04 · Insight
The intelligence layer over everything you have uploaded. It turns your proposals, agreements, and invoices into spend and concentration analytics, ranks the savings still on the table, proves negotiated savings against the invoices that followed, reads your documents for search and grouping, and connects you to an anonymous community of other verified buyers. Where a screen leans on AI, it is marked below and needs an AI plan.
Your organization
The whole estate on one page: what your organization actually spends per year, vendor by vendor, with every agreement consolidated. This is the page you forward to finance, so it is open to every member rather than owners only.
*In plain words: the one-page answer to "what do we hold and what does it cost."*
When to reach for this
- Finance asks for the estate: this page is built to be forwarded, and every member can see it.
- Sanity-checking the consolidation: agreements rolled up per vendor, one line each.
The number it leads with is what you pay per year under the agreements in force today. Not a contract total, and not anything whose term has ended. A vendor you have renewed three times counts once, because three sequential three year deals are nine years of paper and one live agreement.
On the screen
- Open the workroom — the band at the top opens the estate as a workroom. Up to six documents: the cover sheet, the vendor ledger, the flagged overlap atlas, the renewal horizon, a consolidation sheet with three options per overlap (the overlap papers appear only when two live agreements overlap by more than 180 days), and a What now sheet. ⚡ What now drafts the estate report for a stakeholder, copies the estate summary, and opens renewals or your biggest agreements. Only live annual figures are counted, and an overlap is flagged rather than silently merged, so the number is the estate's own. ✦ Ask Vera answers from your estate's own vendors, years, and renewals. Several pages in this chapter open the same way; each section says what its workroom holds.
- Annual spend, live — the headline. Underneath it, what adding every contract on file would have claimed instead, so the difference is explained before anyone asks.
- Why this is lower than your spreadsheet — the gap in money, and the reason for it.
- Renewal windows — what comes up this year, next year, and the year after, by the annual value at stake, with the largest vendor in each named.
- Spend per year — each agreement spread across the years its term actually covers, so a three year deal is a steady line rather than a spike in one year. Agreements with no dates are left out of the chart rather than guessed into a year.
- Vendors by annual spend — one row per company, consolidated across every agreement and legal entity you hold with them. Different spellings of the same vendor (Salesforce, Inc., Salesforce UK Limited, SFDC Ireland Limited) merge into one row, and the merged entities are listed under the name so nothing is hidden. Vendor aliases your organization has confirmed are applied first. A vendor with earlier renewals says so. Two live agreements overlapping by more than six months under the same recorded name are flagged as overlapping terms; a company holding paper through two entities at once is normal contracting and is not flagged.
- The move on a flag — a flag now settles itself rather than just warning you. An overlapping terms flag links the two agreements open side by side in the comparison view, worst overlap first, so one look tells you whether it is two real products or the same contract loaded twice. An uplift ahead flag drafts the objection: the percentage, the years it steps between, your current annual spend with that vendor, and a request for the calculation in writing before the new pricing takes effect. Copy it, or open it in your own mail client. Nothing sends from the platform. The uplift marker reads the signed fee schedule, meaning a rise the contract already prices, rather than an uplift-cap clause.
- Show history — the ended agreements and what they were worth, visible on request and never added into the live figure.
- Your five biggest agreements — the largest live agreements, one per vendor, with one button to send them all for a benchmarked second opinion.
- Second opinions — every verdict the organization has run, with its status, linking to the full report.
- What to do next — a note to your CFO, a board report, a renewal project, a Vera Deal Room, market research on your vendors, and the renewal watchdogs.
- What now — four moves, and each one does something. Write the brief builds the executive brief. Diarise the notice dates writes every dated deadline in the answer into the renewal calendar as an obligation carrying the clause it was read from, so it becomes a date somebody owns. Draft from this clause writes a notice of non-renewal or a request to amend, built from your own clause language, and tells you what to check before it is sent. Compare two clauses puts any two of the cited papers side by side and says whether their numbers agree.
- Two clauses, side by side — Compare two clauses (the move under What now, the Evidence menu, or right click a row and choose Compare with the selected clause) sets both quotes beside each other. The figures agree or disagree, and when both carry the same unit the gap is stated: 30 days apart, two points apart. Under them the sheet says which paper governs. It reads both papers for their own order of precedence sentence and quotes it, naming the paper that sentence favours; it says so when the papers belong to different vendors and neither governs the other, and it says plainly when neither paper states which prevails. No convention is assumed: a master does not govern an order because masters usually do, only because one of your papers says it.
- Read it again — where the finding says a page could not be read, the block carries a button that sends that document back through the reader with the image reader switched on. If more text comes out, ask the question again and the answer changes with it.
- Ask next — the chips under a finding are questions that answer raised, named in its own terms rather than a standing list, and pressing one carries the answer with it. "Which of those can we still exit before December" resolves "those" against what you just read instead of starting cold.
- Export the search log — in the Library, organisation owners can download every question asked of these documents as a CSV, with who asked, when, and how many clauses came back. Every search was always on the audit log; this is how it comes out.
- Watch this question — beside the follow-ups. The question is re-run on its own each week, the cited clauses and their figures are compared with the last run, and you hear about it only when one actually moves: a notice period that changed, a paper newly cited, a paper that dropped out. A reworded answer is not a change and will not disturb you. The note tells you what moved and opens the question again.
- Share this finding — a read only link for someone with no seat: outside counsel, a colleague in another workspace. It carries the verdict, the figures, the ledger and the clauses quoted, and it reaches nothing else in your estate. It expires after fourteen days, every view is counted, and creating it is on your audit log.
- Against your playbook — under the clause in the evidence pane, where your clause library has a position on that paper. It names the position, whether this paper meets it, falls short of it or does not cover it at all, and what you said you would accept and where you would walk. These are your own positions from Settings, checked against this document. It is not a comparison with other buyers, and it does not claim to be.
How to use it
- Read the headline, then the line explaining the difference from your own spreadsheet. Take that difference to whoever owns the spreadsheet.
- Check the three renewal windows. The one with the most money in it is where your next quarter goes.
