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.
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, The Desk, 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.
- 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.
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 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 · Spend · Migration Studio
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 Policy Watch 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.
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 one line take: the move to make, grounded in your numbers.
- 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: Weekly report · Research · Policy Watch · Platform pulse
Policy Watch
Vendors reprice you through their documents, not just their price lists. Policy Watch 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
- Vitals — documents watched, vendors covered, material changes in the last 30 days, and when the last daily sweep ran.
- Signals — the subscription panel (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.
- 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
The position and risk lens on your estate, built automatically from proposals and agreements that carry an annual value. Portfolio, Spend, and Renewals share a tab row at the top with a one line note on what each covers, and every chart lives on exactly one of them: this page argues where you stand and where the risk sits, and links to the others for values and dates.
On the screen
- Vitals — tracked annual spend, benchmarked proposals, renewals in notice, and realized savings.
- Data confidence meter — how complete your estate records are, blended from pricing, dates, benchmarks, categories, and owners. It names the three highest-impact fields to add next, each a deep link straight to the exact records that need them.
- Spend mix — the category donut beside the concentration read: how dependent you are on your biggest vendors, top three share included.
- Treemap — every vendor sized by spend and colored by standing.
- Market position — where your deals sit against the market, with the upcoming renewals beside it.
- Vendor risk — the vendors carrying elevated risk right now.
How to use it
- Scan the vitals and the spend mix to see where the money and the dependence sit.
- Read market position for the leverage, then the vendor risk strip for what needs attention.
- Add annual values to agreements to enrich this view; renewal outlook lives on Renewals insights and exports on Spend, one click away.
Tips
- The richer your annual values, the sharper every chart here. Missing values leave gaps.
Related: Spend · Opportunities · Agreements
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.
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 (reporting the real outcome rather than a generic line), 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. The room is rebuilt from the live briefing on every open.
- Generate — builds this month's briefing from your live portfolio when one is not already waiting.
How to use it
- Open Monthly briefing and press play, or generate the current month if the player is empty.
- Skip between chapters to reach renewals, spend, or leverage directly.
Estate map
Your whole software estate on one canvas: every vendor sized by spend and colored by market position, for the quarterly leadership conversation. It runs the same deterministic portfolio scan as Portfolio, promoted to a full canvas with a matching slide export.
On the screen
- Vitals — tracked annual spend with the share of it that is benchmarked, the spend sitting over market, and the headroom to the median. The share counts only vendors the canvas actually colors, so the number and the picture always agree.
- Verdict lens — chips under the masthead, each carrying the spend behind it. Press one and the canvas isolates that verdict; press it again to bring the whole estate back.
- The map — one tile per vendor, area sized by annual spend, color set by benchmark position, taking the full width of the screen. Vendors we cannot benchmark yet read as "Not benchmarked yet". Hover or tab a tile and the inspector under the canvas spells that vendor out in full.
- Off-map note — how many vendors carry no annual value and so do not appear on the canvas.
How to use it
- Read the biggest tiles first: that is where the money and the leverage are.
- Press the Over market chip to see only what is priced above the cohort, which is the version of this canvas worth putting on a slide.
- Click a tile to open that vendor's page.
- Export the canvas as a slide for the board deck.
Anomalies
What the weekly watchdog found while scanning your portfolio: unusual uplifts, missed notice windows about to bite, duplicated spend, and other things worth a look.
On the screen
- Vitals — what the open findings put at risk each year, how many are open, and how many carry an AI verification.
- 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
- Open a finding and check the evidence.
- Act on it, then resolve or dismiss findings you have handled.
Related: Billing watch · Invoices
Rights register
Everyone benchmarks the price; this page harvests the contract rights you already paid for. A quote-anchored pass reads each contract and records your buyer-side rights (true-downs, swap windows, price holds, SLA credits, benchmark and termination clauses) with their exercise windows, then the weekly watchdog alerts you when a right is about to expire unused.
On the screen
- Register — every harvested right, its status, and the exact clause it was read from, so you can act with the contract in hand.
- Harvest stats — active rights, contracts scanned, and how many are still pending a harvest.
- Right families — before anything is harvested, the six kinds of right the harvester looks for, plus the one step that unlocks the register.
- What next — under the register, the next moves: open the clause behind the next closing window, start the negotiation with that vendor, ask Vera which expiring right is worth most, or book the analyst to sequence the windows.
