Before a company signs a supplier contract, someone has to read it: the payment terms, whether the price can go up, and whether the deal fits the budget that was approved. Done by hand, that means paging through every agreement line by line, and a mismatch on the cover page is easy to miss. Here, Oakcase Workspace, the company we use to show ALK at work, reviews Wendham Textile Mills’ supply agreement, then runs the same checks on all 20 of its vendor contracts.
Step 1 of 9
Start with one contract
Drop in Wendham Textile Mills’ supply agreement and ask in plain words: what are the payment terms, and can the price go up?
Step 2 of 9
The answer, with the receipt
Net 60, and prices can rise up to 3% a year with 60 days’ notice. Each line of the answer quotes the contract word for word.
Step 3 of 9
One click to the source
Every answer points back to the file it came from, so anyone on the team can check it for themselves in seconds.
Step 4 of 9
Spot what doesn’t match
The contract is worth $184,000 a year. The approved budget on its cover page is $150,000. That’s $34,000 over.
Step 5 of 9
The decision: hold the signature
You hold the signature and ask for a short approval request to Karen Whitlock, the Controller. ALK drafts it. You read it and send it.
Step 6 of 9
Now the whole pile
The same checks run on all 20 vendor contracts: 15 are ready to sign, 4 go back to the vendor and 1 needs budget approval.
Step 7 of 9
See where the money is
Every contract sits next to its approved budget. Wendham is the only one over.
Step 8 of 9
Draw the line
One instruction: warn me when any contract is more than $25,000 over its approved budget.
Step 9 of 9
ALK tells you first
Wendham is $34,000 over, past the $25,000 line. You know before anyone signs.
What ALK checks in each contract
- Payment terms and price-increase clauses, quoted word for word with the line they came from
- The contract’s yearly value against the approved budget on its cover page
- Where each contract goes next: ready to sign, back to the vendor, or budget approval
Try it on your own contracts
Send one real contract, or a redacted one, and see what ALK finds.