- Scan the vendor table for overlapping terms. Each one is either a product nobody told procurement about or the same contract twice, and both are worth ten minutes. Press Open the two terms side by side on a flagged row to settle it in one look.
- Press Analyse these 5 to get a benchmarked verdict on your largest agreements. Results appear on this page as they finish.
- Pick a next move from the bottom of the page.
Tips
- Two live agreements from one vendor are counted, not merged, until you say otherwise. We will not quietly halve your spend on a guess.
- A renewal signed a few months before the old term ends is normal and is never flagged as an overlap.
- Contracts still inside a migration that has not gone live do not appear here at all.
Related: Portfolio · Enterprise Uploader
The Vera Wire
The always-on market news desk. Every licensing, pricing, and vendor move the platform tracks lands here in one feed, newest first, each item read for what it means for your estate. It writes itself: the wire aggregates Terms Watch price changes, the Price Index, newly published research, the weekly vendor report, and the Vendor Changes agent's document changes every day, so it stays current without anyone curating it. A condensed strip also rides on your dashboard under the Ask bar and on the welcome screen. Pressing the wire starts the app: it opens as its own window with nothing behind it, and Esc or Close returns you to Home.
The wire follows your spend category. The feed carries the suppliers of the desk you are working in, so a facilities buyer reads facilities market news and a software buyer reads software market news: 50 suppliers each on Facilities and Office Services and on Professional Services, 25 each on Marketing, Workforce, Travel, MRO and Logistics, and the whole software estate on Information Technology. Items with no named vendor, which is where market and policy news sits, stay on every desk. Switch category in the header and the wire switches with you. Two places deliberately do not filter: a vendor's own page and the negotiation plan, where you have already chosen the subject and news about that vendor should reach you whichever desk you are on.
Where the non-software items come from. Every supplier the benchmark library covers has a curve document behind it, and each one records the dated market event that set the current commercial regime: an acquisition, a margin move, a published target, a valuation. Those are on the wire, each dated, attributed to the document and linked to that supplier's benchmark. They are market context rather than a daily ticker, so an item may be some months old; the date on it says which.
On the screen
- The cover — the lead story of the day, with Vera's read on what to do about it and a chip counting the items that touch vendors you hold.
- Lenses — one tap filters the wire to Licensing, Pricing, Vendor news, or Research.
- My vendors only — a toggle that narrows the feed to vendors you hold a contract with.
- The feed — a dated timeline of every signal; a colored dot marks the category, a pill carries the verdict, Favorable, Caution, or Risk, and a chip marks your vendors.
- Vera's read — tap any item to expand Vera's read, set as short points rather than a paragraph: what changed, why it matters, and the move to make, grounded in your numbers.
- Your move — an item touching a vendor you hold ends with a Your move line: the vendor room, that vendor's benchmark, and Ask Vera seeded with the headline.
- The rail — price movers, Terms Watch changes, and newly published research, each linking to the source.
How to use it
- Read the cover story and Vera's read for the headline move of the day.
- Tap a lens to focus on Licensing, Pricing, Vendor news, or Research.
- Turn on My vendors only to narrow the wire to your own estate.
- Tap any item to expand Vera's read, then follow the source link for the detail.
Tips
- The strip on your dashboard and welcome screen shows the same lead and the next signals, so the headlines meet you before you open the full wire.
Related: Research Agent · Research · AI Agents - Vendor Changes
AI Agents - Vendor Changes
Vendors reprice you through their documents, not just their price lists. The Vendor Changes agent fetches the public licensing and cloud policy documents of the top-20 vendor set every day, 32 documents in all, and diffs each one against yesterday's copy: the Microsoft Product Terms and Universal License Terms, the Oracle partitioning, cloud licensing, support, and Java SE policies, AWS service terms, the Google Cloud terms, and the standing agreements of SAP, Salesforce, IBM, Adobe, ServiceNow, Workday, and their peers. Vendors publish on their own rhythm, Microsoft monthly on the first business day, AWS continuously, but the sweep runs daily because vendors do not always keep to their own calendar. When the fine print changes, the change is logged with the exact lines that moved and Vera's read on what it means, and material changes publish to The Vera Wire under the Licensing lens.
What you see
- The four rooms — the rail on the left walks the agent: The change ledger, What we watch, Signals, and What this agent does in plain words. On a phone the rail becomes a strip under the title bar.
- Vitals — documents watched, vendors covered, material changes in the last 30 days, and when the last daily sweep ran, at the top of the ledger room.
- Signals — the subscription panel, its own room (see below).
- Change ledger — every caught change, newest first: the headline, what changed in the document, a verdict pill, Favorable, Caution, or Risk, and Vera's read on why it matters and the move to make. Minor wording edits are kept in the ledger but marked and never sent to the Wire. Each change row ends with the same Your move trio the Wire carries, scoped to the change: the vendor room, that vendor's benchmark, and Ask Vera seeded with it.
- Show the changed lines — expand any change to see the exact lines added and removed, the evidence behind the read.
- What we watch — the full registry by vendor: each document with its type, why it matters to buyers, its known publication rhythm, when it was last checked, and a link to the live document at the vendor's site.
Signals: alerts per vendor or all
- Follow every tracked vendor with one switch, or pick vendors one by one with their bells.
- Choose your channels independently: Email me sends one exec brief email per sweep with the changes on your vendors and a one click unsubscribe that touches nothing else; Notify my dashboard lands each material change on your notification bell, tunable like every other alert kind in settings.
- Both channels are opt in and off by default, carry material changes only, and share one vendor list. Minor wording edits never alert.
How to use it
- Read the change ledger newest first; the vitals tell you in seconds whether anything moved since your last visit.
- On a change, read Vera's read, then expand Show the changed lines for the primary evidence, for example before raising it with your vendor rep.
- Follow your vendors with their bells and turn on the channel you want in Signals; from then on the fine print comes to you.
Tips
- Material changes also land on The Vera Wire, so you do not need to visit this page daily; with a subscription on, you do not need to visit it at all.
- A document shown as unreachable means the vendor moved or blocked the page on the last check; the platform keeps checking and the history stays intact.
