01 · Contracts & renewals
This is the paper-trail heart of the platform: where you upload vendor quotes for expert benchmarking, keep your signed agreements, and watch every expiry, notice deadline, and price-list change so none of them catches you out. It is also where you work a live deal to a close, from setting a mandate through to signature. If a screen touches a contract, a vendor, or a renewal date, it lives in this chapter.
Proposals
Vendor quotes and contracts you have submitted for benchmarking. Each one moves along a path: Uploaded, In review, Benchmarked, then Delivered when your report is ready.
On the screen
- Status pills — where each proposal sits in the review pipeline. Every step talks to you: an alert and an email when an analyst picks the proposal up (with the expected delivery date), when the benchmark is built and moves into final quality review, and when the report is delivered. If a benchmark ever slips past the promised turnaround, you get one proactive email owning the miss with a revised delivery date. Tune these under Settings › Notifications (Benchmark status updates and Report delivered).
- Proposal page — open a row to see its status path, the files you attached, and, once delivered, the benchmark report. While a proposal is anywhere before Delivered, the page refreshes itself within half a minute of a status change, so you never need to reload; delivery announces itself with a toast that opens the Report tab.
- Benchmark request card — an upload normally enters the analyst queue by itself. When your plan's benchmark allowance is used up it cannot, and the proposal page says so plainly: the card states your usage (for example 4 of 4 requests this month) and resolves it in place. An organization owner adds a benchmark credit ($5,000 for one full analyst benchmark, billed by invoice, no card) in a dialog; the request lands on our desk as a support ticket, our team confirms and invoices it, and the credit is added to your account. A teammate who is not an owner asks their owner in one click; the owner gets the request with a link back to the proposal. While a credit request is in flight the card shows it, with a link to follow the ticket under Support.
- AI review — on a proposal page you can run an AI redline scan of the vendor PDF that flags risky clauses with quotes from the document.
How to use it
- Upload a proposal: vendor, contract type, your question, and the files (PDF or DOCX).
- Open a proposal to track its status, or wait for the emails; every stage change reaches you either way.
- Read the report once it is delivered.
- About 30 days after delivery, answer the What happened? question, from the one-touch email or the card on the Report tab. A won reduction, with its annual figure, lands in your savings proof; if the contract has no stored annual value the card asks for the pre-reduction baseline so the saving can be reconciled against invoices.
Related: Upload a proposal · Delivered reports
Upload a proposal
One drop zone sends vendor quotes and contracts to our analysts for benchmarking. Drop one file or twenty; each document is read as it lands, its details fill in as editable chips, and you confirm the whole batch once. You will be emailed when each report is ready.
On the screen
- The drop zone — drop PDF or DOCX files, browse, choose a whole folder, or paste files from the clipboard. Every file is verified by its contents (not just its name) the moment it lands, and stored privately: your organization and our analysts only.
- File cards and chips — vendor, title, category, annual value, currency, seats, term dates, and uplift cap fill in per file, shaded by how confident the read is: plain for high confidence, gold for worth a glance, red for please check, blue for values you set yourself. Click any chip to correct it; the AI pass never overwrites your edits.
- Discount band — once the vendor is known, the card shows the discount band buyers like you land with that vendor at your deal size, with sample sizes, so you know the stakes before you submit.
- Notes and benchmark focus — optional per file: notes for our analysts and what you want benchmarked, with a one-click starter template matched to the proposal category.
How to use it
- Drop your files (up to 20 at a time). Each card starts reading immediately: rules first, then an AI pass that upgrades anything you have not edited.
- Check the chips, correct anything gold or red, and add your benchmark focus.
- Confirm once (Ctrl+Enter also works). A batch shows a progress bar while it submits, and each card ends as Queued with a link to its proposal page.
- Track progress afterwards on the Proposals list.
Tips
- Files are limited to PDF and DOCX and capped at 40 MB each. Files upload straight from your browser to storage.
- Your edits survive a stray navigation: chip corrections, notes, and the benchmark focus are restored when you re-add the same files in the same browser session.
- If your plan's benchmark allowance is used up, the upload still lands but ends as Saved, not queued instead of Queued. Open the proposal page to fix it in place; see Proposals below.
Related: Proposals
Your Archive
Your whole contract estate as one console, led by the ledger. A navy mast states the estate in a single reading: vendors and agreements in force, the annual run rate, the top vendor's share, what still awaits a first review, and the nearest renewal. Four numbered views sit under it, and the vendor ledger is the working surface. Drop files or entire folders and Vera reads every document, fills in its terms, files it under its vendor, and judges whether each agreement is current, due for renewal, expired, superseded, or a perpetual license. The judgments respect how vendors actually work: a perpetual Oracle license from years ago is a current asset, and only your newest Microsoft Enterprise Agreement counts as live.
On the screen
- The mast — the estate's verdict in one row of figures: annual run rate, the top vendor's share, agreements awaiting first review, and the nearest renewal, with Add documents and the review action beside it. A meter on the tab band tracks how much of the estate has been reviewed.
- The four views — numbered tabs on the mast, the console's one navigation: Vendors, Agreements, Renewals, and the Review queue.
- Vendors — the ledger: every vendor ranked by annual spend with its share of estate drawn in the row, the exact annual value, the next renewal with months out (inside 6 months reads in gold), and what still needs review. An accounting rule closes the table with the estate total. Select a row to focus its vendor file; the chevron or a double press opens the full file.
- The vendor file — the focused vendor as a cover sheet beside the ledger: annual value and share, agreements, what awaits review, the next renewal, the largest agreements as press-to-open rows, and the analyst read in plain prose, with Open the vendor file and the review action beneath.
- Agreements — every document in the estate, largest first: title and filename, vendor, the term drawn against a today line, annual value, and the lifecycle state. Press a row for the document peek.
- Renewals — the next 24 months, soonest first, opened by the runway read: how many renewals sit inside 18 months and what they are worth, or the all clear.
- Review queue — the documents Vera could not fully read, each with the reason, and Review all one press away. Your correction always outranks the automatic reading.
- Search, filters, and sort — find anything by vendor, title, or filename; filter agreements to Current, Renewal due, History, or Needs a look; sort vendors by biggest spend, due first, or A to Z.
- What next — the console closes with the moves the estate itself suggests: give the estate its first read, get ahead of the nearest renewal, open the top vendor's room, or ask Vera where the risk is.
- Adding documents — drag PDF or DOCX files or whole folders anywhere on the page, or press Add documents. Up to 40 MB per file and 300 files per run; every file is verified by its contents, not its name, and stored privately.
- The filing ticker — during a scan a live feed narrates each document as Vera reads it: filename, vendor, value, renewal date. Leave any time; a floating chip follows you on every screen with the percent and a notification brings you back when the archive is ready, even if you closed the tab mid-scan.
- Next moves — after a scan, a numbered rail with the money named on each decision, and nothing happens without your confirmation. Renewals: Vera lists only the contracts genuinely coming due (never ten-year-old paper) and you choose which go on the calendar; vendors you already track are advanced, never duplicated. Spend: your top 20 vendors by annual spend, ready for the Spend Optimizer. Benchmarks: a card wall with vendor logos and a quota dial to pick which contracts our analysts should benchmark. Each move ticks off as you answer it.
- The finishing ceremony — when a scan completes while you are on the page, a short full screen reveal stamps in the vendors and contracts, runs the spend odometer, and names the renewals due with their money. Skip it any time; it plays once per scan and lands instantly under reduced motion.
- The Estate Intake Brief — every scan produces an executive document in the house brief style: the vendor table, the renewals inside the window, the lifecycle findings, and a bottom line. Open it from the ceremony, the Next moves rail, or the button above the floor; it prints clean for a CFO forward.
- Timeline and peek — inside a vendor file, the Timeline tab lays every agreement on a time axis against a today line, and clicking any contract opens a side peek with its terms, the lifecycle reasoning, the verbatim passages each date and value was read from, a signed link to the document, and the full record one click away.
- Needs a look — documents the scan could not read wait behind the review coverage panel and the ledger's gold chip. Fill in a vendor, end date, or value in the review queue and the contract refiles instantly; your correction always outranks the automatic reading.
How to use it
- Drop your contract folder, then leave the screen if you like; the chip and the completion notification keep you posted.
- When the scan finishes, work through the three follow-up asks: add the due renewals, review the top spend, choose benchmarks.
- Read the console any time: select the biggest row, read the vendor file beside it, and open the full file for every agreement and its evidence.
Tips
- Files that fail verification are skipped with the reason on the file chip; the rest of the batch continues.
- Uploads land as contracts, so everything you drop also feeds Document search, the spend portfolio, and the vendor pages automatically.
- A reloaded tab cannot resume files that never finished uploading, but everything already uploaded still scans and gets filed.
Related: Proposals · Renewals · Spend optimization
Compare
Side-by-side document comparison with an AI difference scan: two proposals or versions next to each other with the changes called out. The result opens with a verdict band (terms compared, which side is stronger where, watch-outs), then one card per term showing both sides' language with the stronger position highlighted, and an amber watch-out panel closing the read.
On the screen
- Document panes — the two documents side by side.
- Difference scan — the AI's read of what changed and what it means commercially.
How to use it
- Pick two documents and run the scan.
- Save the scan into the customer workspace to keep the read on file.