How to use it
- Upload contracts and index them on Document search, then harvest here.
- Work the rights with a near expiry so nothing you paid for lapses unused.
Related: Document search · Clause library
Opportunities
Everything worth doing about your vendors, ranked in one list by value and urgency together, with the reasoning for each and the reading that prepares you for it.
On the screen
- Vitals — how much of your spend sits above market, what you pay for licenses nobody uses, and the prize: the two added together, which is what the whole queue is playing for.
- Next best actions — the ranked queue. Every renewal window, benchmark gap, shelfware finding, price anomaly and stack overlap in one order, scored on what it is worth and how soon it closes, which is why a smaller number with a deadline can outrank a larger one without.
- The live tier — an action whose deadline falls inside thirty days, or has passed while the cycle is still open, is marked live: a gold rule down the side, the amount at stake set large, and the deadline as a red pill. The header counts them for you, so you can see at a glance how much of the list is urgent.
- Why now — one sentence per action explaining what makes it worth doing today, written against the figures beside it: the annual dollars, the deadline, or the vendor's own fiscal close.
- Read this before the meeting — where a negotiation prep brief exists for the vendor, it appears under the action as a button. Three pages on what the vendor is selling, the facts about your own estate to hold before they quote, the talking points, and what they will say with the counter to each.
- The window workbench — the what-if. Two sliders, the annual uplift you hold to and the discount you win, applied to every renewal in the window at once. It shows the three year cost against the baseline, what you keep, and which vendors it comes from. The baseline is what happens if nobody acts: each agreement uplifted by its own contractual cap, or by a typical renewal uplift where the agreement has no cap, which is why an uncapped agreement costs money before anyone negotiates.
- The window workroom — Open the workroom turns the queue into a full case file: a cover sheet with what is live and what is at stake, the ranked queue with its reasoning, the renewal window with the uplift baseline each agreement carries, and a What now sheet of moves. Ask Vera from inside the room and she answers from this queue, with your deadlines and exposures in front of her.
- Ranked vendors — the vendors above market, with the estimated annual saving per vendor if the deal moved to the market median.
How to use it
- Read the count in the header first. It tells you how many actions are inside thirty days, which decides whether the list needs attention today.
- Work the live tier top down. Where a prep brief is offered, read it before the first call rather than after.
- Move the workbench sliders to see what holding the line across the whole window is worth, and note the agreements with no uplift cap: capping those is usually the cheapest win on the page.
- Open the workroom when you want the whole position in one file, or something to forward.
- Turn an opportunity into a tracked negotiation, and book an analyst to pressure-test the plan if the deal is large.
Related: Portfolio benchmark · Negotiations · Renewals · Research
Guarantees
Engagements where the fee is at risk: if invoice-verified savings land under the guaranteed floor by the end of the measurement window, the fee is waived. Every guarantee settles on invoice evidence, never on claims. There is nothing to create here; guarantees are underwritten by VendorBenchmark on engagement start, only where the dataset is deep enough to stand behind a floor.
On the screen
- Vitals — guaranteed engagements, how many measurement windows are still live, and how many have settled.
- Guarantee rows — per vendor: the guaranteed annual floor, the savings verified so far, the measurement window, and the status (Open, or Settled with the floor met or the fee waived).
- Certificate — open a guarantee for the pinned projection, confidence, model version, and settlement.
- Before your first guarantee — the page names the candidates rather than leaving you to work them out: your largest renewals still ahead, with their dates and annual values, and the two ways forward. Whether any of them qualifies depends on how deep the dataset is for that vendor, which is the question to put to us.
How to use it
- Track open guarantees against their window and the savings verified to date.
- Open the certificate for the full underwriting detail.
- With no guarantee yet, read the candidate renewals and press Ask whether a renewal qualifies to put the question to the team.
Related: Managed renewals · Savings proof
Expert Bench
Vetted negotiators and ex-vendor insiders you can bring into a deal: former EA desk leads, LMS auditors, and commercial architects, presented by verified track record under bench codenames.
On the screen
- Vitals — how many negotiators are on the bench, the specialties they cover, your open requests, and the intro turnaround.
- Track record — verified from engagement records when the expert joins, re-checked annually.
- Engagement shapes — a working session, a fixed-scope review, or a full embedded engagement.
- The intro — the advisory desk confirms the quote and you meet the expert by name on the first call.
How to use it
- Open the profile matching your biggest renewal.