Related: The Vera Wire · Watch · Research
Portfolio
*In plain words: the whole money story on one floor: position, spend, opportunities, the map, and the plan.*
When to reach for this
- The quarter's "where should effort go" question, answered by position rather than noise.
- Before leadership conversations: the masthead and the Estate map lens are the picture they want.
- Budget season: the Spend lens carries the trend, the forecast, and every finance export.
- Choosing the quarter's targets by money: the Opportunities lens ranks them.
One page now carries what used to be five. Portfolio, Spend, Opportunities, the Estate map, and Strategy live here as lenses over one ledger: the navy masthead states the estate in figures, a tab rail switches the lens, and every chart lives on exactly one lens. Old links and bookmarks land on the matching lens automatically.
On the screen
- The masthead — tracked annual spend, the twelve month change, what is on the table, stated as the money and the vendors paying above market (or, when every benchmarked contract is already at or above market, saying so rather than showing a blank), renewal exposure in the next ninety days, and realized savings, with the lens rail beneath.
- The portfolio brief — under the masthead, the long form brief the agent writes across your largest agreements, with a web search of each major vendor's current pricing and policy moves: what you spend and with whom, where the estate is exposed (uncapped uplifts, auto renewals with short notice, metrics that can only grow, audit and cloud rules, shelfware), the seven to ten changes worth making this year in order of money, the renewals inside twelve months that decide the number with what to do first on each, what is negotiable across these vendors, and how to run the year. It reads one paper per vendor from the largest down. Press Write the portfolio brief and a bar says how long (about six minutes); then read it over the page, save it as PDF, take it as Word or copy the text.
- Overview — the estate read: vendor concentration with the top three share, market position across your scored metrics, the data confidence meter naming the three highest impact fields to add next, upcoming renewal windows, and realized savings verified against invoices.
- The what-if instrument — on the Overview lens, on every plan: two levers, the annual uplift you hold vendors to and the discount you win, over the agreements reaching a decision inside ninety days. Drag either and the kept-over-three-years figure moves with it, computed on your own figures, so the same inputs always draw the same result. The page closes with a What next module: the opportunity queue, the renewal calendar, or recording a saving.
- Vendors — every vendor on one ledger: annual value, share of estate, market position, contracts held, and the money on the table per vendor. Rows open the vendor's own page.
- Spend — the finance lens: tracked spend over time, spend by category, the twelve month budget forecast with renewal months priced in, paid versus contracted from your invoices, and every estate export (Excel, PDF, and the raw CSVs) in one card.
- Opportunities — the ranked savings queue with its reasoning, the live tier for deadlines inside thirty days, cross vendor leverage windows, and the utilization radar for seats nobody uses.
- Estate map — the whole estate as one canvas, sized by spend and colored by market position, with the verdict chips and the slide export for the board deck.
- Strategy — the board ready annual read: state of the stack, category strategies with lock-in, and the sequenced plan, exportable as a Word brief or a board deck.
How to use it
- Read the masthead, then the Overview lens: the concentration and position instruments say where effort should go.
- Work the Vendors ledger top down; the on the table column is the queue in dollar order.
- Before a budget conversation, open Spend for the forecast and the exports; before a board conversation, export the Estate map slide and the Strategy brief.
- Turn an opportunity into a tracked negotiation from the Opportunities lens while its window is open.
Tips
- The richer your annual values, the sharper every lens. The data confidence meter names exactly what to add next.
- Old bookmarks to Spend, Opportunities, the Estate map, and Strategy redirect here, onto the matching lens.
Related: Invoices · Agreements · Renewals
Monthly briefing
Your portfolio as a five minute spoken brief, one per month: what renewed, what is landing, where the leverage is, and the one number that matters. Chaptered, skimmable, and grounded in the same data as every page in the app. Restored in August 2026: the agent records on the 2nd of each month, and the page holds the latest recording.
*In plain words: the month, spoken, in five minutes.*
When to reach for this
- The commute, the treadmill, the five minutes before the leadership call.
- The monthly cadence between quarterly board packs.
On the screen
- Player — the current month's brief, split into chapters so you can jump to the part you want.
- Open the workroom — a band above the player lays the current briefing out as a five paper workroom: the month at a glance, every chapter as a timed ledger, the full script verbatim, a provenance sheet, and a What now sheet. ⚡ What now plays the recording, re-records it with today's numbers when AI is enabled, forwards the briefing to a colleague as a drafted note, copies a chat ready summary or the full transcript, and follows where the script points into your renewals, the market wire, or your dashboard. ✦ Ask Vera answers from the briefing's own script.
- Generate — builds this month's briefing from your live portfolio when one is not already waiting. Before the first recording exists the page says so plainly and offers the one press that writes it, which takes about a minute.
- Transcript — the full script under the player, set at a reading line length rather than the width of the window, so you can read the month instead of listening to it.
How to use it
- Open the Monthly briefing from the Agent Center's wire and press play, or generate the current month if the player is empty.
- Skip between chapters to reach renewals, spend, or leverage directly.
Related: Portfolio · Your AI agents
Anomalies
You no longer wait a week for your first findings: Run the scan on the page scans your portfolio now. Every finding can also be closed out: Resolve files an optional recovered annual amount, moves the finding to a Resolved section, and closes any linked task, and the verdict band totals recovered dollars against dollars at risk. Billed-above-contract, unused-seat, and no-uplift-cap findings also offer Draft the fix, a copy-only letter built from the finding's stored facts; nothing sends from the platform.
What the watchdog found while scanning your portfolio: unusual uplifts, missed notice windows about to bite, duplicated spend, and other things worth a look. It runs itself every week, and you can run it here whenever you like.
*In plain words: the sweep's findings: what looks wrong in your portfolio, worth a human look.*
When to reach for this
- The weekly glance: findings arrive scored, not alphabetized.
- Straight after an upload: run the scan and see what the new paper changes, rather than waiting for Monday.
- An uplift breach like the sample Northwind case (a 14 percent ask against a 7 percent cap) is exactly what lands here.
- Before renewing anything: check whether the watchdog already flagged the vendor.
On the screen
- Vitals — what the open findings put at risk each year, how many are open, and how many carry an AI verification.