Tips
- Use this to check a renewal quote against last year's paper, or a redlined draft against the version you sent. For a year-over-year read on the same vendor, see the Time machine tool.
Vendors
Every vendor across your proposals and agreements, one page per vendor, so you can see your whole relationship in one place.
On the screen
- Your position — the masthead states the estate in one sentence under a gold rule: how many vendors you hold, their stated annual value, how many renew inside 90 days, and how many are priced above the market median.
- The briefing band — three reads before the rows. Where the money is draws your spend concentration as one bar across the top five vendors, with the share each holds. The renewal runway plots every tracked renewal across the next twelve months, soonest first, and counts the vendors with no renewal date on file. Needs attention names up to four profiles worth opening today, each with the reason: renewing inside the window, priced above market, or carrying proposals with no stated value.
- The register — vendors grouped by the role they play in your estate: anchor vendors (the top five by stated value), the working portfolio, and the profiles with no stated value. Each row carries the vendor, a one line position statement, a verdict in plain colors, the annual value, and the renewal countdown. Choosing a sort (spend, renewal urgency, recently active) flattens the groups into one ranked list.
- Vendor page — open a vendor for its contracts, benchmarks, market intel, and notes.
- Open the case — a navy band under the related records opens the vendor as a case file: a full screen file of numbered executive brief documents in a grouped left rail, paged with the arrow keys or the rail, with a read meter tracking your progress and Esc to close. Up to six documents build from what the vendor's record holds: your agreements ledger, the pricing band at your deal size, the vendor's terms and conduct intel, a negotiation angles brief fitted to your footprint, and a closing What now sheet whose every move runs on your live records. Drafts open in your own inbox, copies go to your clipboard, and nothing ever sends from a case. Several records across the platform open the same way; each section below says what its case holds.
How to use it
- Open a vendor to see everything you have with them.
- Run an instant benchmark for a vendor from here.
Watch
One watchtower, four rooms. The Terms tab watches the vendor side: every change to a tracked vendor's published price list, diffed and priced at your seat counts. The Billing tab watches your side: what you are billed against what you are entitled to against what the market pays, checked daily. The Price list check tab is the machinery behind the first tab on one screen: every price list the platform tracks, the live state of the automated verification sweep, and the controls that decide which vendors' changes reach your inbox. The Archive by vendor tab holds every price-list change ever detected, re-sorted by vendor. The four sit as a pill row in the page header, under the Market Desk strip, so you can move between them from any of them, including the archive. The old addresses (/vendors/watch for Terms watch, /spend/watch for Billing watch) redirect to the right room, so old links, bookmarks, and emails keep working.
All three working rooms open with a navy masthead that states the room's live figures, keep their context in a column beside the work, and carry the same navy band: Open the workroom raises the watchtower file, a four document case that reads the whole tower for the last 90 days. The watch brief states the period in tiles and one narrative, the change ledger lists every change on your vendors with both published prices and your exposure, On your paper folds the period per vendor with the renewal windows to act, and What now carries the stakeholder memo, the copy moves, and the rooms. ⚡ What now and ✦ Ask Vera, grounded on the file, ride beside every paper, and the same file opens from any of the three rooms.
Terms watch
Every change to a tracked vendor's published price list, diffed on each refresh and priced at your own seat counts. This is the vendor side of the watch: what a vendor moved, and what that move would cost you at renewal. Every change is kept, so you can read a vendor's full price history any time.
Your position sits in the masthead: price changes on your vendors in the last 90 days, vendors tracked and how many are in your estate, your annualized exposure at the next renewals, and the biggest single move in the window. The vendor follow switch and the other standing watches sit in the column beside the strips.
On the screen
- The watchtower workroom — the navy band above the floor opens the watchtower file described at the top of this section: the whole period across Terms, Billing, and the check, as four executive papers with the moves and Ask Vera docked beside them.
- The floor toolbar — one instrument row over the strips: scope the board to your vendors, the tracked market, or both; cut it to increases, decreases, new SKUs, or retirements; and read the last 90 days or the full year. The count at the right restates what the filter left, so a narrowed board never reads as a quiet market.
- Email me when price lists change — a switch in the side column turns on the price-change digest; nothing is sent until you turn it on, and every email carries a one-click unsubscribe that turns off only this email. Below it, one chip per vendor company (Microsoft covers Microsoft 365, Azure, and Dynamics 365 in a single chip; Oracle and Google merge the same way): pick the vendors you care about, or choose All tracked vendors to hear about every tracked change. The list here and on the Price list check tab are the same roster, so the two tabs always agree.
- Your vendors — a seismograph strip per vendor you hold: increases strike upward in brick, decreases downward in green, new SKUs in gold.
- Open the change workroom — selecting a change shows a second navy band under the diff panel; it opens that one change as a five document workroom: the cover sheet, the change itself with both published list entries side by side, an impact brief priced at your own seat counts, a response sheet weighing the grandfathering, renewal, and acceptance options, and a What now sheet. ⚡ What now drafts five letters from the change itself, the grandfathering request, the claim on a new list price, a clarification request on a new SKU, a continuity request on a retired SKU, and the internal note to stakeholders, then copies the change summary or the one line version and opens your renewals or the full price history. Both published prices are quoted rather than derived. ✦ Ask Vera answers from this change and your own exposure to it; if you do not hold the vendor, the room says so and treats the move as market intelligence rather than exposure.
- Market watch — tracked vendors outside your estate. Changes here are context, not exposure, because nothing below touches a contract you hold.
- Also watching for you — cross-links to the Billing tab and to standing answers that changed.
How to use it
- Read your vendors first: any strip with a recent brick strike is a price rise heading for a renewal you hold.
- Use the switch to have price-list changes emailed to you, and follow the vendors you want to hear about.
- Open a change to see the old and new price, the delta, and what it costs at your seat counts.
- Switch to the Billing tab to see whether your invoices already reflect a move.
Related: Archive by vendor · Billing watch · Weekly report
Terms watch archive by vendor
Every published price-list change Terms Watch has ever detected, kept and re-sorted by vendor. It opens with the read: how many vendors have moved, increases against cuts, and which vendor moves its list most. The index lists every vendor whose price list has moved, with how many changes it has, a breakdown of increases, cuts, new SKUs, and retirements, and when it last moved. Open a vendor to read its full history, newest first: each change shows the old and new price, the delta, and the grounded analyst note (what changed, why it likely changed, and the one action to take before renewal).
How to use it
- Press Archive by vendor in the watchtower's pill row, from any of its rooms.
- Scan the index (most-changed vendors first) or find the vendor you are about to renew.
- Open the vendor to read its full price history and the note attached to each change.
Billing watch
Every day, per vendor per SKU: what you are billed against what you are entitled to against what the market pays. Drift arrives with its corrective draft attached, and a correction only counts once later invoices confirm it. This is the customer side of the same seismograph as the Terms tab.
On the screen
- The masthead — the headline number lives in the navy masthead: how much a month is leaking, across how many vendors, with live bleed, open findings, vendors leaking, and corrections landed. Recompute sits beside it.
- The watchtower workroom — the navy band above the board opens the shared watchtower file (see the top of this section), which reads the billing drift beside the period's price-list changes.
- Leak board — a row per leaking vendor with the SKUs where billed, entitled, and market prices disagree.
- The side column — how the watch reads (billed against entitled against market), entitlements waiting for your confirmation, and the rest of the tower: the Terms tab, invoice disputes, proven corrections, and standing answers that changed.
How to use it
- Read the verdict band for the live monthly bleed.
- Open a leaking vendor to see the SKU-level findings and the corrective draft attached to each.
- If the board is empty, confirm entitlements from a contract or connect a license source so the daily check has something to price against.
Tips
- An approved correction is proven or disproven against later invoices on Savings proof; mischarge disputes are tracked on Invoices.
Related: Terms watch
Price list check
The verification machine on one screen. The book of published list prices refreshes weekly, an automated check re-reads each vendor's own public pricing page and compares it against the anchors on file, walking the whole roster inside every week, and an analyst confirms any detected change before it is published to the Terms tab. This tab shows all of it live, and doubles as the place you choose what you are notified about.
On the screen
- The watchtower workroom — the navy band above the desk opens the shared watchtower file (see the top of this section).
- The sweep band — the dark panel at the top of the desk states the live numbers: price lists under watch, published prices on file, checks against vendor pages in the last 7 days, and detections currently with an analyst. Beneath them, a heartbeat marks every automated check this week: green verified clean, gold a detected change, red a page that could not be read and retries.
- Notification bar — the email switch, the All tracked vendors chip, and your follow count. The roster below is the picker: the bell on each row follows or unfollows that vendor and saves instantly, no separate save step. Following is one chip per vendor company, so all the Microsoft lists ride one follow.
- Latest verified changes — the most recent analyst-confirmed changes with their deltas, linking to the Terms tab where each is priced at your seat counts.
- Search and lenses — find a vendor by name, or cut the roster to your vendors, lists with changes, stale prices, or lists needing attention.
- The roster — grouped by category, a row per price list: the vendors it covers, how many SKUs are on file, a freshness bar for the published prices, the list's recent check history, and the latest result. A gold dot marks vendors in your estate.