- File a session request with the deal in one line.
Related: Advisory
Savings proof
Every claimed saving proven or disproven against the invoices that followed: the ledger of what your negotiations actually returned against your benchmarked baselines.
On the screen
- Vitals — annual savings recorded, what the same outcomes are worth over their terms, and how many outcomes are on the ledger.
- Savings ledger — each outcome with the baseline, the negotiated price, the annual saving, and the term total.
- Cumulative curve — annual savings stacked by the month each outcome was recorded.
- Open the workroom — the band above the proof hero opens the ledger as a five document workroom: the evidence ledger row by row, the bridge from claimed to invoice verified savings with every accepted, awaiting, and contested outcome narrated on its stored verdict (omitted while nothing is claimed), a forwardable CFO brief, and a What now sheet. ⚡ What now drafts the CFO note from the ledger's own verified figures, copies the savings one pager, opens the proof statement, mints a verified win badge, shelves the record on the board, opens The Desk, and puts the next win on the ledger. ✦ Ask Vera reads the ledger, so a question about what is actually verified is answered from what the ledger verified rather than from what was claimed.
How to use it
- Record a negotiated outcome as each deal closes.
- Export the ledger as CSV for finance.
- Find the next saving to go after in Opportunities.
Related: Verified wins · Opportunities
Verified wins
A tab on Savings proof, sharing its underline tab row. The bragging layer on top of the ledger: mint a public, revocable badge from any invoice-verified saving, follow your Deal Score against the calibrated corridors, and (owners only) list your organization on the opt-in board.
On the screen
- Ready to mint — only savings confirmed against a real invoice appear here; claims never mint.
- Deal Score — where your confirmed deals land inside the corridors, 100 being the strong end.
- The board — opt-in, owners only, ranked under whatever name you choose; it opens at five listed orgs.
How to use it
- Mint a badge from a verified saving and copy the public link.
- Check your Deal Score against the corridors.
Related: Savings proof · Vendor scorecards
Spend
The values and finance lens: spend analytics over time, built from the annual values on your proposals and agreements, with invoice actuals beside them. Headline numbers paint immediately and the heavier charts stream in.
On the screen
- Vitals — total annual spend, how much of it is up for renewal inside ninety days, and the vendors tracked.
- Category breakdown and trend — spend by category and over time, including what renews when.
- Forecast and actuals — the forward forecast, and invoice actuals when you have imported them.
- Vendor chart — spend by vendor, with a CSV export.
- Exports — every estate export in one card: the Excel and PDF reports and the raw CSVs. Portfolio links here.
How to use it
- Read the trend to see where spend is growing and what renews next.
- Add missing annual values on agreements to fill the picture.
- Concentration lives on Portfolio; the link under the category chart takes you there.
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.
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.
- 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.
Tips
- Setting up the forward-in address is an owner action under Settings › Integrations.
Related: Billing watch · Anomalies
Strategy
An annual, board-ready read on your software stack: category strategies, vendor posture, and the year's negotiation calendar in one document.
On the screen
- Vitals — annual spend covered, categories in the stack, renewals in the next twelve months, and how many categories already carry a strategy.
- Category sections — per software category: current position, market movement, and the recommended play.
How to use it
- Generate or refresh the strategy.
- Export it for the board.
Related: Portfolio · Estate map
Vendor calendar
The timing desk: the fiscal year ends and quarter closes of the top 40 software vendors, read against your own notice deadlines. Vendors discount hardest when their quarter is closing, so this is when to time your asks. The navy masthead states the position in figures: how many vendors close within 90 days, how many inside 30, how many of your deadlines meet a close window and what they are worth a year, and how many vendors you track.
On the screen
- Four views on one band — the masthead's band switches between Timeline, Agenda, Close pressure, and Your renewals. Press 1 to 4 to switch views and / to jump to the vendor search.
- Timeline — every vendor's forward closes on one axis anchored on today, the next 30 days shaded as the pressure band, your notice deadlines drawn on the matching vendor rows. Search, the horizon control (30 days to 12 months), and the Tracked filter ride a pinned toolbar.
- Agenda — every quarter and year close inside the horizon with your own notice deadlines threaded in, one chronological ledger grouped by month. Deadline rows are tinted so your dates stand out from theirs.
- Close pressure — the twelve months ahead as a grid, one card per month with its close count and the vendors closing in it; the busiest window is flagged in gold.
