads the clause on 3 April. Nobody behaved badly. The practice simply asked its questions after the point at which asking was free. This piece sets out what a UK firm should ask for before that point, and why price is not the first question. Four of the six asks below can be checked from papers and accounts the firm already holds, and the other two are commitments to be written down.

The date that matters is not the end of the term

A firm's leverage ends on the notice date written in its own contract. After that date the choice is renewal on whatever is on the table. We make no claim about what notice period or renewal mechanism agencies typically use. The signed contract decides, and the first job is to read it and write the date down.

Read how notice must be given as well as when. A clause that asks for notice in writing to a named address turns a missed email into an avoidable argument, so send notice the way the contract says and keep proof of it. Then set an internal deadline two weeks before the contractual one, so that the decision belongs to the managing partner and not to the calendar.

The six asks

Each ask is something the firm can write down, send and later hold the agency to. Place them on the clock at the start of March, not the end.

What the second ask rests on

The change record is the agency's delivery, written by the platform. Google's page on reviewing account history describes a record of changes with the user who made each one. Set it against the scope. Our piece on running a review from the firm's own records shows how, and the same pre-read serves the renewal.

Writing the measure for the next term

The fourth ask only works if the firm, and not the agency alone, can read the measure. A measure that exists only inside the agency's own report cannot be checked by the person who is paying for it. Choose one the UK practice can count from its own records, such as enquiries logged by the practice that name a service it offers and leave a way to reply. Write that rule in a sentence, attach the review date from the clock and put both in the renewal itself. If the agency wants a different measure, ask it to say in writing why, and what the firm would see if the work were going well. The answer tells the partner whether the supplier expects to be judged.

Access is the ask with an exit attached

A firm that can see, and remove, an agency's access to its advertising account has an exit before it needs one. Google's help page on unlinking a manager account says an administrator of the client account can remove the manager's access from the Access and security page, and that the account keeps its own campaign history afterwards. That holds only where the account is in the firm's name. If the agency created the account in its own, the page does not help, so the ownership question comes first and belongs in the written answer. Screens get renamed, so read the current page.

Changed terms deserve a comparison, not a new document

Whether a renewal extends the old agreement or replaces it depends on the wording, so ask to see the difference. A marked comparison shows what moved in the fee, the scope, the notice and the limits on liability. Where a firm contracts on the agency's written standard terms, section 3 of the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 subjects some terms to a test of reasonableness, including a term that lets the supplier perform something substantially different from what was expected. Whether it helps in a given case turns on the facts, which is the reason to show a solicitor the changes and nothing more.

The sixth ask is the one most easily forgotten. The ICO says a supplier's role is decided job by job, so a new activity can change the answer. Our piece on who decides in an agency's ordinary jobs sets out the test, and the renewal is the cheapest moment to apply it.

Reading what comes back

A good answer is dated and names the screen or the clause it rests on. “Our change record is attached and the six changes in April are listed with the user who made each” can be checked in a minute. “We have always handled that for you” cannot. Give the agency the time the clock allows: a supplier asked on 1 March has six weeks to assemble a change record and a marked set of terms, which is fair. A request made on 25 March is not, and the agency is entitled to say so. The aim is not to catch anyone out. It is to get the facts onto paper while the firm still has a free choice about what to do with them.

Why price is not the first question

In our view a fee compared without its scope compares nothing. A lower renewal fee that quietly narrows the work is a rise in disguise, and a flat fee for a wider scope is a cut. Read the renewal as a quotation is read: line by line, as in our guide to what an accountancy practice website should cost. Raise price once the first five asks are answered, and raise it against the scope that answer produced.

When not to renew yet

If a UK firm cannot answer the second and third asks from its own accounts, it is not ready to decide. Ask the agency for a short extension on the current terms while the checks are finished. It may refuse, and then the choice is cleaner than a rushed yes. A review that keeps producing explanations without a rule behind them has moved from the meeting to the contract, and a solicitor should take it from there.

Keep the exchange in writing from the first message. Ask by email, ask for answers by email and file both with the contract. A conversation that ends with “we will sort that out” has not ended, so write the same sentence back with a date. When the renewal is signed, the person who signs it should be the one who read the answers, which is usually the managing partner.

None of this says renewal is wrong. A managing partner whose records agree with the agency's and whose measure was met has a sound reason to renew, and the asks above cost that agency nothing. For a longer account of what we look for in a supplier, see how we introduce accountancy practices, recruitment agencies, tax advisory and financial advice firms to one agency.