- Run the scan — runs the watchdog over your portfolio now. It is the primary action on the empty state before your first scan, and a quiet control beside the verdict band once findings exist. It is the same scan the weekly pass runs, the same feeds and the same AI triage against your own clauses and billing evidence, so it never returns a thinner answer than waiting would have. Owners and analysts can run it; approver and viewer seats see the findings without the control.
- Findings list — each anomaly with its severity and the evidence behind it.
- What a finding looks like — before your first scan, three worked examples of the kinds of finding the watchdog raises, marked as illustrative. Your first scan replaces them.
- Triage controls — mark a finding resolved or not relevant; the watchdog will not raise it again.
How to use it
- Press Run the scan now if the page is empty or you have added paper since the last pass.
- Open a finding and check the evidence.
- Act on it, then resolve or dismiss findings you have handled.
Tips
- Running the scan yourself emails nobody and pings nobody. You are looking at the findings already, and anything it turns up is still raised to whoever asked to be told on the next weekly pass, so pressing the button costs your team nothing it would otherwise have heard.
- The scan is limited to four runs an hour per organization. With no agreements or contracts on file yet, the page points you at the uploader instead: there is nothing to read until there is paper.
Related: Billing watch · Invoices
Vera Licensing
The area your license reports land in. A license management tool pushes a report over the API, a connected SAM source syncs or imports one, or you upload a CSV export by hand; every arrival files into the ledger with its rows and a computed summary, updates your live license position, and can be read by Vera as an exec brief.
On the screen
- The reads — four requests in buyer words: Read my license position (what you own, what is deployed, what is used, vendor by vendor), Find the shelfware and price it (a reclaim ladder ordered by money), Show my true up exposure (every line deployed past entitlement, priced, with the fix for each), and What does this mean for my renewals (real usage joined to your tracked contracts, with the resize ask per upcoming renewal). Pick a read, choose the scope, press run; the brief takes a few minutes and opens by itself, and you can leave the page while it writes.
- The scope picker — a read runs on the current position (every source combined) or on exactly one report's snapshot, chosen next to the run button.
- Push over the API — the endpoint your license tool posts to, with a working example to copy. Keys are created by an owner at Settings › API access; pushes are limited to 12 per hour per key and 5,000 rows per report.
- Connect your license tool — opens the connectors page: ServiceNow SAM, Flexera One, Snow, Xensam, USU, Microsoft 365, Oracle LMS worksheets, cloud billing and more, as a live sync or a file import. Connector syncs and imports file into this ledger automatically.
- Upload an export — a CSV from any tool works: vendor, product, entitled, deployed, used, cost. Column names are matched automatically, commas or semicolons, up to 5,000 rows and 5 MB.
- License reports — the ledger, newest first: the report, its source, its row count, the idle and over-entitlement gaps (in USD per year where the source stated unit costs, in license counts where it did not), and when it arrived. Open a report to see every row with a position pill per line (Idle, Over by N, or Balanced), run the four reads on that exact snapshot, or delete it. Deleting a report removes the snapshot only; the live license position keeps its current state. Finished licensing briefs file into your reports like every other Vera read.
How to use it
- Feed it once: upload a CSV export from your license tool, or connect the tool on the connectors page, or hand the API card to whoever runs your SAM platform.
- Open the report when it lands and scan the position pills: brick rows are deployment past entitlement, the audit side; gold rows are licenses bought and idle, the savings side.
- Run Read my license position first. It states the whole estate in one document and tells you which of the other reads matters most.
- Before a renewal, run What does this mean for my renewals: it joins the usage numbers to your tracked contracts and writes the resize ask per vendor.
- Schedule the push from your tool weekly. Every push updates the live position, so shelfware analysis, audit exposure, and vendor pages stay current without anyone exporting anything.
Every figure in a licensing brief is computed from the rows your source sent, converted to USD at the current rate; where the source priced nothing, the brief says so and names what to ask your tool for rather than inventing a rate. A pushed report also raises the license_report.received webhook event for your connected channels.
Related: Integrations · API · Portfolio · Data health
Invoices
Invoice line-item intelligence: what the vendor actually billed, reconciled line by line against what you contracted. Every line gets a verdict with the dollars at stake.
*In plain words: every invoice line checked against the contract, with the overbilling priced.*
When to reach for this
- Standing hygiene: set the forward-in address once and every invoice checks itself (the dispute recipe).
- A bill feels wrong: the line verdicts replace the feeling with a figure.
- After a price-list move: whether your invoices already reflect it is a fact, not a worry.
On the screen
- Vitals — what has been billed above contract, what you have recovered, what is in dispute, and the worst offender by dollars.
- Line verdicts — per line: ok, price above contract, billed over entitlement, off-contract item, uplift-cap breach, or above MSA rate card (a consulting line billed higher than the rate on your saved MSA rate card; see Rate Card Benchmark).
- Open the workroom — once findings exist, a band above the invoice list opens the analyzed invoice with the most at stake as a six document workroom: the parsed invoice with every flag marked, an overbilling brief, the recovery bridge, the itemized recovery sheet, and a What now sheet. ⚡ What now drafts the vendor dispute letter and the AP payment hold note from the invoice's own lines, files the dispute on this page's own desk in one click (reporting the real outcome rather than a generic line), copies the dispute summary, opens the agreement the invoice bills against, and opens a negotiation dossier. ✦ Ask Vera answers from this invoice's own line items and the contract terms they should have matched. Every figure is read from the stored invoice lines.
- Send the claim — a flagged invoice prepares a served claim: billed against contracted with the gap quantified, every evidence line citing the invoice line and the term it breaks, and a letter you edit in place. Send the claim mails it from the desk with you in copy; nothing sends without that press, and a draft dispute moves to sent on the existing lifecycle. The recipient prefills from your last negotiation contact where one is on file.
- File as verified saving — on a dispute resolved with money recovered, one press writes the recovered amount to your savings record with the invoice number in the note; the recovery counts into Portfolio's realized savings. It is counted once, as a one-time recovery, never multiplied across a term, so a recovery does not inflate your annual savings figure. The card then reads On the savings ledger.
- Forward-in address — connect the invoice rail to get a private email address; invoices forwarded there are processed automatically.
