# The CI renewal audit: twelve questions before you sign again

Find your non-renewal notice date first, then answer twelve questions on price, data, value and the decision, each with a quoted clause or a usage export.

URL: https://www.hiresteve.ai/blog/ci-renewal-audit
Updated: 2026-10-12

Find your non-renewal notice date before you look at the price. Klue's public terms require notice at least 90 days before the subscription period ends, Crayon's 60 days before the renewal date, and both public terms describe automatic renewal when that date is missed. Then answer twelve questions on price, data, value and the decision, each with a quoted clause, a usage export or a written "ask the vendor". Claude can read the contract and the export for you, with a quotation beside every field; a field it cannot quote is "not found", never "none".

## Start with the date, not the price

A renewal audit that starts with price benchmarks can finish after the contract has already rolled over. The two public contracts we read on 7 October 2026 put the deadline well before expiry. Klue's terms (section 10.1) say the subscription period "will automatically renew for a further twelve month period, unless either Customer or Klue provides notice of non-renewal at least ninety (90) days prior to the expiration of the then-current Subscription Period", and that "Pricing, products and packages may change on renewal". Crayon's Service Offering Agreement (section 4, read 12 October 2026) renews each period "for a subsequent Subscription Period of the same duration and at the then current Subscription Fees" unless the customer gives written notice "at least sixty (60) days prior to the renewal date".

Both documents refer to an authorization form that can take precedence. Check your own signed order form with your legal team; the public page only tells you what to look for. Read your own, convert the notice clause to a calendar date, and put that date and one 30 days earlier on a shared calendar. Klue's fee-change clause (section 10.6) requires written notice of a rate change "at least thirty (30) days prior to the applicable deadline for Customer's notice of renewal or non-renewal", so by that clause a Klue customer should know the new price about 120 days before expiry. That arithmetic holds for that clause only; it is not a market norm.

**Find the notice date in your own contract**

Crayon's public terms describe renewal "at the then current Subscription Fees" when no notice arrives in time, and Klue's say pricing "may change on renewal". [お名前.com's guidance on SaaS price rises](https://www.onamae.com/business/article/301267/) (in Japanese, read 7 October 2026) makes the same point for general SaaS, which gives 30 days before the renewal date as its example deadline and calls the cancellation deadline the clause that matters most. With windows of 90, 60 and 30 days in three documents, the only deadline worth planning around is the one in your own clause.

The audit itself is twelve questions. Each one is answered in one of three ways: a clause quoted from your contract, a number from a usage export, or the words "ask the vendor" with the date you asked. A row with none of those is not finished.

- 1. What does the contract say about renewal, price change and exit? Quote the notice period, the fee-change clause, any cap, termination for convenience and the data-return clause.
- 2. What will the platform cost at renewal, and what did it cost this year? Written down by the vendor, not estimated from a blog.
- 3. How many of the seats you pay for were used in the last 28 days? From the usage export, counted by distinct seller.
- 4. What is the price per active seller? Annual fee divided by sellers active in the last 28 days, beside the price per provisioned seat.
- 5. What usage data can you export, in what form, and how long does it take to get? A CSV you hold, or a dashboard you can only look at.
- 6. What happens to your battlecards, sources and uploads on exit, and for how many days can you retrieve them?
- 7. Can you leave early, and what do you still owe if you do?
- 8. Which integrations are still syncing, and who fixes one that breaks? Evidence is thin here; check the admin screens.
- 9. Is the feedback loop alive? Sellers who sent a correction in the last quarter, and the median days to a visible answer.
- 10. What changed in the product since you signed, and does the renewal price include it? Packaging, AI features, API access.
- 11. What are the alternatives, including a Claude-based baseline, and what would switching cost in hours and data?
- 12. Who decides, and what result renews the contract? Written before the data arrives, so the data cannot move the line.

## The contract questions

Question 1 is answered by reading, not by asking. Pull every document that governs the subscription: the order form, any amendments, and the terms it incorporates. For each of six fields, write the clause's own words beside it: term and renewal mechanism, notice days, the fee-change clause, any cap on increases, termination for convenience, and data return. A field whose clause you cannot find is recorded as "not found" and goes on the list of questions for the vendor; the right may still exist in a document you have not been sent.

