Applied Epic: build a renewal workflow from the expiration list

In a lot of Epic agencies, the expiration report gets exported monthly and the real renewal status lives in someone’s inbox. A manager asks “where are we on the Henderson package?” and the answer takes ten minutes. Epic already has a screen built for this: Renewals Manager. This guide sets it up so the expiration list becomes a working queue, with a stage on every policy, a filtered view for every account manager, and a weekly check for managers.

One caveat up front. Applied’s detailed product documentation sits behind its customer login. Everything below comes from Applied’s public announcements and from material prepared for Applied Client Network, the Applied user group. Menu labels can differ by Epic version, so treat paths as a guide and check with your Applied rep or your own Epic help if a screen looks different.

What you need

Applied Epic with Renewals Manager. It’s part of Epic. The bulk features (update the stage on many policies at once, renew up to 50 policies in one go) were announced in the Epic 2021 release.
Configuration access. Policy types, renewal stages and Renewals Manager settings live in Epic’s configuration area. Usually that’s an owner, ops manager or Epic administrator.
Clean policy data. Every policy needs the right expiration date, Client Service Rep and Producer. Renewals Manager filters on those fields, so missing assignments mean missing renewals.
An agreed stage list. Write it down before anyone touches configuration (step 2).

There is no separate add-on cost for Renewals Manager that I could confirm publicly. Pricing for Epic itself isn’t published.

Step by step

1. Decide how far out policies should appear

Renewals Manager shows policies starting a set number of days before expiration. The Applied Client Network article on optimizing Renewals Manager says this is set per policy type under Policies > Types in configuration.

A sensible starting point:

Personal auto and home: 60 days
Small commercial (BOP, monoline GL, work comp): 90 days
Commercial packages and anything you may remarket: 120 days

If a type is set too short, the account manager sees the renewal when it’s already too late to remarket. If it’s set too long, the list fills with policies nobody needs to touch yet.

2. Define your renewal stages

Stages are configured under Policies > Renewal Stages. The defaults are editable and can be made inactive. A stage can be set to stay visible for a certain number of days after expiration, or indefinitely.

The ACN session handout on Renewals Manager suggests this stage list. Each one starts with a different letter, so staff can type the first letter and press Tab:

Waiting to Start Renewal Process (the default; nobody has touched it)
Discovery - Updated Information Requested
Marketing
Carrier Quote or Policy Requested
Renewal Quote or Policy Received
Proposal or Renewal Offer Sent
Ordered and Renewed
Not Renewing - Lost Business / Cancelled / No Longer Needs

The handout sets “Waiting to Start” to stay visible 7 days after expiration, so a manager can catch anything that was never started. The last two stages are set to drop off the dashboard right away.

Use the same first and last stages across departments so one report covers both.

3. Turn on the settings and events

Two more configuration areas, per the ACN article:

Policies > Renewals Manager Settings controls visibility options.
Policies > Renewals Manager Events lets you link events to stages. The article says there are three.

What each event does isn’t documented publicly. Ask your Applied rep how they behave in your version before you depend on them. If your agency gets carrier downloads, the article also mentions a stage-update setting under Interface > System Settings. Check with Applied whether it applies to your download setup.

4. Give every user a default view

Each person sets this up once. From the handout:

Open Renewals Manager from the navigation panel on the Home screen.
In the filter bar, choose Client Service Rep (account managers) or Producer (producers) and look up your own name.
Personal lines and small commercial teams: add the Renewed Policies > Exclude filter. Then you only see renewals that haven’t downloaded or been renewed in Epic yet.
Optional: filter Bill Mode to Agency if you only want to track agency-bill renewals this way.
Click Find, then Filter Defaults, check Use as default, and click OK.

Then choose columns with Select Columns. The handout’s minimum set is Renewal Stage, Account Name, Policy Expiration, PPE, Line Type, Policy Number, Bill Mode and First PR/BR. Sort by Policy Expiration.

5. Attach a follow-up activity at every stage change

A stage tells you where a renewal is. An activity tells you who does what next, and when. The ACN article lists adding and managing activities (notes, tasks, follow-up dates, ownership changes) as something you can do from inside Renewals Manager.

Make it a rule: every stage change gets an activity with a follow-up date. For example:

Stage set to	Activity	Follow up in
Discovery - Updated Information Requested	“Renewal info requested from client”	7 days
Carrier Quote or Policy Requested	“Waiting on carrier renewal quote”	10 days
Proposal or Renewal Offer Sent	“Renewal offer sent, awaiting decision”	5 days

If the client hasn’t replied by the follow-up date, the activity shows up on the account manager’s list. Close each activity with a note saying what happened.

6. Send the client emails from approved templates

Epic will not write your renewal emails for you. Keep a short set of approved templates: information request, reminder, renewal offer, renewed confirmation. My 90/60/30-day cadence guide has wording you can adapt.

Whether Epic can send those emails automatically depends on which Applied products you have. Applied markets sales and marketing automation alongside Epic, but I couldn’t confirm the setup details publicly. Check with your Applied rep. For E&O reasons, keep this rule even if you do automate: any email showing renewal premium, coverage changes or a recommendation is reviewed by a licensed producer before it goes out. Log the approval on the activity.

If you text clients about renewals, only text those who have given consent, and keep the texts informational. Federal TCPA rules require you to honor “stop” replies.

7. Use bulk actions for the easy renewals

For auto-renewing direct-bill personal lines, you don’t need one-by-one handling. Renewals Manager can update the stage of several policies at once and renew up to 50 policies at a time. Filter to the batch, check the policies have downloaded cleanly, then move them to Ordered and Renewed together. Keep the one-by-one attention for accounts that need it.

8. Give managers a weekly check

Once a week, the manager opens Renewals Manager without personal filters and looks for three things:

Anything still in Waiting to Start inside 45 days of expiration
Anything in Proposal or Renewal Offer Sent inside 10 days with no recent activity
Anything past expiration that isn’t in a final stage

Per the ACN article, renewal stage data also shows up in expiration reports. So you can run a stage-by-rep breakdown to see where work is piling up. Pick one fixed window for that report, such as 120 days, and run it on the same day every week so the numbers are comparable.

Common mistakes

Configuring stages nobody agreed on. Get the account managers to agree on the stage list first, or they’ll ignore it.
Changing stages without activities. The dashboard looks current, but nobody is reminded to follow up.
Skipping filter defaults. Every user sees the whole agency’s list, gets overwhelmed and stops opening it.
Treating “Actions > Renew” as the workflow. Renewing the policy header is one step. Renewals Manager is meant to track the whole process.
Letting renewal offers go out unreviewed because the template “already says it.”

When it’s worth getting help

Configuring stages and filters is an afternoon’s work for someone who knows Epic. The harder part is the layer on top: emails that go out on schedule, tasks that create themselves, and a weekly exception report that lands in the manager’s inbox. If you want that built and documented, my Applied Epic page explains what I do. The cost calculator will tell you whether it’s worth paying for.