How to use it
- Upload an invoice, or set up email-in so they process automatically.
- Work the lines flagged above contract or over entitlement, dollars first.
- When a dispute is resolved with money back, file it as a verified saving so the recovery joins the proof ledger.
Tips
- Setting up the forward-in address is an owner action under Settings › Integrations.
Related: Billing watch · Anomalies
Vendor calendar
The timing desk, as its own application window: the fiscal year ends and quarter closes of the top 40 software vendors, read against your own notice deadlines. A vendor's quarter close is the one date their side cannot move, so this is when to time your asks. It opens over whatever you were doing, and Close returns you to Home.
*In plain words: when each vendor's quarter closes, so your ask lands when their discount authority peaks.*
When to reach for this
- Booking the vendor conversation: their calendar, not yours, decides the good weeks.
- The annual plan (the strategy recipe): quarter ends layered against your notice windows.
- A stalled deal: sometimes the fix is waiting three weeks for their quarter to squeeze them.
On the screen
- The rooms rail — six rooms, and the number beside a room is its keyboard shortcut: The year, Timing lab, Next 90 days, Pressure, Your paper, and The research. Search in the command bar finds a vendor from any room.
- The stage and the year wheel — how many vendors close a quarter inside 30 days, how many fiscal year ends fall inside 90, what your own paper with those vendors is worth a year, and how many of your notice deadlines are tracked. The wheel beside it is the calendar year as a ring: every vendor's closes as a radial histogram, the selected vendor's own closes and their leverage runs in gold, your deadlines as pins, and a hand on today.
- The year — every fiscal calendar on one axis, vendors you hold paper with leading. The shaded run before each close is the leverage window, the three weeks when a quarter still has room to be saved. Click any vendor row and their dossier opens above the axis.
- The vendor dossier — their fiscal profile, what closes next and in how many days, your annual value with them, and the analyst briefing we publish on that vendor, played in place with its chapter marks. Click a chapter and the film seeks to it.
- Timing lab — move your signature date and the reading moves with it: which close you land before, how many days out, and the point band that timing is usually worth. Where you hold paper with that vendor, the band is priced against your own annual value. Four buttons jump to the windows of their year, and a strip reads the same date across every vendor you hold paper with, because one date rarely suits everything.
- Next 90 days — every close in the window on one ribbon, year ends and your own vendors picked out, then each close in order with what to do about it and its briefing offered inline.
- Pressure — the twelve months ahead as stacked bars with your notice deadlines counted per month, then every vendor against every month as a grid, ordered by fiscal year end so the quarterly cascade falls as a diagonal.
- Your paper — the alignment chart: each renewal's notice deadline against that vendor's own closes on one shared twelve month axis, with the gap between them drawn and coloured by whether it lands inside a window. Under it, what better timing would be worth on the value not already aligned, and the shortest moves that would buy the most.
- The research — every analyst briefing whose vendor is on your calendar, ordered by whose quarter closes first.
How to use it
- Read the stage: it says how many vendors are inside a window right now.
- Open Your paper to see which of your renewals are well timed and which sit on no clock of theirs.
- Take a renewal into the Timing lab, move the date toward the shaded run before a close, and read what the timing is worth on your own value.
- Watch that vendor's briefing before the call: it is in their dossier and in The research.
A note on the figures. Every date comes from the vendor's own published fiscal calendar. The point bands are what buyers report from closing inside a window, applied to a figure of yours; they are a size, not a quote, and the panel says so.
Related: Renewals · Agreements
Document Agent
The search application for your contracts: type a word, a phrase or a vendor into one box and every clause that says it comes back as a crop of the page it sits on, grouped by paper, with the words marked and the page number beside it. Filter on the left with counts the database itself reports, open the page beside the results, tick the clauses you want, and export what you see as Excel rows, a Word brief, the clipboard, a print or a link. It is one room and one bar: no menus, no rooms to switch, no question to phrase. The words you type are matched against the papers' own text; no model reads your question and nothing is written for you, so the clauses on screen are exactly what the papers say. The Report tab is where the window argues: what the papers in scope hold as charts, the questions you ask of them answered with every clause cited, the AI review of which agreements could be better, and your team's notes, sent on with a link and the Word file.
*In plain words: search every contract you have stored the way you search your mail, see the clause as it sits on the page, filter, and export what you found; press Report to see what your terms look like across the papers, ask them a question, and send the answer on.*
When to reach for this
- "Which agreements renew automatically, and how many days' notice do they want?" answered by the papers themselves, one clipping per clause.
- A dispute needs the exact language: the clause on its page, quoted and cited, beats a recollection.
- "Every price increase clause across our Salesforce papers, as a sheet for the renewal meeting."
- "If we divest a business tomorrow, which agreements let it keep using the software, and for how long?" asked on the report, answered with the clauses, and sent to the deal team with one press.
- "Which of our agreements could be better?" the review reads the largest papers clause by clause and says which to renegotiate first, and what to ask for.
- One question answered per contract in a grid belongs in Review tables instead; a written verdict across the papers belongs in Vera.
It opens as its own application. However you reach it, Home's Your apps, More, the palette, a bookmark, a typed address or a link a colleague sent you, Document Agent draws its own window and nothing loads behind it, exactly as the Negotiation and Contract Readers do. Closing it from its X or from the taskbar returns you to Home; Escape only ever closes what is open inside it, then clears the selection, then the box.
On the screen
- The titlebar — the workspace name, your recent searches behind the chevron (one press runs any again), Your estate with the count of searchable papers (a press lists the papers not searchable yet), the dark mode switch, and minimize, maximize and close.
- The box — the one control the window is built around. It names how many papers it searches and takes a word, several words, a phrase in quotes for the exact wording, or one of its own tokens:
vendor:snowflakefor one vendor's papers,clause:terminationfor one kind of clause,renews:90for papers whose term ends within 90 days,signed:2025for the year the term started,value:>500kfor papers over that annual value. Press / anywhere to reach it, Enter to search. As you type, the suggestions under the box list your recent searches and the language of the box with an example of each; Down walks them and Enter takes one. The x at the right end empties the box. - The bar — beside the box: Find, the Clauses / Table / Report switch (V steps through them, R opens the report), Filters to show or hide the rail (F), The page to show or hide the page beside the results (P), Export with the count it will take (Ctrl E), which on the report becomes Send, and ⋯ for the keyboard shortcuts, the text size (medium, large, larger), the papers not searchable yet, and About, which says what the window reads.