- The drawer — open any row for the full detail: every anchor's list price, unit, publication date, and confidence, a price-history trend per SKU, the latest check's verdict for each anchor (matches the page, change detected, or not printed publicly) with a link to the vendor's own pricing page.
- The side column — how the check works in three steps (the book refreshes, the check reads the vendor's page, an analyst verifies), and Request a vendor: buying from someone we do not track? Ask and the list joins the roster with its own weekly check.
How to use it
- Read the sweep band: if detections sit with an analyst, a price move may be coming to Terms soon.
- Turn on the email switch, then either keep All tracked vendors or click bells to follow just the vendors you hold.
- Use the Your vendors lens to confirm your estate is covered; anything green was recently re-verified against the vendor's own page.
- Open a row before a renewal to read the vendor's current anchors and their history, straight from the book our analysts maintain.
Related: Terms watch · Archive by vendor
Weekly report
Two rooms under the tab: This week and Archive by vendor, as a pill row in the page header.
Every Monday the agent sweeps the week's enterprise software news for pricing and licensing changes, anything that moves costs or negotiating position, and files this wire. It is short on quiet weeks and longer only when something major breaks; items on vendors you hold are marked.
The page opens with a plain-language rundown of what each Monday update covers: price and discount moves, licensing and packaging changes, support, audit and end-of-life shifts, and the M&A or earnings news that changes your leverage, each with a read on what to do about it.
On the screen
- What each week covers — a short panel at the top listing the kinds of change the agent files each week.
- The wire — the week's report as an executive brief, built to scan: the executive summary opens with a lede line and bullets the rest of the week, and every item separates the facts (a short bulleted list) from a For buyers list with one move per bullet. Items touching a vendor you hold carry an "in your estate" eyebrow.
- Open the workroom — on a week with items, a navy band above the paper opens the wire as a four document workroom: a cover sheet with the week at a glance and the item to read first, the week's ledger with every item as a row, a priority brief that reorders the wire for your desk (your vendors and major items first), and a What now sheet. ⚡ What now forwards the week's read as a drafted note, copies the week summary for chat or the one line version, and opens your renewals, the Market Desk, or the archive by vendor. ✦ Ask Vera reads this week's own items, each with its magnitude, its source and its date, so what in the week affects you is answered from the wire itself rather than from a general summary of the market. The room recomposes from the live report on every open; quiet weeks carry no band.
- Subscribe card — a switch at the top left turns on the Monday email; nothing is sent until you turn it on, and every email carries a one-click unsubscribe that turns off only this email. Below it, pick the vendors you care about so their items lead your copy.
- Past weeks — the archive strip below the brief; a gold dot marks a week where something major broke.
- Browse the full archive by vendor — a link into the per-vendor archive (see below).
How to use it
- Read the latest wire, starting with the items marked as in your estate.
- Use the switch in the subscribe card to have it emailed to you each Monday.
- Open a past week from the archive strip to catch up, or open the archive by vendor to read one vendor's full history.
Tips
- Your weekly emails now arrive as one Monday brief: the vendor market wire (this report), renewals coming up, watchtower changes, and savings and wins in a single send. Turn any section off while keeping the rest under Settings › Notifications.
Related: Archive by vendor · Terms watch
Weekly report archive by vendor
Every weekly update the agent has ever filed, kept and re-sorted by vendor so nothing drops off. It opens with the read: how many vendors carry a major market-moving update, how many touch pricing, and which vendor the desk keeps writing about. The index lists every vendor the agent has covered, with how many updates it has and when it was last mentioned; a gold dot marks a vendor with a major update on record. Open a vendor to read its full history: every price move, licensing change, and market shift on it, newest first, each linking back to the week it ran in.
How to use it
- Press Archive by vendor in the weekly report's pill row.
- Scan the index (most-covered vendors first) or find the vendor you are about to renew.
- Open the vendor to read its timeline, and click any Week of eyebrow to jump to the full weekly brief it came from.
Billing watch
Every day, per vendor per SKU: what you are billed against what you are entitled to against what the market pays. Drift arrives with its corrective draft attached, and a correction only counts once later invoices confirm it. This is the customer side of the same seismograph as Terms watch.
On the screen
- Verdict band — the headline number: how much a month is leaking, across how many vendors, with live bleed, open findings, vendors leaking, and corrections landed.
- Leak board — a row per leaking vendor with the SKUs where billed, entitled, and market prices disagree.
- Needs confirmation — connector-reported entitlements are held out of alerting until a human confirms the contracted figures. These are marked "confirm".
- Also watching for you — cross-links to Terms watch and standing answers that changed.
How to use it
- Read the verdict band for the live monthly bleed.
- Open a leaking vendor to see the SKU-level findings and the corrective draft attached to each.
- If the board is empty, confirm entitlements from a contract or connect a license source so the daily check has something to price against.
Tips
- An approved correction is proven or disproven against later invoices on Savings proof; mischarge disputes are tracked on Invoices.
Related: Terms watch
Agreements
Signed contracts you are tracking for spend and renewals, worked as a ledger and an inspector. The table groups every vendor folder by what binds you first; selecting a row opens that folder in full beside the table. Set the expiry and notice period once, and the platform watches the deadlines for you.
On the screen
- The ledger — one row per vendor, grouped by urgency: notice window open, past renewal, renews inside 90 days, later this cycle, and no date yet. Each group states its count and annual value, and the runway column shows how much of the final year has run with the notice deadline ticked on it.
- The inspector — select a row and the panel beside the table works that folder in full: the term drawn as a timeline, the editable terms, the uplift verdict against your cap, and up to five documents. On a narrow screen it stacks under the table. Days remaining are counted on your organization timezone's calendar day, the same one deadlines and alerts use, which owners set under Renewals.
- Chips, search and views — filter to the notice windows, the next 90 days, past renewals or undated folders in one press, search the ledger by vendor, or switch to the Runway tab to see every renewal drawn on a timeline. You can track up to forty vendor agreements.
How to use it
- Add an agreement with Add vendor or Add with AI: vendor, expiry date, notice period, and the signed files.
- Press the In notice chip and work the top row in the inspector: confirm the dates, enter the vendor's proposed price against your cap, and file the paper.
- See them sorted by deadline on Renewals.
Related: Renewals
The Desk (beta)
The buy side as one desk file. The navy stage states the book in figures and opens the file, the morning brief is the landing paper, everything waiting on a person in priority order, and the console below holds the live controls for the selected supplier as tabs: Position, Mandate, Execute, Close.
What beta means here. Live on your data: the morning brief, the ranked queue, the leverage behind every row, the connected feeds it reads, signed mandates, real outbound actions with the guardian ruling on each one, and closed deals handed to Savings Proof. Still to come: the desk never picks who a message reaches, and it does not yet open events on its own schedule.
On the screen
- The stage: the desk's one navy surface. It states the book in figures, spend under the desk, money in the workable window (renewals 60 to 150 days out), what waits on a person, mandates in force and savings verified, and carries two doors: Open the desk file raises the full file, and How the desk works opens the whole loop written down, station by station.
- The morning brief: the landing paper, prepared from your paper and feeds when you open the desk. Section one is what needs you, in priority order: notice deadlines inside a week, guardian refusals to read, counters to approve, approved drafts that only need a recipient, mandates about to lapse, windows open with no authority, and closes leaking against their invoices. Every item states the supplier, the reason and the money, and its link lands the console on the right supplier and station. Then the week ahead, dated; what the desk is watching; and the feeds behind the figures. A feed you have not connected reads as unmeasured, never as zero, because something the desk cannot see must never look clean.
- The queue: 0 to 100 leverage per agreement, from money at stake, how workable the renewal window still is, and the levers your own paper gives you. The window matters both ways: a deadline 14 days out scores lower than one 94 days out, because there is no longer room to run a real negotiation. An auto-renewing agreement, a proposal above your uplift cap, a vendor you have never benchmarked, and an unowned renewal each add to the score. Rows carry the days left, a mandate pill when one is in force, and the money any cap breach is worth.
- Position tab: the brief the desk wrote before you opened it. The renewal window drawn in time with the workable band shaded. What your paper says: current spend, the vendor's proposal, the uplift cap, and the money any breach is worth, recoverable without a market argument. What the feeds measured: unused seats and billing drift, each labelled unmeasured when its feed is not connected. The market corridor drawn as a ruler: the observed band from the median close to the upper quartile, with the three mandate targets marked and the number of closes behind them. And the signal ledger showing exactly why the row ranks where it ranks.
- Where the targets come from: push gently, push hard and go for the best are not fixed percentages. They come from the corridor of reductions actually achieved on that vendor: the median close, the upper quartile, and one step past the observed range for the anchor. Each option shows its percentage and the closes behind it, and the note underneath says whether those closes are this vendor's own or borrowed from the all-vendor pool. With fewer than five closes, the figures are labelled house postures rather than measurements. Switching rows loads that vendor's own corridor and cohort.
- Mandate tab: the console on the left sets the terms; the instrument card on the right reads them back as the document you are signing: objective, disclosure, autonomy, authority, term, and the count of human decisions it implies, two under a fully autonomous mandate against 15 to 40 by hand. A signed mandate is never edited; changing your mind revokes it and signs a new one, so the record is a sequence of decisions each carrying a signer and a timestamp.