- Your renewals — the bench where one of your notice deadlines meets a vendor's close, soonest first, each with the one line timing read and an alignment strip reading left to right from today: your notice bar, their close diamond, and the shaded gap between them is your negotiating window.
- The vendor dossier — click any vendor anywhere (a timeline row, an agenda line, a pressure chip, the bench) and their dossier opens on the right: their next four closes, the timing read, and your agreements on that vendor. Each agreement carries its four moves: draft the notice letter, open the vendor in a Benchmark case, book the negotiation window as calendar entries, and watch the deadline, which stays off unless you turn it on. The dossier has an address, so a shared link lands in it.
- The rail — the twelve month close density strip, your tracked vendors with each one's next close, and the roads onward: your renewal calendar, your agreements, and the watchtower.
- The star — track a vendor anywhere on the desk and it lands on your dashboard and in the rail watchlist.
How to use it
- Read the Agenda for the window ahead: your deadlines and their closes in one list.
- Line a renewal up against the vendor's quarter end for the deepest discount window, and land the ask inside the shaded 30 day band.
- When a deadline of yours meets their close, open Your renewals and work it from the bench: the letter, the case, the calendar file.
Related: Renewals · Agreements
Meeting war room
One meeting is one room. Name the vendor and the time, or drop the calendar invite, and the pre-call pack assembles from your stored numbers: where you stand, what is open, the figures to cite at the table, and the three questions to ask. After the call, the debrief slot keeps what happened with the meeting.
On the screen
- The intake — pick the vendor (your tracked vendors autocomplete) and when the meeting happens, or drop an .ics invite anywhere on the panel. Meetings found in the invite are matched against your vendors and become one-click packs.
- The room — the posture headline, a countdown to the meeting, and three fact panels: Where we stand, Open items, and Ammunition. Every line comes from facts already on file (spend, notice deadlines, benchmark standing, open disputes, vendor pressure).
- The three questions, in order — cue cards you can read out loud on the call.
- The agenda paper — a one-page agenda in the executive brief format. Print the agenda prints just the paper.
- After the meeting — the debrief slot: how it went (advanced, concession, stalled, information only) and two lines on what happened. Saved with the meeting, waiting whenever the room reopens.
- The shelf — upcoming meetings stand as tent cards (weekday, vendor, time, headline); past meetings sit in a dimmer ledger below. Click any of them to enter its room.
- Connect the calendar feed — add your private ICS feed (Outlook: Publish calendar; Google: Secret address in iCal format) and the agent assembles packs on its own, about a day ahead. It reads only titles and times.
How to use it
- Name your next vendor meeting (vendor plus time) and press Assemble the pack, or drop the calendar invite on the page.
- Read the room before you dial in, and print the agenda if you want it on paper.
- After the call, write two lines in the debrief slot so the outcome stays with the meeting.
- Optionally connect a read-only calendar feed under Settings › Integrations; the agent then preps a pack for every vendor meeting it spots, and its notification opens the room directly.
Tips
- Refresh the pack rebuilds the room from today's facts, useful when a dispute closed or a new benchmark landed since it was assembled.
- Packs are grounded only in stored data. If a panel says nothing is on file, upload the agreement first so the room has numbers to stand on.
Related: Vera AI · Vendor calendar
Document search
The Records Hall: ask a question in plain English across every contract and proposal you have uploaded and get the exact clause back, cited to the contract it came from, then compare, save, restore, and present what you found without leaving the room.
Opened from your home screen (app mode), the hall leads with the question bar ready and the page header sits below it. Opened from the dashboard, the page keeps the composition described here, header first.
On the screen
- The desk rail — down the left side, the room's fixtures: the question shelf, premade briefs, and the shared work list.
- The question shelf — the questions buyers run most, grouped by what you are hunting (exposure, money, renewal, and what to improve), including list the least favorable terms and which terms to improve at the next renewal. One click runs any of them.
- Premade briefs — one click runs the search and then writes the executive findings brief from whatever comes back, unattended: What to fix first, Renewal exposure, and Liability exposure.
- The work list — what this room has flagged, shared with your whole workspace. On any exhibit, press the bookmark to flag its contract as Improve the terms, Renewal negotiation, or Watch; the flag becomes a workspace task that waits in the rail, on the Tasks page, and in My work until someone checks it off. Each item links back to its contract.