- Before the first search — the room draws your estate rather than an empty list. Ask and Add a paper sit beside the heading. A Try row of six searches worth running on any shelf, each with why it matters and the number of your papers that carry that clause, counted in the database (a nought means no paper on your shelf carries it). Your Recent searches with one press to run each again. Four figures with their instruments: searchable papers (with the share of the estate that is readable), vendors, papers ending within 90 days (with those ends drawn on a ninety day strip), and papers not searchable yet. Then Ending soonest, which draws the next twelve months as one line with a dot for every term end, coloured red inside thirty days and gold inside ninety, the soonest two named above it, and the seven soonest as rows underneath; and The estate by vendor as bars in each vendor's own colour, the largest first. A press on a dot, a row or a bar searches only that vendor's papers. When papers are waiting for their read, a line says how many and Show them lists each with its reason.
- The desk — the pane on the right whenever no clause is selected (P folds it away and brings it back; it says The desk when nothing is picked and The page the moment something is). Three cards:
- The seat — who is answering, their portrait and what they are for. Under it the questions worth asking your estate, the first naming the paper whose term ends first and asking what notice it needs, then the papers that renew by themselves within ninety days, where the price increase is capped, and what a divested company could keep using. Type your own in the box and press Ask. At the foot, Bring in a seat: the negotiator for each vendor on your shelf that has one. Press one and the questions and answers narrow to that vendor's papers; press it again for Vera, who reads them all.
- Relevant research — the published Negotiator's Guides for the vendors on your shelf, the one whose term ends soonest first, each saying why it is here ("Workday Master Subscription Agreement ends in 31 days"). Press one to read the guide's opening and the three things that decide the outcome in place, then The … clauses to search that vendor's papers or Open in the library for the whole guide.
- Sources — every document source your workspace has connected, what each does and when it last synced, your email-in address when it is on, and Connect a source for the ones that are not. With nothing connected it says so plainly and what connecting one would do.
- Talk about the papers out loud — Talk to Vera on the desk (or T anywhere in the window, or Talk in the answers panel) opens the voice line with the seat that is on the desk, so you can say what you want instead of typing it. She is reading the screen you are on. The line opens already holding what is in front of you, and she is handed it again each time it changes: the words in your search box, the filters in force, how many clauses in how many papers came back, the papers listed in the order they are shown, the terms ending soonest, and, when a clause is open on the page, that clause quoted word for word with its page number. So "what does this clause say", "is that notice period normal" and "which of these should I fix first" are all about what you are looking at. Move to another search or press another clause and the conversation follows you. Nothing is sent that is not already rendered on your screen, and the reading is given to her as a quotation of it rather than as instructions. Pick a vendor negotiator on the bench first and the line opens with that seat instead of Vera, scoped to that vendor's papers. The call itself, its minutes and the microphone are the seat dock's, exactly as they are everywhere else in the platform.
- Ask about your papers — Ask in the bar, Ask on the home screen, any question on the desk, or A anywhere opens the answers where the desk was. Each answer arrives as the finding in a sentence with its support underneath, then the clauses it rests on, one row each: the vendor, the paper, the page, what it says and its figure, a press to open the paper there and a press to send that paper to an agent. Show the clauses runs the search behind the answer in the window; the follow up questions are one press each. Escape closes the answers. Everything asked is kept with the rest of your work, so an answer read yesterday is still there today; when an answer never landed it says so and asks to be asked again.
- The count line — above the results: how many clauses in how many papers say the words, counted by the database and never by what is on screen, the time the search took, the Sort (best match, vendor A to Z, value highest first, term ends soonest, signed newest first) and Tick all. Under it, a chip for every token and every filter in force, each with its own x, and Clear all.
- The answer line — one sentence derived from the rows on screen, never written by a model: how many of the searchable papers carry a clause on this, the range of the figure the clauses state (days of notice, a percentage cap), the first paper to end its term and when, and the annual value across the papers shown with a price. When a paper's term ends within 90 days, Ending soon beside it filters to those papers with one press.
- The clauses — the results grouped by paper: the vendor, the paper's name and kind, when its term ends, its annual value, how many notes your team left on it, Send to, Open and a tick for the whole paper in the group's head; then one clipping per clause, drawn as a crop of the stored page, black text on white in the window's own face, with the running header, the words you searched marked in yellow, and p. 3 of 12 in the margin, or p. ? when the paper carries no page map. A thin strip beside each clipping shows where on the page the clause sits. Press a clipping to select it, press it again or press Enter for the page beside the results, double click or press Ctrl Enter to open the paper in the reader at that clause. Under each clipping: The page, Copy (the clause with its citation) and Tick. A Word paper draws as a plain sheet, since it has no page image to crop.
- The table — the same results as one row per clause, the way they export: the tick, the vendor, the paper and its kind, the kind of clause, the words with the match marked, the annual value and the page. Press a column head to sort by it, again to reverse. Forty rows come at a time; Show the next 40 at the foot brings the rest in order.
- Filters — the rail on the left, each row a filter with the count of papers behind it from the database, so a count never disagrees with the results: Vendor (with Find a vendor when the list is long, and More for the rest), Clause (renewal, termination, price increase, liability, indemnity, data protection, confidentiality, service levels, audit, warranties, intellectual property, governing law, assignment, insurance, payment, fees, support, notices), Paper (the kind of document), Term ends (within 90 days, within a year, later, already ended, no date stated; one at a time), Signed (the year the term started) and Value a year (over USD 500K, USD 100K to 500K, under USD 100K, not stated). Every count is what that filter would leave with the others still applied. Clear at the head takes them all off; before the first search the rail counts the estate by paper. Drag the rail's edge to widen it; the width is remembered.
