Corporate maintenance refers to the legal responsibilities of a business entity to remain in compliance with federal or provincial/state laws. Corporate maintenance allows a business to protect its own interests, avoid incurring legal or financial liabilities, and shield directors or shareholders from stiff legal penalties.

Most corporate maintenance work is very clerical, very administrative, and very repetitive. Despite the mundane nature of the work, it is essential work that must be completed to maintain compliance with the laws.

Entity management software is a modern solution to help streamline outdated tedious workflows. Legal entity management technology makes clerical and administrative workers more efficient, and the platform functions as a single source of truth for all legal entity data.

What are examples of corporate maintenance tasks?

Corporations are legally obligated to, one, provide documentation of key business decisions and activities, and, two, provide up-to-date information to government registries. These are the general corporate maintenance responsibilities that all legal entities must uphold.

Those are the primary obligations, but what do the actionable tasks look like to complete those respective responsibilities? Here’s a breakdown of those tasks and legal duties.

Maintaining minute book records

Business documents supplied to government regulators are compiled using minute book records. These records transcribe key takeaways from executive meetings, shareholder meetings, corporate by-law amendments, articles of incorporation documents, and any new issuances or transfers of corporate shares.

Amending management and ownership certificates

When new executives are appointed to positions of leadership, a record of these appointments must be filed with government regulators. Similarly, new investors who acquire shares in the corporation must be reported to the appropriate authorities. Updates must be made to corporate organizational charts, and the announcements are often cited in annual meeting records.

Managing licenses, permits, and contracts

Some industries require corporations to acquire licenses and permits to operate within the legal jurisdiction. Managing and updating those documents is a crucial part of corporate maintenance to avoid inadvertently operating without the proper credentials. Similarly, any contracts to affiliate with third-party vendors must be managed in an ongoing capacity.

Enforcing corporate governance and compliance protocols

Corporate governance and compliance protocols are a series of internal workflows and procedures to enforce corporate responsibility. Documenting governance and compliance protocols provides a framework to enforce the policies across the entire business. Maintaining these documented protocols is especially helpful when enforcing across a global entity with satellite offices across multiple jurisdictions.

Entity management software assists corporate maintenance

All the prerequisite administrative tasks and clerical duties of corporate maintenance are vital to protect the legal security of the corporation. But as previously noted, corporate maintenance work can be very mundane, repetitive, and time consuming.

Entity management software streamlines corporate maintenance workflows, saving invaluable time for the departments tasked with completing these responsibilities. All corporate documents and legal entity data are compartmentalized in one location, and the intuitive nature of the platform makes it easy for workers to insert, edit, or present data.

Benefits of legal technology and corporate maintenance

By using legal entity management technology to modernize corporate maintenance workflows, your legal and/or compliance departments can more efficiently perform their duties. They can earn back valuable working time that can be used to support other aspects of the business.

Most importantly, entity management software allows your respective departments to ensure corporate maintenance is upheld. This will keep the business and its chief stakeholders legally secure by maintaining compliance with the laws.

Legal technology organizes all minute book records

One of the biggest benefits of entity management technology is organization. All minute book records can be scanned into the platform, creating one single source of truth for all legal entity data. Since the platform is cloud-based, the records can be viewed and amended from any location, creating more flexible opportunities to conduct corporate maintenance.

Legal technology creates more efficient workflows

Another huge advantage of entity management software is how it helps workers save valuable working time. Since the platform is intuitive, it automatically generates PDF style documents from all uploaded entity data. Workers are no longer tasked with manually creating those documents. The platform does the work on their behalf.

Legal technology has simplified reporting

Since the platform is cloud-based by design, entity management software makes it easier to report all entity data for internal and external audits. Platform managers can grant access to all internal stakeholders, allowing each executive to transparently review corporate data of their own volition. Similarly, workers can conduct virtual meetings with external auditors and use the platform’s advanced search capabilities to present any additional data under query.

Legal technology’s compliance framework protects corporate interests

Finally, corporate compliance with jurisdictional laws protects the business from any legal or financial penalties incurred from non-compliance. Using legal entity management technology, you have a built-in compliance framework that uses modules for all administrative tasks and requirements to maintain compliance with the laws. It simplifies corporate maintenance and protects the business from unwanted penalties.