08 · Glossary & FAQ

The words the platform uses, and the questions people ask most. If a term on screen is unfamiliar, it is probably defined here.

Glossary

Proposal — a vendor quote or contract you upload for our analysts to benchmark. It moves along a path: Uploaded, In review, Benchmarked, Delivered. Lives under Proposals.

Agreement — a signed contract you track for spend and renewals, not necessarily uploaded as a document. Lives under Agreements.

Instant benchmark — the self-serve price check you run yourself against market data. No upload, no analyst, a result in about two minutes. See Instant benchmarks.

Analyst benchmark — the deliverable our team produces from an uploaded proposal: metrics, market ranges, and a written narrative. Delivered to Delivered reports.

Report — any delivered narrative document you read or forward: the analyst benchmark, board reports, strategy reports.

Deliverable — the umbrella for every generated artifact: reports, briefs, playbooks, memos, and scans. They collect in Deliverables.

Brief — a short AI-generated executive summary of one thing: a contract, a vendor, or a renewal.

Playbook — a structured negotiation guide, either generated by an agent or curated for a specific vendor. See Playbooks.

Vendor — the company you are buying from. Called a supplier only inside the Sourcing module, where RFP language applies.

Verdict — the fast, classified read the Verdict Bar returns on any dropped quote, contract, or invoice.

Notice window — the period before an agreement expires during which you must tell the vendor if you are cancelling or renegotiating. Set as 30, 60, or 90 days. Your team is emailed automatically when it opens.

Percentile — where your deal sits against a cohort of comparable buyers. A lower percentile on price usually means a better deal for you.

Corridor — the calibrated range of renewal outcomes behind our benchmarks. Vendor grades and your Deal Score are read from it.

Deal Score — where your invoice-verified deals land inside the corridors, with 100 being the strong end. Tracked on Verified wins.

Buying bloc — an opt-in group of buyers of the same vendor who renew in a coordinated window under one term sheet, anonymous until mutual opt-in. See Buying blocs.

Fair Renewal Rider — the versioned standard addendum you attach to every renewal: uplift cap, benchmark repricing, audit conduct, and change-of-control protection. See Fair Renewal Rider.

Vera — the AI analyst, grounded in your contracts and our market data. The feature is branded Vera AI and opens anywhere with Ctrl or Cmd J. See Vera AI.

Licensing and negotiation jargon

The vendor-side vocabulary the chapters use. You do not need to be a licensing veteran to use the platform, but these twelve terms come up constantly.

List price — the vendor's published price before any discount. Net price is what you actually pay; the gap between them is your discount, and benchmarks often measure it.

ACV — annual contract value: what an agreement costs per year, the number most benchmarks and blocs coordinate on.

Uplift — the percentage increase a vendor applies at renewal. An uplift cap is a contract clause limiting it; the Fair Renewal Rider indexes it.

True-up — the periodic reconciliation where you pay for usage above what you licensed. A true-down, reducing counts to actual usage, is rarer and usually only possible in the renewal window.

Shelfware — licenses you pay for but nobody uses. The optimizers in Chapter 03 exist largely to find it.

EA / ELA — an Enterprise Agreement (Microsoft's term) or Enterprise License Agreement (IBM's and others'): a large multi-year bundle covering many products, renegotiated as one deal.

ULA — Oracle's Unlimited License Agreement: deploy as much as you like during the term, then certify your deployment counts at exit to bank the licenses. The certification date drives the whole Oracle ULA playbook.

MACC — the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment: a contracted amount of Azure spend, negotiated inside the EA.

FUE — full user equivalent, the license metric RISE with SAP prices on; rebuilding the FUE count from real usage is the first move of the RISE playbook.

SOW — statement of work: the services document that carries day rates and deliverables. Priced against the market by the Rate Card Benchmark.

Third-party support — maintenance for a vendor's product bought from an independent provider instead of the vendor, typically far below the OEM rate. See the third-party support playbook.

Co-termination — aligning several agreements to end on the same date so they renew as one negotiation instead of dribbling out through the year.

Contract status path

Every proposal moves through four fixed statuses:

1. Uploaded — received, waiting for an analyst to pick it up.
2. In review — an analyst is benchmarking it.
3. Benchmarked — the final quality check before delivery. Still internal.
4. Delivered — the report is ready and you have been emailed.

FAQ

Who can see the documents I upload?
Only your own organization and our analysts. Files are stored privately, never on a public URL, and downloads use short-lived signed links. Data is isolated per organization at the database level, so another customer can never see your records.

What file types and sizes can I upload?
Proposals and contracts accept PDF and DOCX. The Verdict Bar also accepts photos and screenshots. Limits are shown on each upload screen (proposals up to 25 MB, Verdict Bar files up to 30 MB, images up to 3.5 MB). Files are checked on type, size, and signature, not just the extension.

How is my account protected?
With your password, or, once you turn on two-factor authentication under Security, with the rotating six-digit code from your authenticator app, which then replaces the password at sign-in. Accounts with elevated access are required to use two-factor authentication. The sign-in screen also offers Remember this device for 30 days; untick it on shared machines and the session ends when the browser closes.

Why does a benchmark say "insufficient data"?
We never estimate a market position without data to defend it. When a vendor lacks reference coverage, the report says so plainly and names the one step that closes the gap, usually adding a list price or seat count in that vendor's benchmark tool.

What is the difference between an instant benchmark and an analyst benchmark?
An instant benchmark is self-serve: you answer a few questions and get a market comparison immediately. An analyst benchmark is a deliverable our team produces from a document you upload, with metrics, ranges, and a written narrative.

Can I try the platform without entering real contracts?
Yes. Load the sample portfolio from the dashboard to explore populated screens, and remove it in one click. Sample rows never mix with your real data.

How do I move around quickly?
Press Ctrl or Cmd K anywhere to open the command palette and jump to any page, tool, or vendor. Press Ctrl or Cmd J to open Vera over whatever you are looking at. The round help button at the bottom right explains the current screen.

Which actions are limited to org owners?
Inviting and managing members, connecting integrations, configuring single sign on, setting branding and notification rules, and data controls. Regular members can use every workspace and tooling feature but not these org-level settings.

Do the AI features cost extra?
AI-powered features (marked "requires an AI plan" in this manual) depend on your plan including AI, and each run counts against a periodic allowance. Everything else works on any plan. Plans, allowances & limits defines every gate and cap, and your own usage is always visible under Billing.

Which plan do I need for a feature?
The plan matrix in Plans, allowances & limits lists what each plan includes, from the Free single-contract decoder to Enterprise's included analyst benchmarks and advisory sessions. Every tool is free to explore with sample data on any plan.

How do referrals work?
Every account has a referral code under Referrals. Refer a company and earn 10% of their spend for their first 12 months.

Something is broken, or my question is not here.
Start with Troubleshooting, which walks the most common symptoms. Otherwise message our team from Chat (the "Vera AI team" thread) or email [email protected].

Next: Chapter 09 · Record & detail pages