- The index observatory — a cluster at the top of the stage states your archive at a glance: a coverage ring showing how much of the archive is searchable, plus documents indexed, contracts, and vendors, and how many are still waiting to index. Vendors are counted as companies: Salesforce UK Limited, SFDC Ireland, and Salesforce, Inc. count as one Salesforce.
- The library wall — your contracts stand as a wall of spines, one per document, grouped and labeled by vendor company, so every legal entity of the same company shelves together. A spine is lit gold where its text is searchable and dim while it waits. Hover a spine for the contract name, click it to open the contract. When an answer cites a vendor, that company's spines glow gold, and hovering an exhibit or a citation chip flares its spines brighter.
- The ask bar — type a question across your whole portfolio, or press / anywhere in the room to focus it. Type ahead surfaces your standing questions, recent asks, vendors on the wall, and proven clause patterns as you type. The scope chip counts how many documents are indexed, Try chips offer starting questions, your starred questions wait as gold Standing chips, and your last three questions wait as Recent chips.
- Index button — appears when documents are waiting. Indexing runs as a progress bar that names each document as it becomes searchable and lights its spine.
- Sample documents — when your archive is empty, a Try with sample documents button (also offered in the empty state below the ask box) loads four realistic sample contracts, already indexed, so you can try a search before uploading anything. The sample is clearly labeled and removable from the dashboard at any time.
- The staged search — while a search runs you see each stage: your question turned into legal search terms, the scan across your indexed documents, passage ranking, and the drafted answer.
- The command bar — when the answer lands, a slim bar takes over: the question you asked, the method badges (a Literal scan badge always, a Semantic scan badge when meaning-based retrieval contributed), the clause and scan counts, a star that keeps the question standing on the stage, and the finding's big moves: Generate report, Present, Forward, and Copy. The bar stays pinned as you scroll, so the moves are always one click away.
- The bottom line — the cross-contract synthesis in a sentence or two on cream paper, with gold numbered citation chips inline. Hover a chip to light the matching exhibit and its spines on the wall; click it to open the exact clause on the workbench. Read the full analysis unfolds the rest of the written answer when you want it.
- The finding workbench — the results live on one full-width tabbed surface: Evidence, Coverage, Project plan, and Send it on.
- Evidence — a two-pane exhibit browser. The left pane lists every cited clause: exhibit number, vendor monogram, contract, a pin marker, and a topic dot (liability, renewal, pricing, termination, data, support). Select a row and the right pane presents that exhibit as a formal sheet: the vendor under a gold rule, the exact quote in large type on cream paper with your question's key terms flared, why it answers, and the sheet's own action row: previous and next, Reading room, Copy (the clause with its citation), Work list, Pin, and Open contract.
- Coverage — every vendor in your portfolio accounted for: matched vendors glow gold, silent ones stay gray, the strip counts them, and the contracts the answer cited link straight through.
- Project plan — ask Vera to draft the plan and the finding becomes a 6 to 12 week action plan on a Gantt board: phases group the bars, weeks run across the top, and the owner (You, Procurement, Legal, CFO, IT) rides each bar. The plan is saved with the finding, states what done looks like, copies as text for your project tracker, and redrafts on demand. A gold dot on the tab means a plan is waiting.
- Send it on — the email desk as its own tab (and on the Present stage). Pick a reader (the vendor, your CFO, your CIO, or a colleague) and Vera drafts a short human email from the finding. Edit the subject and body, then copy the email into your own mail client; a confidentiality check warns before internal figures travel to a vendor.
- Pin and compare — pin exhibits to the bench tray at the bottom right, then press Compare to see the pinned clauses side by side on paper columns.
- The reading room — any exhibit opens full focus: the clause in large type on cream paper, why it answers, previous and next a keystroke away, and copy as citation one click away.
- Saved findings — every answer saves to your browser with its pins and its project plan. The strip above the answer restores any saved finding instantly, with no re run and no second AI charge, and coming back to Document search later opens on a Pick up where you left off shelf listing your recent findings. Remove a finding from the strip with its ×.
- Press further — under the workbench, chips offer three drafted follow ups built from what the answer found, beside the Ask a follow-up button.
- Forward — sends the finding to a colleague as an exec brief email directly from the platform: the answer, the exact clauses quoted, your optional note, and a workspace link that re-runs the search live. The recipient needs a VendorBenchmark login with access to this workspace to use the link; the quoted evidence travels in the email itself.