- The desk file: the whole desk as formal papers, opened from the stage, from the navy band below the brief, or by sharing a
?open=caselink. It lands on the morning brief and reads on: the book, every agreement ranked by leverage with its standing and one line of why, then the selected supplier's case as a workroom: the cover sheet, the position sheet with the corridor targets and their provenance, the signed mandate read back as a formal instrument, the guardian ruled execution ledger and the close package with its verification state once that data exists, and a What now sheet. ⚡ What now briefs a stakeholder on the mandate, reports the close, prepares a counter under the mandate, copies the case summary, jumps back to the stations, and opens the savings ledger once a close verifies. The drafts state the mandate's real basis, including how many observed closes it rests on, whether those closes are this vendor's own or borrowed from the all-vendor pool, and whether the number reaches one step past the observed range on purpose, so a target never reads as more measured than it is. ✦ Ask Vera answers from the papers in the file. - Guardian preflight: judges three moves against the settings on screen before you sign, naming the rule behind each verdict. Move the disclosure setting and the verdicts change. The case worth understanding is a move your mandate permits but org policy forbids: it is rewritten and released, not blocked, with the diff kept in the audit record.
- Execute tab: the action ledger. Press Prepare a counter and the desk drafts one from your stored figures, reproducible and incapable of inventing a number. Every row carries the guardian's verdict, the rule that decided it, and a timestamp; drafts open in their own window. The scope toggle switches between this supplier and every supplier. *Ask me first* leaves the draft for you to send, *Check with me* waits for one click, *Just run it* clears it to send. You always type the recipient yourself, and nothing the guardian refused can be promoted.
- Close tab: type what you will pay under the new terms and the signature package computes before you commit. The saving in money and percent, whether you met the mandate you signed or came up short and by how much, the market check, the uplift cap, and what is on the record. The mandate line is the one to read: a saving alone does not tell you whether the desk did what you told it to. Figures that are not a close are refused with the reason. The verification bar alongside shows claimed against verified against leaking, re-checked by Savings Proof against the invoices that follow, and the network panel shows how many separate buyers stand behind your position, behind the floor of five and the give-to-get rule.
How to use it
- Read the morning brief. Its first item is the day's priority, and its link lands the console on the supplier and the station that can act on it.
- Press a queue row and read its Position tab. Every figure carries its source.
- Open Mandate, set how hard to push, what may be revealed, how much rope, the spend cap and the duration, then read the instrument and the guardian preflight before you sign.
- Open Execute, press Prepare a counter, read the guardian's ruling, and send it to a recipient you type yourself.
- When terms land, open Close, enter the new price, read the package against your mandate, and press Sign off and record.
- Press Open the desk file on the stage to read the whole desk as papers, or to walk someone else through it.
Related: Renewals · Negotiations · Agreements
Renewals
One renewal at a time, argued in full. The queue on the left is every agreement ranked by how soon notice falls due; the case in the middle states the decision, the money on each option, and what to do next. When a notice window opens, your team is emailed automatically.
On the screen
- The queue — every agreement grouped into Decide now, Inside the sourcing runway, and Ahead of the runway, with the countdown to its notice date in tabular figures down the left edge, so the column reads as a list of numbers without reading a single vendor name. The total value of the book, how many sit inside the notice window and how many carry no benchmark are stated at the top. Press
jandkto step through it without the mouse. - The case — opens with one sentence that states the decision and the money on it, not a summary of the row you just pressed.
- The clock — the life of the renewal drawn to scale and graduated every ten days, each graduation a real date. The hatched stretch is your sourcing runway, the time you are meant to be working; the solid stretch is the notice window, the time the contract is deciding for you. Today is marked on it, so how much runway is already behind you is one glance rather than a subtraction.
- The three outcomes — renewing as offered, holding today's price, and pricing at the market median, with the annual figure on each and the difference against the opening position. Renewing as offered uses the uplift cap recorded on your agreement where there is one, and says so when it has had to assume one instead. The outcome marked recommended is only ever the one your delivered benchmark supports; where no benchmark has been delivered the median reads *Not derivable* rather than a guess.
- The argument — why the renewal sits where it does, composed from figures stored against the agreement rather than written for you, plus a cream panel on what the vendor's own fiscal quarter close does to your timing. A vendor with a quarter to close has discount authority it does not have the week after.
- What to do next — the moves in order, each one a link to where the move happens, and a button that opens the full renewal record.
- The dossier — on the right: the agreement's terms with leader dots, where your unit price falls in its market cohort with the median marked, and the risk score with every reason behind it listed.
- The sample book — See the sample book in the header fills the desk with fourteen worked example agreements, ten of them benchmarked, so you can see the desk working before your own agreements are on file. It includes a notice date already missed on a contract that renews itself, one seven days out, two priced below the market median where the work is defending them, and four with no benchmark at all. Countdowns are live. Nothing in it is your data and nothing in it is saved, alerted on or exported; a banner says so the whole time it is on.
- Calendar — the year at a glance is one tab across: the month grid, the renewal horizon strip, the stat band, the quarter capacity planner, Present mode and the calendar governance settings.
- War room — once a renewal crosses into its notice window, its vendor record leads with a live countdown, this week's playbook step, the negotiation brief, and the owner and approvers pinned, and the deal jumps to the top of My work.
- The Renewal Event Engine — on the Calendar tab. Owners switch it on and renewals stop being calendar entries: at 90 days before each notice window the platform opens the event itself, the deal thread is created, a mandate skeleton is drafted from the market corridor and the agreement's own figures, and the owner is notified. Humans still approve every mandate; the engine only opens the door, on up to five renewals per day.
How to use it
- Read the case at the top of the queue, which is always the one closest to its notice date.
- Check which outcome carries the recommended flag, and what it is worth against the opening position.
- Work down What to do next, or press
jto move to the next case. - Turn a renewal into a tracked negotiation when you are ready to engage the vendor.
- Build the full plan with the Renewal playbook.
Related: Renewal calendar · Renewal playbook · Negotiations
Renewal calendar
The year at a glance: every notice date, expiry and vendor quarter close. Planning a year of capacity and taking one decision are different jobs, so the calendar keeps its own tab beside the case desk.
On the screen
- Renewal horizon — the same 18-month strip your dashboard shows: every dated deal sized by spend, colored by risk, and led by its notice deadline. One timeline everywhere, so the dashboard and this page always agree.
- Month grid — twelve months with deadlines, expiries and vendor fiscal quarter closes layered on the same days.
- Stat band and quarter planner — decisions due, renewals inside the sourcing runway, spend at risk, the next deadline, and the next four quarters with the value and ownership coverage of each.
- Present — runs the calendar as a full screen QBR session: the horizon and quarter planner open, each upcoming quarter follows deal by deal with notice-window renewals leading, and the decisions due close the show. Arrow keys move, N shows presenter notes, the print control leaves the walked screens behind as a packet, and a shared link carries the show.
- Get it managed — every renewal card carries a control to hand the renewal to a human team as an add-on engagement. If your workspace is served by a partner firm, the request goes straight to them; otherwise it goes to the Vera AI team. One live request per renewal.
- Calendar governance — folded shut at the foot: calendar sync, alert timing, vendor aliases, and the approval and SLA policies your renewals run by.
How to use it
- Read the horizon for the shape of the year, then the quarter planner for where the capacity crunch is.
- Press a quarter to narrow the list below it.
- Subscribe your own calendar app from Calendar governance so the notice dates ride along with your diary.
Related: Renewals · Renewal playbook
Renewal playbook
Name what is renewing and the platform builds the whole plan: a work-back timeline, the questions to ask, the plays to win, and the negotiation talking points. Turn on the agent and it watches the deadline and keeps you on track.
On the screen
- The work-back wall — the whole plan on one engraved scale, redrawing live as you type the date and the notice period below it. The three delivery phases are drawn to scale worked back from the notice deadline, the stretch after the notice date is hatched because that is time the contract is deciding rather than time you are working, and the graduations are real dates rather than a progress bar. It is the same instrument the Renewals case desk uses for a single agreement.
- Their calendar — the gold dashes on the wall are the vendor own fiscal quarter closes. Discount authority loosens as a seller chases a number, so a decision timed into one of those is worth more than the same decision a week later.
- The three steps — name what is renewing, fill in the renewal details, then choose who works it. A completed step stays pressable, so you can change an earlier answer without losing the ones after it.
- Wizard — pick an existing contract or just name the vendor and fill in the details. Contracts that already have a playbook offer "open" instead of starting a new one.
- The agent — turn it on and it tracks the deadline and prompts you at each step.
How to use it
- Pick the contract that is renewing, or name the vendor and its details.
- Let the platform build the timeline, the discovery questions, the plays, and the talking points.
- Turn on the agent if you want it to watch the deadline for you.
Tips
- The step-by-step plan and the agent draw on your AI plan. Without one you still get the plan structure and the work-back timeline.
Related: Renewals · Managed renewals
Managed renewals
Hand over the calendar: Vera runs every covered renewal under mandates you approve, and the fee is a percentage of savings verified against vendor invoices. Claimed figures never bill.
Your position sits in the masthead: savings banked and invoice-verified, fees paid and accrued, your net position, and how many decisions wait in the queue. The renewals tab strip rides the masthead's foot, so the program stays one press from the calendar and the pipeline.
