Run renewals on autopilot with a 90-day cascade

Renewals are the most predictable revenue a service business has. The date is on the policy, the customer is already yours, and the product is already sold. They still slip — because the reminder lives in someone's calendar, the follow-up lives in a spreadsheet, and the customer's reply lands on a phone nobody else can see.

This playbook puts the whole renewal on rails in klerc: a flow that holds every renewal as a card, a scheduled workflow that opens the card 90 days before expiry, a cascade of approved WhatsApp reminders, a task for the owner at the moments that need a person, and a clean-up rule that keeps the board honest. When the customer replies, the message lands in the inbox, on the right record, with a draft waiting.

What you'll build#

• A Policy Renewal flow with stages that mirror the job: Renewal trigger → Follow-up cascade → Quote discussion → Plan selected.
• A scheduled workflow that finds the policies expiring in 90 days and opens a card for each.
• A reminder cascade that sends WhatsApp templates at 90, 60, 45, 30, 15 and 7 days — and raises a task for the owner when a call will do more than another message.
• A rule that closes the cards nobody has touched, so the board only shows real work.

Everything below uses features that ship in every workspace: flows, workflows, templates and the omnichannel inbox.

Step 1 — Put renewals on a flow#

A flow is a kanban pipeline layered over any object. Create one on your Policies object in Settings → Flows and give it the stages above. Each policy that enters the flow becomes a card; columns show their counts, and cards show the fields that matter with the owner's avatar.

Two settings make the board trustworthy:

• Per-stage required fields. A card can't move into Plan selected until the premium and the insurer are filled in. The board holds the line, so a manager doesn't have to.
• Flow-specific fields. Things that only matter during a renewal — the quote you sent, the customer's answer — live on the flow, not on the policy itself.

Every move is written to the record's stage history: who moved the card, when, and whether it was a person or a workflow. Cards that slip past their due date flag themselves as overdue, so the board tells you where to look. See Pipelines for the full set of options.

Step 2 — Open the card 90 days out#

Next, a workflow with a schedule trigger. It runs every morning, finds the policies whose expiry date is 90 days away, and adds each one to the flow:

Trigger    Run on a repeating schedule · every day at 06:00Find       Policies whose expiry date is 90 days from todayFor each   Add to "Policy Renewal" in stage "Renewal trigger"           Create a task for the record owner · review the policy           Send the WhatsApp template "Renewal reminder — 90/60/45 days"

Because the trigger is a schedule rather than a person, nothing depends on anyone remembering. Ninety days is a sensible default for annual cover — long enough to quote, compare and collect documents without a scramble at the end.

Step 3 — Write the reminders once#

WhatsApp only lets a business start a conversation with a template Meta has approved, so write the reminders once, in the template library, and submit them to Meta from klerc. A renewal reminder is a utility message: it's about cover the customer already has.

Merge fields pull the details from the CRM as each message goes out:

Dear {{contact.firstName}}, your policy {{policy.policy_number}} expires on{{policy.expiry_date}}. Renew early to keep your benefits.— {{agent.name}}

Keep a separate template for each stretch of the cascade so the tone can change as the date gets closer: an early heads-up, a firmer reminder in the final month, and a final notice on the day.

Step 4 — Let the cascade count down#

One workflow can carry the whole cascade. Here's a cadence that suits annual policies:

The demo brokerage goes further, with daily nudges in the final days — at 4, 3, 2, 1 and 0 days. Start with fewer messages and add more only if your customers need them.

Step 5 — Replies come home#

When a customer answers a reminder, the reply lands in the omnichannel inbox, threaded with every other conversation you've had with them. If the owner is busy, auto-assignment can route new conversations to the least-busy teammate or round-robin across a team, and an SLA timer starts the moment a customer is waiting.

Molly, klerc's AI assistant, drafts a reply from the conversation's context; the advisor checks it, inserts it and sends. Once there's a quote on the table, they drag the card to Quote discussion — and the stage history records the move.

Step 6 — Close what's gone quiet#

Boards rot when cards never leave. Add a second scheduled workflow that closes renewals stuck on "will do it soon" past a date you choose, and another that marks policies expired once the expiry date has passed. The demo brokerage runs both, so what's left on the board is live work.

Test it before it's live#

Every workflow has a Test button and an overview: runs in the last 30 days, success rate, failures, runs in flight and average duration. When a step fails, it's counted and named, and each run can be opened in its logs or run again. A workflow with a missing step is marked Incomplete before you switch it on, and the Versions tab keeps track of what changed.

What you end up with#

• Every renewal on a board 90 days before it's due — without anyone creating it.
• Reminders that go out on time, from approved templates, with the customer's own details.
• Tasks at the moments a person should call, each one owned and dated.
• Replies back in one inbox, on the right record, with a draft waiting.

The whole set-up is one flow and a couple of workflows. Start with the flow and the 90-day trigger, then add the cascade a step at a time. The workflows guide covers triggers, conditions and actions in detail.