- Generate report — turns the findings into a short executive brief, about four pages: an executive summary, where the exposure and the leverage sit, the cited clauses verbatim, and a prioritized list of next moves. The brief is built only from the clauses your search cited, so every line is grounded in your own contracts. Print or save it as a PDF from the report toolbar. The report carries its own Send it on desk below the paper.
- Present — runs the finding full screen on the shared stage in three acts: the answer with a coverage map across your portfolio, one screen per cited clause with the clause enlarged as the evidence, and a closing bottom line that recaps who matches and where each quote lives. Arrow keys move between exhibits; the presenter notes, ink pen, and printable leave-behind work as on every other show.
- The keyboard bench — / focuses the ask bar, J and K walk the exhibits, Enter opens the reading room on the active exhibit, P pins it, and G takes the stage. Typing in a field is never hijacked.
How to use it
- If you have nothing uploaded yet, press Load sample documents to try the search on four sample contracts.
- Press Index documents if any are waiting, and watch the wall light up as each one becomes searchable.
- Ask a question like which agreements auto renew, tap a Try chip, or press / and let type ahead finish the thought.
- Read the bottom line, hover a gold citation chip to see which exhibit and which spines it lights, then click it to open the exact clause on the workbench. Walk the exhibit list with J and K or the arrows on the sheet.
- Pin the two or three clauses that matter with P and press Compare to put them side by side.
- Star the question to keep it standing on the stage, then follow a Press further chip to run the next question in the line.
- Press Generate report to turn the findings into a four page brief, or Present to walk the finding full screen, ending on the bottom line.
- Send it on: open the Send it on tab and let Vera draft the follow up email for the reader you pick, or press Forward to email the finding, clauses quoted, straight to a colleague.
- Open the Project plan tab and press Draft the project plan to turn the finding into a dated Gantt board.
- Flag what needs fixing: press the bookmark on an exhibit and file its contract on the work list as improve the terms, a renewal negotiation item, or one to watch. The whole team sees it until it is checked off.
- Leave and come back whenever: your findings wait on the Pick up where you left off shelf with their pins and plans intact, and the work list keeps the follow ups.
Related: Document clusters · Rights register
Document clusters
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 search
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.
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 search · 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.
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.
- 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
Community polls
Four standing polls answered by other software buyers on the platform: the most difficult vendors, audits in the last 12 months, coverage requests, and renewal price increases. Vote to see how your peers answered; individual ballots stay private.
On the screen
- Vitals — ballots on the floor, boards open to you, the vendors in play, and when the next poll opens.
- Board index — a docket of the four boards that follows you as you scroll: a rail on wide screens, a chip strip on small ones. Boards still waiting on your ballot carry a blue dot; voted boards a green check. Click a board to jump straight to it.
- Results bars — unlock after you vote, so results are not biased by peeking. A live board names its leader in the header and badges the top three ranks.
- Ballot search — on long vendor lists (the coverage board runs the full curated list), type to filter instead of scrolling; your picks stay pinned above the list so a search never hides them.
- Suggestion box — what peers vote on next. The strongest suggestion becomes the board that opens on the first of the month.
How to use it
- Walk the index top to bottom and cast a ballot on every board with a blue dot; each vote reveals that live board.
- On a long ballot, search the vendor name; remove a pick from the pinned row if you change your mind.
- After a vote, follow the Next open board link at the foot of the results to the next board waiting on you.
Related: Platform pulse · Buyer Network
Platform pulse
What other teams on the platform are using, published from real usage. Aggregate counts only; no team is ever named.
On the screen
- The pulse report — which features teams across the platform use most, drawn from real usage.
How to use it
- Read the published pulse to see what peers lean on, and try a feature you have not.
Related: Community polls
Buyer Network
Vendor-anchored discussion with other verified software buyers, composed as a trading floor: the market corridors are always on the table, even when the conversation is quiet. Everyone posts under a stable desk handle with banded, platform-verified credential chips; nobody sees a name, an email, or a company. This is one of two rooms under the Buyer Network umbrella: a shared tab strip links these threads with the one-to-one Buyer intros.
On the screen
- Vitals — open threads, peer replies on the board, vendor rooms, and how many carry a calibrated corridor.
- The rooms — vendors with live discussion plus flagship quiet rooms, each carrying the house corridor: the calibrated band where that vendor's renewals settle, drawn with its median tick and the low, median, and high figures printed at the data. Click a room to filter the board to that vendor.