On the screen
- The offer — before you enroll: three numbered cards (Vera negotiates and discloses itself as an AI, you decide the moments that matter, the fee is a share of invoice-verified savings only) above the activation form.
- The command queue — leads the enrolled desk: every interruption typed (a mandate, a formal offer, a counter, a bounced contact), aged in place and flagged when it has waited five days, each row opening the deal it waits on.
- The covered horizon — every covered renewal on one time axis across the next fourteen months, with the open window shaded and dots sized by contract value. Press a state in the legend to isolate its lanes, hover a lane for the readout, and a lane with an open run clicks through to it.
- The book of runs — every run grouped by what it needs (waiting on you, Vera working, preparing, settled), with days to expiry on each line.
- The fee ledger — every fee line paired with the verified saving and the invoice that confirms it, with the program totals in the footer.
- The pairing — in the column beside the work: savings banked against fees paid, always shown net, with how the fee works and the program as signed beneath it.
How to use it
- Read the offer and the fee terms.
- An owner activates the program, which signs a fee agreement and sets the standing mandate defaults.
- Approve each deal's mandate before anything reaches a vendor, and clear the command queue as Vera works; the horizon and the book of runs show everything else moving without you.
Tips
- Nothing reaches a vendor until you approve that deal's mandate, even with the standing defaults in place.
Related: Renewal playbook · Savings proof
Negotiations
A workspace for live deals. Each negotiation is a tracked thread from mandate to signature, so nothing agreed on a call gets lost.
Starting one from a drafted email. Every vendor-facing draft in a workroom ends with one question: is this the start of a negotiation? Pressing Save it to the log saves that draft as your opening move on a tracked thread and puts the track on your dashboard, marked as waiting on the vendor. When they answer, open the track and paste their reply into the composer: Vera reads it against the whole thread and your signed mandate before naming the tactic, logging any concession, and drafting your response, so she is reading the conversation rather than one email. The prompt appears only on vendor-facing drafts, because an internal note to your CFO is not the opening of a negotiation. If a track is already open with that vendor the draft files onto it rather than starting a second one. Nothing sends from the platform either way: the draft still leaves from your own inbox, and the track records what you sent.
On the screen
- Mandate — your target price, walk-away point, and approvals, set before you engage the vendor.
- Tactics analysis — paste a vendor email and the AI reads the tactic being used and suggests the counter.
- Concession ledger — every give and get on both sides, with a running value.
- War room — the panel beside the thread on wide screens: the mandate against reality, the give and take math, momentum, open promises, and counters queued. It closes with its What now dock. Draft the next counter composes against the thread, the mandate, and the ledger, and lands the draft in the counter queue for you to approve; nothing reaches the vendor from the dock. Brief the CFO writes the finance facing read, where the money stands, what each side has given, and the decision in front of them, and renders it in the dock. Copy the position summary puts the target, the ledger, the momentum, and the queued counters on your clipboard as plain lines for a chat thread, with the walk-away deliberately left out. Watch the mandate triggers puts the deal on your notification wire, and like every alert here it is off until you turn it on.
- Commitments — what the vendor promised, captured so it makes it into the contract.
- Competitive Quotes — the desk's Competitive Quotes button opens autonomous multi-vendor quote runs (below).
How to use it
- Start a negotiation from a renewal or an opportunity.
- Set the mandate before you engage the vendor.
- Analyze a vendor email for tactics, and log every give and get in the ledger.
- Run a post-mortem when the deal closes.
Related: Renewals · Competitive Quotes · Ghost writer
The Deal File (preview)
The whole negotiation rendered as one case file, in the same voice as a Second Opinion: a dark stage, a white executive brief per page, and a Put it to work rail. Six pages, walked in order or jumped by tab, with the arrow keys paging when nothing else has focus. This preview runs on the anonymized sample renewal; live runs on your own contract start from Second Opinion.
On the screen
- The file rail (left) — the six pages numbered in reading order with open and read markers, search across the file, and the seats at the table. Offer a seat brings a teammate into the same file on the same page.
- The paper (center) — one executive brief per page: the benchmark Brief with your standing against the peer band, the Research dossier where you tick your leverage directly in the table, the Drafts pack of five letters, the line by line Compare table with a strike button on every row, the Redline with adopt or hold on each clause, and the Mandate ready for sign-off.
- The what-if desk (right) — scope, term, and ambition dials plus three what-if pills. Every page reprices as you move it: the ask marker on the brief, the numbers in the letters, the mandate table.
- Put it to work (right, below the desk) — page-specific moves: the five drafts, copy the one line verdict, send the markup to legal, route the mandate for sign-off.
How to use it
- Open the file from the negotiation desk and read the brief; the gold marker is the ask the file argues for.
- Move the what-if desk until the target is one you would defend on a call, then tick your real leverage on page 2.
- Pick the opening email on page 3, copy it, and send it from your own inbox; nothing sends from the platform.
- Strike the indefensible lines on page 4, decide all six redlines on page 5, and route page 6 for sign-off.
The file autosaves in your browser: leave whenever, and it reopens on the same page with every number held.
Related: Negotiations · Second opinion · Ghost writer
Vendor Twin
A rehearsal room. Write out the asks you intend to put to a vendor and the twin tells you what will happen to each one before you send anything, using a model of how that vendor is negotiating right now rather than how vendors negotiate in general.
On the screen
- Vendor — the vendors you hold agreements with, nearest expiry first, because that is usually the one you came to rehearse.
- Where they stand today — the evidence the rehearsal runs on, assembled from six sources: how this publisher negotiates, where you sit in their fiscal calendar, what their last results said about the pressure they are under, what they changed in their standard paper this year, any viability or consolidation signal against them, and what other buyers verifiably landed with them.
- The coverage strip — the six sources, with the ones that have no data for this vendor struck through. A twin running on two sources and one running on six give answers that look alike, so the strip stays on screen next to the verdicts.
- Your asks — one per line, in the order you mean to raise them. Up to 12 are rehearsed.
- Verdicts — one per ask. Lands means expect to get it. Traded away means you will get it only by giving something back, so decide now what. Stalls means this vendor does not move here and the turn is better spent elsewhere. Reveals means asking it tells the vendor something you would rather they did not know.
- Confidence — Evidenced only when outcomes other buyers actually landed sit behind the reading. Informed when the vendor's live position and known behavior do. Directional when coverage is thin, which means treat the whole rehearsal as a prior rather than a prediction.
- Play them in this order — the sequence to raise the asks in, and the one change that would most improve the outcome.
How to use it
- Pick the vendor. The evidence panel loads without running anything, so you can read where they stand before you commit to a rehearsal.
- Paste or type your asks, one per line, in the order you plan to raise them.
- Press Rehearse this ask set and give it a minute or two.
- Deal with any Reveals verdict first. Those are the only ones that cost you something you cannot get back.
- Re-order your asks to match the suggested sequence, apply the single biggest fix, and rehearse again.
Tips
- Order matters to the result. The twin reads your list as the sequence you intend, so rehearsing a reordered set is a genuinely different question.
- Thin coverage is worth fixing before rehearsing. Running the earnings radar for that vendor is usually the fastest way to move a Directional reading up to Informed.
- The twin predicts the vendor; it never writes to them. Nothing here is sent, and your internal figures never appear in anything drafted for the vendor.
Related: Negotiations · Buying blocs · Renewal playbook
Ghost writer
The correspondence desk for every vendor conversation you are running, in the shape of the mail client the work actually happens in. A drafting box is right for one email and wrong for the eight weeks after it, where the negotiation is a thread: what they sent, what you sent, what you nearly sent, and what to send now.
The three panes. Down the left are folders, worked out from the record rather than stored, so they can never disagree with the thread: Needs a reply (they spoke last), All conversations, Waiting on them (you spoke last), and Closed. Above them, type a vendor name to open a new conversation, or press one that already exists. The middle column lists the conversations, newest first, each showing the last thing said and a Needs a reply mark when the ball is with you. The right pane is the conversation itself: every message in order, yours and theirs, with Vera's read printed underneath each of their messages, the tactic named and the play she would run against it.
The composer. Underneath the thread. Paste what they sent adds their message to the conversation and reads it, against everything already said rather than on its own, so a number they are quietly repeating or a concession they are walking back is visible. Then pick an angle and Vera drafts: Hold the position (concede nothing, make them move next), Ask, do not bid (spend questions instead of money), Bring the alternative forward, The budget ceiling, Offer two packages (two shapes you value equally, so their choice reveals their constraint), or Close it out (narrow to what is open and collect the end-game asks).
The tone, on its own row under the angles, is a separate decision: the angle is what the email argues, the tone is how it sounds. Direct is the standard register, plain and businesslike. Warm is collegial, for a relationship you intend to keep; the warmth is in the wrapping only, so it concedes nothing a cold email would have held. Formal is measured and written to be read by people who were not in the conversation, for an email that will be forwarded, escalated, or attached to the file. Firm is cool and short, for a thread that has stalled: what is not working, what you need, and what happens if it does not arrive. Pressing one rewrites the draft in that register with the position unchanged, and the tone rides every rewrite and saves with the draft. She works out where the negotiation stands from the record itself, probe, anchor, trade, or converge, and writes to that phase, and every draft is written against what is known about how that particular publisher negotiates and where its fiscal year sits. What this draft is doing appears above the email, for your eyes only: what it concedes, what it refuses, and the one thing to hold. Ask Vera for a rewrite takes plain English ("shorter and firmer", "hold the number", "ask for their final paper") and rewrites what is on screen, so edits you made by hand survive.