- The page — the pane on the right draws the page the selected clause sits on, scaled to the pane, with the clause marked, the paper's facts above it (signed, term ends, value a year, pages, the kind of clause, the kind of paper), Previous and Next with the clause's number among the results, Open the paper at page N to read it in the Reader at that clause, Copy the clause, Copy a citation (vendor, paper, clause and page), Tick for export, Only this vendor and Send to…, then Notes on this paper, then Every clause found in this paper, one press each, and the citation written out. Up and Down walk the results and the page follows. Drag its edge to widen it.
- Notes — under the page, the notes your team left on the selected paper, oldest first, each with who wrote it and when. Write one in the box, keep Quote the selected clause ticked to anchor it to the clause, and press Add the note (or Ctrl Enter); Remove takes your own back. N on a clause, or Add a note on a right click, puts the cursor in the box. A paper with notes says so in its head in the results, the report lists the notes across the papers in scope, and the same notes sit on the paper's own record under Contracts, so nothing is written twice.
- Right click a clause, or a paper's head — open the paper at the page, show the page, copy the clause, copy a citation, tick it, add a note, keep only this vendor, keep only this kind of clause, or hide this paper from the results. A hidden paper is a chip in the count line and never travels in a link; Undo brings it back. Under Send this paper to: the Contract Agent (every clause in plain English and the changes worth asking for), the MSA Agent, the SOW Agent and a Second opinion run in the background and land in the runs tray on the right; the Contract Reader, to redline opens the paper with your marks and the redline beside it; the Renewal playbook builds the renewal plan for it; Ask Vera about it reads it and answers. The same menu opens from every Send to button.
- The report — the Report tab reports on the papers in scope: every searchable paper when the box and the filters are empty, otherwise the papers they leave, named at the top. The head carries Send, Copy a link, Word and Print. Four figures across the top: papers in scope, value a year, ending within a year, the renewal caps found. Then the charts, each one bar per row with the number printed at the end: What the papers cover by kind of clause (press one to see the clauses), When the terms end as a segmented bar, Value a year by vendor (press a vendor to report on its papers alone), Term ends by quarter for the next eight quarters, Renewal caps in the papers (the price increase clause's cap, lower is better for you), Notice to stop a renewal (shorter is better for you) and, where the papers state one, Notice to terminate; a bar in colour says what the number means for you, a press on it opens the paper. Every count is the database's own for the scope.
- Ask the papers — on the report, one press asks a question buyers ask most: If we divest (which agreements let a divested company keep using the software, and for how long), Uplift next year, Uplift over three years, Walk away (termination for convenience and its notice), Change of control, Auto renewals (and their notice dates), Audit rights, Data and sub-processors; or type your own question and press Ask. The answer is the AI search's finding: the verdict in a sentence, its support, the figures, and one row per paper with what it says, the figure and its standing, Open beside each row; where two papers disagree or something could not be confirmed, a note says so, and the follow up questions are one press each. Questions stay on the report, answered, until you press Remove.
- Which agreements could be better — press Review with AI and the largest papers in scope, ten at most, are read clause by clause (renewal, price increase, termination, liability, indemnity, assignment, audit, payment, fees, service levels, data protection, support). The review says, paper by paper and ranked by how much there is to gain, whether the terms are strong, fair or weak for you, what holds them back, and the sentence to say to the vendor with the figure to ask for, then What to do first across the papers. A term the stored clauses do not show is said to be missing, never assumed. Under each paper: Send to…, Open the paper and Only this vendor. Review again reads them afresh.
- The brief — where the scope is one vendor, or every searchable paper, the report closes with the written brief on that subject, in the house paper, at the length its argument needs, written over the agreements themselves with the vendor's current published terms searched on the web and named in the sentence. Press Write the brief, wait about five minutes with a bar that says how far in it is, then Read it to open the document in place, Word to take it away or Save as PDF to print it. A scope that is neither one vendor nor the whole estate shows no brief, because a brief is about a subject and a filter on clause kinds is not one.
- Send the report — Send keeps the report as a document in your workspace and opens the sheet: up to ten addresses, a note in your words, and whether to attach the Word file. The email carries the title, your note and the executive summary, a button that opens the report after sign in (members of your workspace), and the Word file for anyone else. Copy a link keeps the report and copies its address; Word takes it as a .docx in the brief theme; Print prints the tab. The report itself is what the tab shows: the figures, what the papers hold, every answered question, the review, the notes, the clauses quoted, and what to do.
- Export — the flyout says what it will take: everything on screen with the filters applied, or only the ticked clauses when any are ticked. Excel rows (.csv) is one row per clause with the vendor, the paper, the kind of clause, the page and the words; Word brief (.doc) sets the clippings, cited, in the brief theme; Copy the rows puts them on the clipboard tab separated, ready for a sheet; Copy the clauses quotes each with its citation; Print (Ctrl P) prints the results as a document; Copy a link to this search (Ctrl L) gives a colleague the same search with the same filters, which opens in their own window on their own papers.
- Nothing found — the room says *Nothing in the papers says that*, offers to run the search without the filters when any are on, and suggests other searches. A misspelt vendor or a phrase in quotes that the paper words differently is the usual cause; drop the quotes to match the words in any order.
- Papers not searchable yet — from Your estate in the titlebar, from ⋯, or from the line on the cold start: every paper that is waiting for its read, by vendor and name, with Read them now to start them; a scanned paper with no text layer is read with the image reader, and a paper that cannot be opened needs a fresh copy. A paper dropped on the platform is searchable about a minute after it lands; the window reads the newest waiting papers by itself after every search.
- The keys — ? or ⋯ › Keyboard shortcuts lists every key that is bound, grouped by the box, the results and the window.
- Undo — clearing the filters, hiding a paper and every other change that takes something away says so in a toast with Undo on it, and Ctrl Z takes back the last one.
- The window's memory — the words in the box, the filters, the view, the sort, the ticks, the selected clause, the questions asked on the report and their answers, the last AI review, the rail and page widths, whether each pane is open, the text size and the dark mode all hold when the window closes and are there when it opens again, per workspace.