Klue's public terms also let a customer "terminate the Agreement or any Authorization Form in effect at any time without cause by providing Klue with at least sixty (60) days prior written notice", while remaining "responsible for all Fees applicable for the then current Subscription Period". Crayon's say a customer "may cancel the Services during a Subscription Period" but "will not be relieved of the obligation to pay fees for the committed Subscription Period". Read how each public document treats fees for the current period, and check your own contract.

For a sense of what a negotiated contract can look like, one lawyer's published model positions ([terms.law, 16 January 2026](https://terms.law/saas-enterprise-contract-review-guide/)) are 30 days' notice to cancel with a reminder from the vendor 60 days ahead, increases "capped at 5% annually, or CPI, whichever is lower", and "30-60 days to export your data after termination". Those are one practitioner's recommended asks, not evidence of what CI vendors accept.

## The price questions

Questions 2 to 4 need two numbers from the vendor and one export. The renewal price in writing is the first. The second is the price you paid this year, including add-ons. The export gives you the seat count that matters: distinct sellers who opened any card in the last 28 days. That window is the same one used in the [adoption signals](/blog/ci-tool-shelfware-adoption-signals) lesson, and it is this site's proposal rather than a vendor definition. Price per active seller is the annual fee divided by that count; put it next to the fee divided by provisioned seats, and the gap is what idle seats cost.

The reason to do this before the vendor call is that renewal is where unused seats get paid for again. Zylo reported that "70% of SaaS application contracts were renewed in 2023, despite being underutilized" ([Zylo, 4 April 2023](https://zylo.com/news/companies-waste-over-17m-on-saas-every-year-according-to-zylo-report)), and Productiv's figure, reported by Help Net Security on 4 July 2023, was that "47% of SaaS licenses are used over a 90-day period on average". Both are vendor figures covering SaaS in general, not CI tools.

On price itself, the only public per-vendor data we found is marketplace commentary. Vendr's Klue page (last updated February 2026) lists a median of $30,000 a year and says Klue contracts "may include automatic price escalations (e.g., 5-10% annually) unless explicitly negotiated out". Its Crayon page, same date, also shows a $30,000 median, a range of $12,700 to $46,000, and says Crayon contracts "often include annual price escalation clauses (typically 3-7%)". Vendr is a third party and none of this is your contract. Use it only to decide what to ask.

## The data and exit questions

Questions 5 to 7 decide whether you could leave at all. Start with usage data. A connector vendor's documentation says Klue's usage API "returns user event activity logs (card views, clicks, actions)", "updated daily at 00:00 UTC with a 3-day delay", with keys "created and managed by Klue Admins" ([Nexla](https://docs.nexla.com/user-guides/connectors/klue_api), read 7 October 2026). That is second-hand; Klue's own help centre did not resolve when we tried, so whether API access depends on plan tier is unknown. Crayon's measure page names a leaderboard and an Insights API without stating an export format, and Semrush's Kompyte knowledge base names behaviour and battlecard analytics with no export wording. For all three, "can I download usage by seller as a file" is a question 5 you put to the vendor in writing.

On your content, the public positions differ. Klue's section 10.4 says that on termination "Customer will have ninety (90) days from the date of the termination notice to extract any Customer Data from the Klue Services". Crayon's public terms, searched for return, export, download and portability, contain no data-return clause that we found; the order form may. We did not find a Kompyte terms page on 7 October 2026; Semrush's general terms are a separate document. Take the export before the notice date, not after, so that the answer to question 6 is a folder you hold.

If your company or the vendor has an EU presence, the EU Data Act's switching chapter may apply: a law-firm summary ([Greenberg Traurig, 25 September 2025](https://gtlaw.com/en/insights/2025/9/cloud-switching-under-the-eu-data-act)) discusses switching rights under it. Whether it applies to your contract is a question for your legal team.

## The value and decision questions

Questions 8 to 10 are about what you would lose. Evidence for them is thin, so treat them as this site's proposals. The one documented dependency we found is that Crayon's seller engagement report is calculated "with the Salesforce integration set up" ([Crayon, 14 December 2023](https://www.crayon.co/blog/introducing-seller-engagement)). Check that your own integration is still syncing. Question 9 reuses the feedback-loop signal from the adoption lesson. Question 10 asks what shipped since signature and whether the renewal price is for the product you bought or the one now sold; ask for the packaging in writing.