Drafts are kept. Save the draft keeps it as edited, so leaving the desk does not lose it. Every draft Vera wrote lists the whole history for that conversation, each with the angle and tone it took, when it was written, and a sent mark on the one that actually went, and Put it back in the composer restores any of them, in the voice it was written in. I sent this records that you sent it from your own inbox: it joins the thread as an outbound message, and every later draft reads against it.
Nothing sends from here. The platform never mails a vendor from this desk. You copy the draft or open it in your own email app, and the desk records what left. If you would rather work the thread from your inbox entirely, Ghost writer by email in the left rail sets up a private agent address you forward vendor mail to.
Related: Negotiations · The benchmark library · Workflow agents
Cases
Case Mode: every agent-run deal as one complete record, with the worklist sorted needs-you first and one rule throughout: a case holds at most one pending human decision at any moment.
Your position sits in the masthead: money in motion, decisions waiting on you, saved this year from certificates, and certificates booked. The operating rule and the worked example sit in the column beside the worklist rather than under it.
On the screen
- The numbers: money in motion across open cases, decisions waiting, savings booked from case certificates, and certificates issued. Every number clicks through to the cases behind it.
- The worklist: every case with its annual value, stage (Your decision, You have the wheel, Agent negotiating, Setup, Closed), who the case is waiting on and for how long ("Vendor · 3d", "You · 2h"), the predicted close date with its basis, and the next action. Filter by stage with the chips above the table. When a vendor has been silent for 3 days or more, the row grows a Have Vera follow up button: one click and she sends a polite chase, you on CC.
- The case record: a status path across the top (Setup, Agent negotiating, Your decision, Closed; gold "You have the wheel" when you take over), the metadata grid, then Your mandate: the one panel that answers "what exactly did I authorize?" with the opening ask, target, walk-away, and leverage, a plain-language "she may / she may never" split, how she signs, who rides CC, and the exact AI disclosure sentence the vendor reads. Below it the market evidence and the case file: every email and every system action merged into one chronology (filter to Emails or Case log), sent messages edged in blue and vendor replies edged in gold, each with its addressing, timestamp, complete body, and Vera's read.
- The decision panel: when an offer stops the agent, the money leads: three tiles showing what you pay now, what the vendor offers, and what you would save or pay more, plus the vendor's offer trend across rounds so you can see the floor forming. Then the one decision: accept and close, approve and send Vera's prepared counter, or reject it and tell her what to push for so she counters the vendor again. A negotiation runs as many rounds as it takes. Accepting can carry conditions: state them and Vera sends the vendor a written acceptance confirmation, subject to your conditions, before the case closes, so the terms live in the thread. When an offer lands you also get an email that leads with the same numbers. Nothing goes to the vendor until you choose.
- Take the wheel: step in on any live case and the agent stands down entirely; work the thread yourself, then hand control back to Vera whenever you are done. Both moves are on the case log.
- The certificate: closing books a verified outcome certificate with the baseline, the accepted figure, the savings, any acceptance conditions, and the evidence counts, and it rolls into the Saved this year number. A closed case ends with next moves (start the next vendor, open the report, see the insights), never a dead end.
Vera AI-run Negotiation (/cases/new)
The one intake for Case Mode, with two modes at the top. Automated is the easy path for the tail (tier-3 and tier-4 vendors): pick the vendor, give the contact email, and launch, and Vera benchmarks the discount, writes the opening email, and runs the negotiation on her own with no strategy to review. Guided is for the deals that matter: you review and approve the strategy, the asks, and the opening email per vendor before anything sends. Both copy you on every email and stop for your decision on any formal offer.
The first visit plays the Case Mode introduction (/cases/intro): an eight-scene, full-screen walkthrough of how a case runs, from intake to the certificate, with the control model spelled out (you approve the goal, she negotiates, you decide every offer). The product screenshots carry each page; click any of them (or the Enlarge control) to view it near full screen, and press Escape to return. Replay it any time from How Case Mode works in the Cases header. Finish with "Do not show this again" ticked and it never interrupts again.
In either mode you tick a vendor already on file (each row carries a colored vendor monogram so long lists scan fast), add one by hand, or drop new contracts (single files or whole folders; the drop zone accounts for every file: added, failed, or skipped for type), and supply the vendor's sales or renewals email by typing it or by pasting a signature or email thread. The paste box shows what it found ("Found [email protected] · Dana Reyes") before you commit it. As each row lands, Vera reads the market for that vendor and states it in dollars: the published discount band, and what your target percent is worth per year against your current spend ("At your 10% target that is $32,000 a year off the table"), with a nudge when your target sits below what buyers typically get. A summary line under the guardrails totals the whole launch. The screen also shows the exact AI disclosure sentence the vendor will read, word for word, and warns you if a CC address sits on the vendor's own domain. Up to 10 cases launch at once; the counter is on the screen. Your mode, guardrails, sender name, and CC list are remembered for the next launch, and once your org has launched its first case the big explainer folds away into a one-line header.
The launch is live. After you press launch, each case plays its opening on screen: benchmarked, strategy set, first email in the vendor's inbox, then the actual email that went out, readable in full, with the sender name the vendor sees. The headline states the target on the table in dollars across everything you launched. Failed rows list their reason with a Fix these and relaunch shortcut. In Guided mode you then press Prepare the strategy with Vera: she benchmarks where you sit versus the market (the discount read), drafts a high-level negotiation strategy that uses real competitive tension (naming credible alternatives so the vendor has to stay price competitive), sets the opening ask, the internal target, and the walk-away, lists the prioritized asks as tick boxes (defaults are pre-ticked; untick what you do not want), and writes the opening email. The plan also states how she will play the rounds: the concession plan (steps that shrink round over round so the vendor reads the floor), what she finds out from the vendor before conceding anything, and, when talks would fail, the credible alternative as a costed path (If talks fail). Review and edit any of it, including the email itself, then approve; the approved plan becomes the mandate every one of her emails is checked against. The owner's authorization launches every prepared selection at once. How the email works is spelled out on the screen: Vera sends through VendorBenchmark's secure relay so vendor replies route back to her, the vendor sees your sender name (not VendorBenchmark), and you are copied at your real inbox on every message.
How Vera negotiates. Before every strategy and every counter she reads the VendorBenchmark research for the moment at hand (the vendor's Negotiation Toolkit, the Negotiation Craft doctrine, Renewal Outlooks, audit defense manuals, exit runbooks), so a quarter-end squeeze or an audit-as-leverage play gets the researched counter. She computes the vendor's offer trend across rounds (shrinking moves mean the floor is near), recognizes the rep from your prior threads and the plays they favor, knows the vendor's fiscal year and quarter closes and deliberately slows her pace into them, and never gives without getting: every concession is paired with an ask, on the shrinking curve you approved. Before any email goes out unattended, a seller-side check reads the draft the way the vendor's account team would; anything exploitable is parked in your approval queue with the findings attached. And a negotiation that reaches ten vendor rounds without landing stops and asks you to converge or walk, with a prepared next move waiting.
Editing what Vera sends. You can edit any email before it goes out: the opening email in the prepare step, and every counter Vera drafts (open the case, use Edit on the prepared counter, then approve to send exactly what you see). The AI-agent disclosure is always kept on the opening email even if you remove it.
If the first email has not gone out. A case only reads as "Agent negotiating" once the opening email has actually been sent. If a case shows "Setup · not started" with the next action "First email not sent yet", open it and use Send the first email now; if delivery fails you will see exactly why.
Insights (/cases/insights)
The management view leads with the number a leader repeats: verified savings a year across closed cases, on a navy banner. Below it: money in motion, decisions waiting, median cycle time, and the agent's email activity, with pipeline-by-stage and savings-by-month charts you can click into, and a table of every case with its predicted close date and basis. Board deck exports the whole portfolio as a three-slide PowerPoint in the executive-brief theme (the numbers, then every case), ready to drop into a board pack unedited; the portfolio report is one click away too.
Email that keeps you current. A weekly Your cases digest lands Monday morning when you have open cases: money in motion, decisions waiting, savings booked, and the worklist, decisions first. And the first time a vendor replies on a case you get a short note with the vendor's message, Vera's read, and her next step, so you never wonder whether the machine is working.
Reports
Every case has a report (/cases/[id]/report): the mandate, the full correspondence, Vera's reads, and the outcome, as an executive brief you can export and forward. The portfolio report (/cases/report) is everything Vera ran across every case in one brief.
How to use it
- Open Cases and work top down; the list already puts what needs you first.
- On a setup case, review the mandate table and approve it in place; that approval is the agent's written authorization.
- When a decision is waiting, read the correspondence log first, then send the counter or accept and close.
- To steer a live thread yourself, take the wheel on the case, work it, then hand it back to Vera.
- Use Full deal thread on any case to drop into the complete negotiation workspace with every tool.
Tips
- Cases are the same deals as Negotiations, read as records; anything you do in either place shows in both.
- The sender name and CC list you choose at launch apply to every email Vera sends on that case, not just the first.
