Contract Management

Below you’ll find two visualizations of the same core task — checking that a supplier is compliant with a contract and that invoices match the agreed terms. The first shows how it’s done manually. The second shows how the same process runs automatically using Intric Plans.

Before Intric: Manual Contract Review

1 Retrieve2 Review3 Get Invoices4 Invoices In5 Compare6 Document7 Report

Step 1 — Staff retrieves the contract

A staff member opens the contract archive and locates the relevant supplier agreement.

What happens:

• Staff searches through the archive (PDFs, a shared drive, or a document system) to find the correct contract.
• They identify the clauses relevant to invoicing — pricing, service levels, payment terms, renewal conditions.

Challenge: Contracts are often 50+ pages. Finding the right clause takes significant time.

Step 2 — Staff reviews the contract in their Office Suite

With the contract open in Word or a PDF viewer, the staff member reads through the relevant sections.

What happens:

• They highlight or note key figures: agreed price per unit, SLA thresholds, discount structures.
• They may copy relevant clauses into a comparison spreadsheet to use as a reference.

Challenge: This is purely manual and relies on the staff member’s attention to detail. It’s easy to miss a clause buried on page 38 — and there’s no system checking their work.

Step 3 — Staff opens the invoice system

The staff member switches over to the finance or invoice system to pull the supplier’s latest invoices.

What happens:

• They log into the invoice system and filter by supplier and time period.
• They export or download the invoices for review.

Challenge: Different systems, different formats — exporting and organising the invoices is its own task before any comparison work begins.

Step 4 — Invoices pulled into staff’s workspace

The exported invoices are now in hand — typically downloaded as PDFs or a spreadsheet export.

What happens:

• Staff opens the invoice files alongside the contract notes they made in Step 2.
• They’re now working across multiple open documents or browser tabs.

Challenge: Working across multiple sources simultaneously increases the risk of mixing up figures or losing track of which invoice has been checked.

Step 5 — Staff manually compares invoices to the contract

This is the core compliance check — done entirely by hand in the Office Suite.

What happens:

• The staff member goes line by line through each invoice, comparing amounts, descriptions, and service levels against the contract clauses they noted earlier.
• Any discrepancy (overcharge, incorrect service level, wrong unit price) has to be spotted manually.

Challenge: This is time-consuming and error-prone. Small discrepancies — a decimal, a rounding difference — are easily missed. The more invoices, the higher the risk of oversight.

Step 6 — Staff documents their findings

After the comparison, the staff member writes up what they found in their Office Suite.

What happens:

• Compliant invoices are noted and approved.
• Discrepancies are recorded in a spreadsheet or Word document for follow-up.

Challenge: Documentation is manual and inconsistent. Different staff members may record findings differently, making it hard to track patterns over time.

Step 7 — Findings reported to management

The completed review is sent from the Office Suite to a manager or finance lead for sign-off or escalation.

What happens:

• Staff emails their findings or shares a document.
• Management decides whether to raise a dispute, approve payment, or put the supplier on review.

Challenge: By the time this report lands, the manual review may have taken several hours or spread across multiple days — for a single supplier’s invoices.

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After Intric: Automated Weekly Compliance Check

Using a scheduled Plan in Intric, the same compliance monitoring runs automatically every week — without any manual work. The Plan connects to the contract knowledge base, retrieves the latest invoices from the integrated supplier system, compares them, and delivers a compliance summary directly to the responsible staff member.

1 Trigger2 Fetch Contract3 Contract In4 Fetch Invoices5 Invoices In6 Summarize7 Deliver

Step 1 — Schedule triggers the Plan automatically

Every Monday morning (or any configured interval), Intric’s scheduler fires the Plan without any human action required.

What happens:

• The Plan wakes up and begins executing its steps in sequence.
• No staff member needs to initiate, remember, or log in.

How it’s configured: In the Plan settings, a weekly schedule is set. The Plan is scoped to the assistant responsible for contract monitoring.

Step 2 — Plan fetches the supplier contract from the knowledge base

The Plan’s first step queries the knowledge base where the supplier’s contract is stored.

What happens:

• The AI retrieves the full contract document.
• It extracts the relevant compliance criteria: agreed unit prices, service level thresholds, payment terms, and any discount or penalty clauses.

How it’s configured: The assistant has the contract archive connected as a knowledge base. The step uses an analyze action type to extract structured compliance criteria from the contract.

Step 3 — Contract data is available to the Plan

The extracted contract terms are now held in the Plan’s context and ready for comparison.

What happens:

• Key terms are structured: “Unit price = X”, “SLA = Y%”, “Late payment penalty = Z”.
• This structured output becomes the baseline for the next step.

Step 4 — Plan queries the invoice system for the latest week’s invoices

The Plan’s next step calls the integrated invoice system and pulls all invoices from this supplier for the past 7 days.

What happens:

• The Plan sends a query to the connected supplier invoice system (via MCP or OAuth integration).
• All invoices matching the supplier and date range are retrieved.

How it’s configured: The assistant has the invoice system connected as an integration tool. The step uses a search action type to retrieve invoices by supplier and date range.

Step 5 — Invoice data is returned to the Plan

The invoice data is now loaded alongside the contract terms — all within the same Plan execution.

What happens:

• The Plan now holds both the contract baseline and the actual invoices in context.
• It proceeds to the comparison step.

Step 6 — Plan compares invoices to contract and writes a compliance summary

The AI compares each invoice line against the extracted contract terms and produces a structured compliance report.

What happens:

• Each invoice is checked: Does the price match? Is the service level correct? Are there any discrepancies?
• Compliant invoices are confirmed. Discrepancies are flagged with the specific clause and the actual vs. agreed value.
• A clear, readable summary is written — formatted for the responsible staff member.

How it’s configured: The step uses a write action type with instructions to produce a compliance summary including a compliant/non-compliant verdict, a list of any discrepancies, and a recommended action.

Step 7 — Summary delivered to staff

The completed compliance report is delivered directly to the staff member responsible for supplier management.

What happens:

• The staff member receives the summary — typically via their Intric assistant conversation or a connected notification channel.
• If everything is compliant, no action is needed.
• If there are discrepancies, the summary includes context and a suggested next step.

The shift: Staff go from spending hours on manual comparison to spending a few minutes reviewing a pre-prepared summary — acting only where something actually needs attention.

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Before vs. After

Task	Manual	Time spent	Intric	Time spent
Contract retrieval	Staff manually searches archive	~20 min	Automated	—
Invoice collection	Staff logs into invoice system and exports	~15 min	Automated	—
Compliance comparison	Line-by-line manual comparison, error-prone	~90 min	Automated	—
Reporting	Staff writes findings and emails management	~30 min	Automated	—
Read, analyze and take action on findings	Read, analyze and take action on findings	~30 min	Read, analyze and take action on findings	~30 min
Total time	Full process from start to finish	~3 hrs 5 min	Staff time only	~30 min