Questions 11 and 12 are the decision. Vendr's advice on both vendor pages is that buyers who demonstrate competitive alternatives get better pricing, which is marketplace commentary but matches how procurement works. The cheapest alternative to price is a baseline you build yourself: the [build-versus-buy lesson](/blog/build-vs-buy-competitive-intelligence) describes what a Claude Project with your competitor files can and cannot replace. Write the pass criterion for question 12 before the numbers arrive, with the name of the person who signs. If the criterion is written after the export is read, it will be written to fit the export.

## Use Claude on your own documents

Claude's job here is narrow: read the contract and the export, fill the sheet, and draft the questions you still have to ask. It cannot see a side letter, a verbal promise, or what a clause means in law. Upload the order form and terms as PDFs and the usage export as a CSV, in a Project if you keep one for this tool. Anthropic's support page (read 7 October 2026) states that PDFs are limited to 1,000 pages, that visual elements are analysed only for PDFs of 100 pages or fewer, that CSVs are read as text only, and that Project files are capped at 30 MB each. A scanned contract longer than 100 pages loses its visual layer, so check that the text extracted.

```prompt
Read the attached contract documents. For each of these fields, return the
exact quoted clause and its section number: term and renewal mechanism,
non-renewal notice period, fee-change clause, cap on increases, termination
for convenience, data return or export after termination. If no clause
covers a field, write "not found" and do not infer one from typical SaaS
terms. Then convert the notice deadline to a calendar date, showing the
arithmetic from the expiry date I give you.
```

**Extract the six contract fields with a quote beside each**

Check: find every quotation with a search in the original file. A field with no quotation you can locate is "not found", whatever the summary says.

**Convert the notice deadline to dates**

Check: the arithmetic is shown step by step from the expiry date, and you have recomputed it once by hand. Put the deadline and a date 30 days before it on a shared calendar.

**Compute the usage numbers from the export**

Check: pick two sellers and recount their activity in the raw file. If the two counts disagree with Claude's, the column mapping is wrong and every number is.

**Fill the twelve-row sheet**

Check: every row ends in a quotation, an export figure, or "ask the vendor" with a date. A row that reads like a summary of typical terms goes back to step 1.

**Draft the vendor request from the unknowns**

Check: the email asks for each unknown in writing and asserts nothing about what the contract says. The reply becomes next year's first upload.

Keep the sheet and the export. They are next year's baseline, and the reply to the request email is the first document in next year's audit.

## Where Steve stands

Steve is not a renewal tool, and this checklist applies to Steve as much as to any vendor. As of 7 October 2026, Steve's pricing page says the platform fee is priced "by how many competitors your team tracks", with add-ons such as call recording analysis and custom reporting "priced separately based on what you need" ([pricing](/pricing)). The site lists a SOC 2 Type 2 attestation.

The pricing page does not state a non-renewal notice period, a term length, a renewal price cap or an early-termination right. Check those, and any export arrangement, in the quote and order form before signing, exactly as questions 1, 5 and 6 require of every other vendor.

## Frequently asked

### When must I give notice to cancel Klue or Crayon?

Under the public terms read on 7 October 2026, Klue's terms state notice of non-renewal at least 90 days before the subscription period ends, and Crayon's state written notice at least 60 days before the renewal date. Both refer to an authorization form that can take precedence, so read your own signed order form and check with your legal team.

### How do I find price per active seller?

Divide the annual fee by the number of distinct sellers who opened any card in the last 28 days, taken from the vendor's usage export. The 28-day window is this site's proposal, not a vendor standard. Compare it with the price per provisioned seat to see how much of the fee idle seats carry.

### Can Claude read my contract?

Yes, as an uploaded PDF or CSV. Anthropic's support page says PDFs are limited to 1,000 pages and that visual elements are analysed only up to 100 pages. Ask for the quoted clause beside every extracted field and treat a field with no quotation as not found, never as none.

### What data should I export before I leave?

The usage export by seller, every battlecard and its sources, and your own uploads, taken before the notice date. Klue's public terms state 90 days from the termination notice to extract customer data. We did not find a data-return clause in Crayon's public terms or a terms page for Kompyte, so confirm both with the vendors in writing.

### Should Steve answer these twelve too?

Yes, every vendor should answer them. Steve's pricing page states the pricing basis, and the site lists a SOC 2 Type 2 attestation. The pricing page does not state a notice period or a price cap, so check those, and any export arrangement, in any order form before you sign.