The renewal window is not the due date

A licence has two dates that matter and most operators only track one. The expiry date is the obvious one. The filing window is the one that actually decides whether you keep trading.

In roughly a third of the jurisdictions we file in, a renewal will not be accepted more than 60 days before expiry. In a smaller but painful set, the window also closes 10 days before, which means there is a hard band of about seven weeks in which the work has to happen.

The practical consequence is that a calendar reminder set to the expiry date is useless. By the time it fires, the window has closed and you are filing a late renewal with a penalty attached, or worse, a fresh application.

Track the window, not the date. If you only take one thing from this, make it that.