Related: Negotiations · Competitive Quotes · Renewals
Competitive Quotes
Autonomous multi-vendor quote runs: hand Vera a set of vendors, the tier-4 tail is the sweet spot, and she runs every quote conversation herself, so the vendors effectively compete for your business in parallel.
On the screen
- The launcher — up to 10 vendor rows, each with the vendor, the rep's contact email, a one-line scope ("25 seats, renews October"), and the current annual spend if you know it. Guardrails are set once for the run: the target reduction, the walk-away ceiling, and optional notes for the agent.
- The authorization — the launch checkbox is the written mandate approval the agent cites to vendors. Owners only, and the approved mandate is recorded per vendor in the audit log.
- What Vera does — introduces herself to each rep as your declared AI agent, requests a formal written quote, negotiates the back-and-forth inside the mandate, and politely chases silence. You are copied on every email she sends.
- The offer gate — the moment a vendor puts a formal offer on the table, the agent stops, notifies you, and waits. No offer is ever accepted without your explicit approval on the deal thread.
- The board — every run with its state: quote requested, Vera negotiating, proposal awaiting your decision, paused, or closed, with sent and received counts and a link into each thread.
How to use it
- Open Competitive Quotes from the negotiation desk and add your tail vendors with their rep emails.
- Set the target reduction and the walk-away ceiling, tick the authorization, and launch.
- Watch the CC'd emails arrive, and act only when the board says a proposal needs your decision.
Tips
- Give each row a real scope line and the current spend; the agent's opening ask is built word for word from what you enter, never generated.
Related: Negotiations · Approvals
Buying blocs
Buyers with the same vendor and the same renewal window, negotiating on one term sheet. You stay anonymous until mutual opt-in.
Your position sits in the masthead: invitations waiting on your answer, blocs you have joined, how many buyers are in them, and the combined annual value those buyers carry into the same window. That last figure is the whole argument for a bloc, so it leads.
On the screen
- Matchmaking strip — where your renewal calendar lines up with other buyers of the same vendor.
- Invitations — a bloc you have been invited to: you see the shape (buyers, combined ACV, window, term sheet version), never the members.
- Your blocs — blocs you have joined, with a room to coordinate the shared negotiation.
How to use it
- Review the matchmaking strip and your invitations.
- Open an invitation to read the bloc's shape and thesis.
- Join a bloc to enter its room; identities unlock only on mutual opt-in after you join.
Tips
- Blocs form around vendor families where several buyers renew in the same quarter, built on a shared Fair Renewal Rider term sheet.
Related: Fair Renewal Rider · Renewals
Clause library
Your organization's negotiation positions per clause, worked like a desk: the playbook rail on the left, the selected position as a one-page dossier in the center, and the live contract's verdict on the right. These positions feed the AI engines, so scans and drafts argue for your standard instead of a generic one.
This is the same playbook you see under Settings › Clause positions, viewed from the negotiating side. Every workspace starts with the VendorBenchmark starter library already in place, so the page has positions to grade against from day one; edit them to match your own standard.
On the screen
- The playbook — the left rail lists every position grouped by area; its header states how many of the eight standard areas carry one, and names any area with no position, because a comparison cannot grade a clause you have taken no position on. Once a contract is compared, each clause carries its grade as a colored dot: green meets your standard, red weaker, gold missing, gray unclear.
- The dossier — the selected position as a one-page brief: your position, your preferred language, the acceptable fallback, the walk-away, and why the position holds. Every section carries a copy action, so the wording is one press from a redline.
- Against the live deal — pick a contract on the right and run the comparison. The rail grades the selected clause, quotes the language the AI found in the document, and drafts the redline from your preferred language, with the deal scorecard beneath.
- What next — the sweep closes with its next moves: copy every drafted redline in one block for the negotiation thread, start the negotiation, open Vera Deal-Room, or ask Vera which redline to push hardest for.
How to use it
- Select a clause in the playbook rail and read its dossier. Add or edit positions from the rail; each carries a name, a category, your position in plain English, and optionally the precedent wording, the fallback, and the walk-away.
- If the rail header names an area with no position, add one before comparing.
- Pick a contract on the right and run the comparison, then click through the graded dots to read each clause's verdict and its redline.
- See position coverage across all contracts on Coverage.
Related: Coverage · Clause positions (Settings)
Coverage
Your clause library's must-have template, swept across every contract: which agreements carry your required protections, and which do not.
Before the first sweep, the stage does not draw an empty grid. It states what it is about to do, lists the protections your template requires below it, and offers one action: Run the first sweep. Nothing is graded until something has been read.
On the screen
- The verdict stage — the page opens on a navy stage, the same language as Second Opinion: one sentence on how many swept contracts are missing a protection you require, four figures counting up beneath it (fully covered, carrying a gap, gaps in total, and posture, the share of checked cells carried), and the page's actions: run the sweep, generate the report, edit the template.
- The sweep theatre — Run coverage check raises a fullscreen stage where the sweep plays live: position lines tick in as the portfolio is read, a gold arc tracks the real batches, and when the verdicts land the completion line types itself. Esc or the corner button lowers the stage at any time; the sweep keeps running behind it and the stage offers Watch the sweep live to return.
- The board tab — the protections rail on the left lists every must-have weakest first with a coverage bar; selecting one turns the ledger into that protection's story: one row per agreement with the finding the sweep recorded and its verdict pill, worst first. Expand a row for the evidence in full: the finding, the exact clause quoted from the document, and what your template requires. All protections shows every agreement with a verdict square per position (✓ present, ~ deviates, ✕ missing, ? unclear, · not checked) and a gap count; click any square to follow that protection. Verdict filter chips, a search box, and a worst first or vendor A to Z sort work the board.
- The By protection tab — the ranked read: the coverage ring, then every protection weakest first with its bar and counts. Opening a row shows the template language it grades against and the agreements missing it, each one press from its contract.
- The report tab — the white-paper read of where your protections are strong and where they are missing. If no report exists yet, this tab writes one; regenerating from the stage lands here.
How to use it
- Run the sweep and watch it play, or lower the stage and keep working. Only contracts with indexed text can be read; the scope line says how many are waiting.
- Read the stage first, then the protections rail on the board: the top entry is the protection your portfolio is thinnest on.
- Select that protection and work the ledger from the top, expanding rows to read the clause each verdict rests on. Press the Missing chip to isolate the agreements with no responsive clause at all.
- Open the contract from any row to fix it, or generate the report for the narrative summary.
Tips
- The must-have template comes from your Clause library positions, so keep those current first.
Related: Clause library
Fair Renewal Rider
The standard addendum buyers attach to every software renewal: an indexed uplift cap, benchmark repricing, audit conduct rules, no retroactive true-ups, co-termination, and change of control protection. Versioned, public, and free to send.
On the screen
- Adoption counter — how many real renewals carry the rider through VendorBenchmark. A standard works because everyone asks for the same thing.
- Open the workroom — the band above the adoption counter opens the rider as a six document workroom: the cover sheet, the operative language of all six clauses, the rationale brief in three clause families, a risk register pricing each missing protection in the rider's own words, the vendor facing send sheet, and a What now sheet. ⚡ What now drafts the cover note that transmits the rider, copies the full text, downloads either edition, and opens your renewals, the negotiation dossier, or the clause library. The standard edition is what goes to the vendor; the negotiator's edition, with the fallback ladders and the push backs already countered, stays on your side. ✦ Ask Vera answers from the rider's published text, including what you will hear on each clause and the counter to it.
- Generator — pick the contract that is renewing and the rider comes back as a ready-to-send Word document with the parties and renewal date filled in, or, when the vendor's paper on file is a DOCX, as tracked-change insertions inside their own document.
- Reading room — the rider itself, every clause annotated with why it is fair, the fallback tiers, and the vendor objection countered.
- Clause changelog — what changed in each version of the rider.
How to use it
- Read the rider in the reading room to understand each clause.
- Pick the renewing contract in the generator and choose the edition.
- Download the Word document or the tracked-change redline and attach it to your renewal.
Related: Renewals · Buying blocs
Vault
One workspace over your governed document store, in the same voice as Second Opinion: a navy stage on every page. Projects group documents by matter, for example an acquisition review, and each project is org-wide or limited to named people; documents in a restricted project stay hidden from everyone else.
The front door opens on the stage: your estate in a sentence, documents, rooms, the share read and ready for AI work, encrypted megabytes on file, with a chip for every room. Each chip is a door into that room's own page; a lock marks a restricted room. Three estate-wide tabs sit under the stage: every document across the vault, the coverage matrix across rooms, and every room with its access level.
A room's own page carries its stage: the room's name, its figures, and the drop target. Drag documents or whole folders onto the stage and each file is validated by signature, malware scanned, deduplicated, and indexed automatically; the add existing and cloud import moves (Box, Google Drive, SharePoint) sit beside it as stage buttons. The same three tabs follow below, scoped to the room.
- Documents — the room's documents with type, size, state, and per row remove.
- Coverage — a vendor by document role matrix built from what the read stage has named: master agreements, order forms, amendments, statements of work. A vendor holding supporting paper with no governing agreement on file is flagged as a gap; papers not yet read for a role sit in the Untyped column rather than being guessed at. The read below the matrix turns the flags into sentences, starting with the missing agreements, which in diligence are usually the first document request.