- Your desk — the pseudonym you post as, with your verified chips and your contribution record (threads started, replies posted). It stays yours, so a reputation can build on it.
- Credential chips — verified buyer and estate bands computed from platform data, never self-claimed.
- The house read — the calibrated renewal corridor, shown live in the composer the moment you type a recognized vendor, and charted beside every thread so the conversation starts from the same market facts the benchmarks stand on.
- Sort lenses — Latest, Most active, or Unanswered. Threads still waiting on a first reply carry a gold flag so help finds them.
- Verified position chip — opening a thread can attach your organization's anonymized market position on that vendor, a percentile band verified from your stored standings and rounded to 5 points so it can never fingerprint a deal. It renders as a gold chip on the thread; your identity never rides along, and the option only attaches when your org actually holds a standing on the vendor.
- Report — every thread and reply carries a Report control. One click flags it for the platform moderation team; nothing is removed until a moderator reviews it.
How to use it
- Open a thread on a vendor you are renewing; the composer shows the house read as you type the vendor, so you can cite the corridor in your opening post. On a quiet board, one-click openers prefill a question peers argue about.
- Click a room, or use the vendor filter, to read everything the network holds on one vendor.
- Sort to Unanswered and give a peer their first reply; your desk's record grows with every contribution.
- Switch to Buyer intros from the tab strip when you want a private one-to-one.
Related: Buyer intros · Vendor scorecards
Buyer intros
The Buyer Network's intro room: talk to another buyer who runs the same vendor, one to one. Anonymous until you both accept, with contact details shared only on a mutual yes. The page is a launcher; the work happens in the full-screen intros workspace, five pages on one dark stage with Ask Vera docked beside every one of them. The shared tab strip links back to the Buyer Network threads.
On the landing
- The network pulse — the page opens on the numbers: organizations active, requests waiting for a peer, calls connected, and the share rated a good call, plus the most asked-about vendors of the last 60 days. Press a trending vendor and the workspace opens on the ask composer with it filled in.
- Enter the workspace — the navy band opens the workspace on The floor; beneath it, one card per workspace page shows its live figure (open requests, decisions waiting on you, organizations in the network, your profile strength) and opens that page directly.
- Sample view — one press opens the workspace over a realistic example week, clearly marked with actions disabled, so you can feel how the network works before yours is warm.
In the workspace (pages on the left rail, ← → to move between them, Esc to close)
- The floor — the board at a glance: the pulse verdict and figures, the requests that fit you best, trending vendors, recent connections, and the most helpful desks, with your next move one press away.
- Talk requests — the ask composer and the open board. One-click challenge templates (renewal uplift, audit posture, packaging change, price sanity check, switching away), a live reach line that says how many organizations get notified the moment you post, and a live preview of exactly what peers see: your alias, country, and industry, never your organization. The composer warns if your text contains an email or phone number; contacts are shared automatically on a mutual yes, so they never belong in the post. Requests on vendors from your talk list (and anything sent directly to you) surface first in a For you lane.
- Requests & matches — the reciprocity ledger (your helper credits translated into the planned renewal discount, 1% per credit toward the 10% cap), then every match on four stages: Offered, Mutual yes, Connected, Rated. Connected matches carry the other person's contact details and a suggested 30 minute agenda built from the vendor and the challenge, ready to copy into the calendar invite.
- Our profile — a profile strength meter that names exactly what is missing, watched vendors as add-and-remove chips, and the visibility switches (accept direct requests, appear in the network).
- Community network — the directory with industry facets and vendors-in-common badges, plus the most helpful desks, recent connections, and the network's reach by industry and country. Helpers rank first.
- The dock — three panels beside every page: What now with your next moves on the board, Ask Vera grounded on the live board (the open requests, your matches, your profile), and Who sees what, the three-stage anonymity ladder.
How to use it
- Enter the workspace and read The floor; the requests that fit your talk list lead.
- Post that you want to talk about a vendor (a template gets you moving), or volunteer on an open request.
- Mutually accept, reveal, and only then share contact details; use the suggested agenda for the call, then rate it. Good calls earn the helper a credit toward the renewal discount.
Related: Buyer Network
Next: Chapter 05 · Team, AI & assistant
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Updated 2026-08-01 · A VendorBenchmark product · Download the manual as PDF · Questions? Message our team in the app.