- Reports and briefs — every report the window kept when you pressed Send or Copy a link, and the briefs the retired Brief room wrote before 12 September 2026, are listed at
/doc-search/briefs: one row per report with the day it was written, each opening as the document it is with Word and Open as PDF beside it. The PDF is printed once from the page you read and kept beside the brief, so what you forward carries the figures, the quoted clauses and the numbered moves exactly as they are on screen; it opens in the same reader the research library uses, with a contents list read from the brief's own headings, find, zoom and Save. They are also listed with the workspace's other documents in the Studio library. - The foot — the status bar: Saved when the search is held, the count of searchable papers with the clauses and papers the last search found and how long it took (or, on the report, how many papers it covers), the selected clause's vendor, paper and page, or how many clauses are ticked, and a note that searches, opens, notes, reviews and exports are on the audit log.
How to use it
- Type what you are looking for, plain words, a phrase in quotes for the exact wording, or
vendor:and a name, and press Enter, or press one of the Try searches before the first search. - Read the count line and the answer line, then walk the clippings with Down and Up: each is the clause as it sits on its page, with the page number beside it.
- Narrow with the rail: press a vendor, a kind of clause, a term end window or a value band, and watch the counts and the results move together. Press a chip's x to take one filter off, Clear all to take them all off.
- Press Enter on a clipping for the whole page beside the results, or Ctrl Enter to open the paper in the Reader at that clause. Ctrl C copies the clause with its citation.
- Press V for the table when you want the same results as rows, sort a column, and tick the rows you need; Space ticks the selected one, Tick all the lot.
- Press Export (or Ctrl E) and choose: Excel rows for a sheet, a Word brief for a colleague, the rows or the clauses to the clipboard, a print, or a link to the search itself.
- Right click a clause to keep only its vendor or its kind of clause, to hide a paper that keeps getting in the way (Ctrl Z brings it back), or to send the paper to an agent: the Contract Agent to decode it, the Contract Reader to redline it, the renewal playbook, or Vera.
- Press N on a clause to leave a note for your team; it lands beside the page, on the report, and on the paper's record.
- Press R for the report: read the four figures and the charts, press If we divest or Uplift next year and read the answer with its clauses, press Review with AI to learn which agreements could be better, then press Send and enter the addresses of whoever needs it, or Copy a link.
- Press / to search again; your recent searches wait under the box and in the titlebar.
Keys: / the box, Enter find, Down and Up the next and previous clause, Enter the page beside the results, Ctrl Enter open the paper at the page, Space tick, Ctrl C copy the clause, N add a note, V clauses, table or report, R the report, F the filters, P the page, Ctrl E export, or send on the report, Ctrl P print, Ctrl L copy a link, Ctrl Z undo, ? the keys, F11 maximize, Escape close a menu, then clear the selection, then the box.
Related: Document clusters · Review tables · Vera · Rights register
Document clusters
The survey bench now says when the map is stale: documents added since the last grouping show as a badge with the count, and the newer documents are named as not yet in any group, with the Re-group control beside it. Nothing regroups without your press.
Your contracts grouped automatically by what the documents actually say, subject matter rather than folder names. The grouping is deterministic text math; the AI only names the groups.
On the screen
- Cluster cards — each group with its AI-written name and the documents inside it.
- What next — under the map, the next moves: price the overlap in the IT spend optimizer, open the ranked opportunities, or ask Vera where the biggest cluster can collapse first.
How to use it
- Run or refresh the clustering.
- Open a document from its group.
Related: Document Agent
Review tables
Ask the same questions across many contracts at once. Each column is one question (termination notice, renewal cap, liability cap) and the AI fills in a quote-backed answer for every document.
*In plain words: one question per column, a quote-backed answer per contract, exportable.*
When to reach for this
- The estate-wide questions ("who has an uplift cap?", "what are our notice periods?") that would otherwise take a week of rereading.
- Diligence and audits: the answer grid is the evidence table, to Excel in one click.
- Anything the Coverage sweep does not already ask; coverage is your standard, this is your bespoke question.
On the screen
- The drawer — the masthead states how many tables you hold, how many documents they cover, how many answers are extracted, and what share of every cell is filled.
- In the drawer — each table as a card with a live mini grid of its answers and a fill ring, opened with one click.
- Columns — your questions. Start from a template or add your own, up to twelve.
- Fill table — extracts every missing answer, a few documents at a time, with the supporting clause behind each cell.
- Export — the whole grid as an Excel workbook, quotes included.
- What next — once answers land, the grid ends with its next moves: export it for the deal file, fix a weak answer with preferred language from the clause library, start a negotiation, or ask Vera which answers should worry you most.
How to use it
- Create a table from the Termination & renewal template, or add your own columns.
- Fill the table, then click a filled cell to see the exact clause it came from.
Related: Document Agent · Clause library
Data health
What the platform cannot see for your organization and what filling each gap unlocks. The scan runs on every load; a prioritized plan tells you which gap to close first, and Vera reads your own stored documents to stage fixes you apply in one press.
*In plain words: what the platform cannot see yet, ranked by what seeing it would unlock, with the fixes already drafted from your own paper.*
When to reach for this
- The migration finish line (Chapter 18): "done" is a score here, not a feeling.
- Before an audit: the exposure estimate says how defensible the entitlement picture is today.
- Monthly: one closed gap a month compounds faster than any single feature.
On the screen
- Vitals — how much of your estate the platform can see, how many gaps are open, how many records are visible, and your audit exposure.
- Fixes from your own paper — missing values Vera read out of your stored documents, each shown with the verbatim sentence it came from. Apply one, apply all, or press Read the paper for these to have her read the current gaps now; the Saturday hygiene sweep stages a small batch on its own. A notice period only stages when the paper states 30, 60 or 90 days, because those are the values the ledger accepts. Applying routes through the same review queue writers as every other correction, so nothing here is a second write path.
- Completeness score — the share of data checks you have covered. Each open gap names the feature it would unlock.
- Audit exposure — an estimate of your license compliance exposure, built from the entitlement data connected so far.
- AI plan — the gaps ranked by value, refreshed whenever the underlying gaps change.
How to use it
- Close the highest-value gap first.
- Connect a data source to fill the entitlement gaps (an owner action under Settings › Integrations).
Related: Integrations
Next: Chapter 05 · Team, AI & assistant
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