- Access & policy — who can see the room, straight from the database: on a restricted room, the creator and each named member with what their organization role lets them do; on an org-wide room, everyone by role. Under it, the handling policy in plain rows: intake checks, encryption, 60 second signed URL downloads, the audit trail, and the note that Redress analysts read rooms to produce your benchmarks, on the same audit trail.
How to use it
- Create a project and pick org-wide or restricted access.
- Open its chip and drop documents on the room's stage, in bulk if needed; each file moves from received to indexed on its own.
- Read the Coverage tab and request whatever the gap flags say is missing.
- Run diligence across a project when you want the deal-grade review.
Related: Diligence
Diligence
End-to-end document review for a deal: every contract in scope is read for change of control, assignment, exclusivity, termination, liability, and data terms, then assembled into a risk register and an analyst report.
On the screen
- Scope picker — run the review across all contracts or limit it to one vault project.
- Risk register — every finding with its severity and the clause it rests on.
- Analyst report — the synthesized read: what needs consent or renegotiation before the deal, and what is clean.
- Open the workroom — once a review exists, a navy band above the report binds it into a numbered workroom: the cover sheet, the scope sheet, findings by area, a severity ranked risk atlas, the open questions sheet, and a What now paper. ⚡ What now drafts the internal deal owner briefing and a neutral counterparty information request from this review's own findings and open questions, copies the findings summary or the one line verdict, opens a Vera Deal-Room, and links back to the flagged records. ✦ Ask Vera is grounded on this review, so a question about what is still unresolved is answered from the review's own open items.
How to use it
- Scope the documents into a vault project first, or run across all contracts.
- Run a diligence review.
- Work the risk register, starting with the highest-severity findings.
Related: Vault
Requests
One front door for new spend. Every request is triaged by the AI against what you already own, then routed into sourcing, renewals, or approvals.
On the screen
- The lobby — the masthead states what is waiting, how much new spend is under review, how fast the triage desk answers, and how much has been routed.
- Two columns — requests needing a decision on the left, everything already routed or dismissed on the right.
- Triage verdicts — the AI's read on each request: net-new, a renewal of something you own, a duplicate of existing capability, or over the approval threshold.
- Routing — send a triaged request onward as a sourcing project, a renewal, or an approval.
How to use it
- Raise a request for the new spend.
- Read the triage verdict.
- Route it onward to sourcing, a renewal, or an approval.
Tips
- Owners can set up an intake address under Settings › Integrations so teammates email requests straight in.
Related: Sourcing
Sourcing
Sourcing opens as a workspace: what the pipeline is carrying, which deals need you today, how far each stage has carried its value, and the project list. The deal desk is one click away and prices every move still open on a live deal.
On the screen
- Pipeline position — the masthead states projects in flight, the budget in play, awarded value, and anything stalled past 30 days, with a stage strip under it counting the projects and the money sitting in each stage.
- Needs you now — projects at a decision point or stalled past 30 days, each leading with its exact next move, ranked by leverage rather than by date.
- Stage by stage — intake to award, with how far the pipeline has carried its value: reached counts every project at or past a stage, here counts the ones sitting in it now, and the money in each is printed alongside.
- Board and list — five stage columns or a dense list ranked by leverage, with search, stage chips, and a stalled-only filter.
- Notes wall — the desk's shared memory, saved to the workspace, so it reads the same for every teammate on every device: why a supplier was shortlisted, what a vendor said on a call, what changed this week. Pinned entries lead.
- Project page — requirements, suppliers, and bids side by side, through to the award decision, led by its own What Next desk (below).
The deal desk
One live deal at a time, with every move still open to you priced from the quotes you already hold.
- What if — the moves, cheapest first, each with the annual cost, the difference against the quote on the table, the difference against the approved budget, and one line on what it takes: award as quoted, hold the supplier to the top of its own discount band, make it match a competing quote, switch to the cheaper response, or bring the deal back inside the approved budget. The move you are currently on track for is marked.
- Where each number comes from — every move carries its basis, and nothing is estimated. A quoted figure is the supplier's own annual total. A price book band figure is its list price less the discount buyers of your size actually land. A competing quote is another response in the same room. A move that cannot be traced to one of those is not shown at all.
- Headroom — the gap between the quote on the table and the best move still open, stated in money and as a share of the quote. It is the number to walk into the call with.
- The responses — what each supplier quoted, scored against your own weighted requirements, with list price, the discount that implies, and the expected band beside it. The leading response is highlighted.
- Next steps — the run in order, with everything already true of the deal marked done: the brief, the weighted requirements, the RFP, the shortlist, the bids, the scoring, and the award. A shortlist only counts as done from two suppliers, because one quote is a price and two is a negotiation.
Deals sit on a switcher across the top of the desk, so you can move between them without going back to the list.
The project's What Next desk
Every project record opens with a What Next desk under the stage path: the computed next move as the headline, then the premade moves of the moment, so no step starts from a blank page.
- Send the word — Vera drafts the email each stage actually needs, from the project's live numbers: the stakeholder kickoff, the requirements review request, the supplier invitation, the Q&A broadcast (one answer, every bidder, so the process stays defensible), the chase for quiet suppliers with their names already in it, the status update, the score sanity check, the recommendation memo to the budget owner, and after award the winner note, the decline notes, the legal handover, and the CFO outcome note. Drafts are yours to edit and copy; nothing sends itself.
- Run the AI — draft or refresh the RFP, find the best suppliers in the field, score every waiting bid against the weighted requirements in one click (each score carries a quote from the bid document that justifies it), and write the evaluation memo. Buttons show what has already run, for example "All 3 bids scored".
- Go deeper — the deal desk for this project, Ask Vera, the RFP and evaluation as Word, and the contract decoder once a winner is picked.
- The supplier field report — discovery now also renders on the Suppliers tab as a forwardable executive brief: the landscape summary, market context, fit bars across the field, and one honest section per candidate with strengths, gaps, price posture, and why the score, with the Send it on drafter beneath it.
- Open the workroom — once a project has a bid, a navy band under the status path opens it as a workroom: the requirements sheet, each bid's stored figures as lettered exhibits, then once two responses are scored a verdict brief that reads the whole field in one paper (the standing, the cross bid price check against bands and the price book, and a what to do first list that prices the band and list rate asks where the stored figures can), the weighted scoring atlas as one toned table, an award brief with a verify before award list, and a What now sheet. ⚡ What now drafts the best and final ask to each finalist (priced from the stored figures where the record can price it, in position language that never names the band or another bidder), the award notification, the courteous note to the other bidders (it carries no scores), and the stakeholder update, all from the stored record, then copies the project one liner or the bid table as text and scores the responses on the record. ✦ Ask Vera answers from this project's own requirements, bids, and scores.
Send invitations, and bids that file themselves
The RFP tab carries the send flow, so the document you drafted actually travels. Pick the shortlisted suppliers, confirm each contact email, set the response deadline, preview the email, and send. You stay in charge of every send; nothing mails itself.
- Each invitation renders in the document standard with your organization named as sender, summarizes the RFP, states the deadline, and carries its own private reply address.
- When the supplier replies with the proposal attached (PDF or DOCX, 8 MB per attachment), the response files straight onto the project: the file is signature checked, its text extracted, and it is auto scored against your weighted requirements exactly as a manual upload would be. The invite flips to Responded, the notes wall gets the update, and the project owner is notified. A reply with no readable attachment is flagged on the wall for a human look instead.
- The RFQ watchdog (an agent in the Agent Center) minds the window daily: each quiet bidder gets exactly one reminder, three days before the deadline, and never without a deadline on record. When every invite has answered, or the window closes, it notes the tally on the project wall and nudges you toward evaluation.
- The supplier list on the tab shows each invite's state: Sent, Reminded, Responded, with dates.
Award scenarios
The Evaluation tab ends the guesswork about weights and split awards with a panel of pure math over your stored scores and extracted line items. No AI call is spent on any of it.
- What-if weights — drag a category's slider and the scored matrix re-ranks live, with each supplier's movement against the RFP ranking marked. One click resets to the RFP weights; the weights on record never change from here.
- Where the winner flips — one line per category stating the exact weight at which rank 1 changes hands, for example "Northline overtakes Meridian if Integration weight rises above 28 percent". No line means the ranking is weight robust.
- Single award vs split — where bids carry priced line items, the panel prices every single award against the best two way split by line item group: each contested group goes to the cheaper bidder, groups only one bidder priced stay with it, and every card shows total cost, the delta against the best single award, the combined weighted score (each requirement served by the stronger member), and mandatory coverage. The math states its own limits: up to 15 line items per bid, the first 8 bids, and no modeling of bundle discounts a vendor might withdraw on a partial award.
- Adopt a scenario — saves the chosen scenario on the project and posts the one line summary to the notes wall. For a single award scenario the regular Award button sits right beside it; the award itself stays a deliberate, separate step.
How to use it
- Walk in and read the marquee; it names the project that needs you first. Click that card.
- Make the move the focus console states, or run the engine it offers.
- Press N to leave what you learned on the wall, and U to log what you did.
- Before you step away, open the Shift log and compose the End of shift handoff for your team.
- Start a new project from the backstage toolbar, or turn a purchase request into one.
Related: Requests
Next: Chapter 02 · Benchmarks & research
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