Contracts & notice periods

What it's about

In the Contracts area (under Finances), you keep track of ongoing contracts – mobile phone, electricity, insurance, streaming, gym membership and more. You record the provider, cost and term; patchio automatically works out the last day to cancel and reminds you in good time, before a contract quietly renews.

Before you start

• The Finances module needs to be turned on under Manage → Modules (admins only).
• You'll then find this area via the Finances overview (Contracts tile).

Add a contract

Tap Contract and fill in the fields:

• Provider & category – the name (e.g. “Telekom”) and a category. You now pick the category from the shared list (the same one used for expenses) instead of typing it freely.
• Customer number – your contract or customer number. Leading zeros are kept.
• Cost & billing cycle – the amount and how often it's charged (monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, yearly).
• Term & cancellation – contract start, minimum term, notice period and renewal type.
• Owner & visibility – who the contract belongs to, and who can see it.
• Debit account – which of your accounts the contract is billed from (optional).

While you type, the live preview shows the calculated contract end and the last day to cancel.

Under “Advanced”, you can also set the Next due date (optional) – when the contract is next debited. Leave the field empty, and patchio calculates it from the start date and billing cycle. The Standing order helper uses this to work out your monthly standing order and the one-off upfront amount for the multi-account model (one shared account, several personal ones).

Automatic deadline calculation

patchio knows three renewal types and calculates the last day to cancel accordingly:

• Ends automatically – the contract runs out after the minimum term. The reminder date sits one notice period before that.
• Fixed renewal (typical for older contracts) – renews for a fixed period (e.g. 12 months). patchio shows the next deadline from today.
• Open-ended / cancellable monthly (newer contracts, since March 2022) – cancellable at any time after the minimum term, with notice. There's no hard deadline; patchio shows “cancellable monthly/any time”.

In the detail view, you'll see a cancellation timeline from the contract start, through the reminders, to the last day to cancel and the next renewal.

Reminders

By default, patchio reminds you 60, 30, 14 and 7 days before the last day to cancel – in the app and by email. You can adjust the timing and channels per contract. That way, you never miss a deadline again.

Subscribing to deadlines in your calendar

If you've subscribed to the ICS calendar feed, the notice-period deadlines for your visible contracts automatically appear as all-day events in Google, Apple or Outlook – with an advance reminder.

Documents

You can upload files to any contract (e.g. the contract confirmation as a PDF or photo). Documents are visible only to members of your household.

Deleting a single document removes the entry and the file together. If you can't edit the contract right now – say, because it's private or your access is read-only – patchio tells you so and leaves both as they are.

Import from CSV or Excel

If your contracts are already in a spreadsheet, import them via Import: upload the file, map the columns (patchio suggests a mapping automatically), check the preview – faulty rows are flagged and skipped. Leading zeros in the customer number are kept.

Cancellation letter

Prepare cancellation generates a finished letter from the contract's details, which you can copy or print. patchio doesn't send anything – you stay in control.

Editing & deleting

Tap a contract to open its detail view. Use Edit to change the details, Mark as cancelled to take it out of the active deadlines. Delete removes the contract permanently – including its uploaded documents and any fixed-cost settlements that feed into your balances. patchio asks you to confirm before deleting; it can't be undone afterwards.

Owner, split & who sees it

For every contract, you set who it belongs to and how you split it – that also determines who sees it.

• Owner – who the contract belongs to and who pays it. Defaults to you.
• Split – choose a preset:
  • Only me – private, the contract belongs to you alone.
  • 50-50 – you and one other person split the contract evenly.
  • Proportional – split freely: equally, by percentage, or with exact amounts.
  • Whole household – the contract affects everyone and is visible to everyone.

Who sees the contract?

• Private (just me or shared) – only you and the people involved see the contract. Private here really means private: even admins can't see private contracts.
• Whole household – every household member sees the contract.

Related topics

• Finances: shared expenses
• Standing order helper
• Export & subscribe to your calendar
• Notification settings