The AI assistant

The AI assistant answers questions about your own SupplierVault records in plain English, and can draft things for you to check: an email to a supplier, a purchase request or a service improvement. It's a fast way to ask "what needs my attention this week?" or "which contracts need notice in the next 90 days?" without building a report. It never approves, signs or changes anything on its own.

Where to find it

Click the round Ask button in the bottom corner of any page. A panel opens headed "Assistant · Answers from your SupplierVault records". Type a question and press Enter (or click Send). Use Shift + Enter for a new line, Stop to cut an answer short, New chat to start again, and Esc to close the panel.

When the panel is empty it suggests questions such as:

• "What needs my attention this week?"
• "Which contracts need notice in the next 90 days?"
• "Summarise where we are with [a supplier]"
• "Which suppliers should move tier, and why?"
• "Draft a renewal email to [a supplier]"
• "Raise a request for 5 laptops from [a supplier]"

The assistant is switched on as standard. An admin can switch it off for the whole organisation in Setup › Modules & forms by turning off the AI assistant module. It is never shown on the supplier portal.

Good questions to ask

What it can see

Each time you ask, SupplierVault sends the assistant a snapshot of the records you can see in your browser at that moment:

• Today's date, your organisation's name, who you're showing work for, and the supplier you have open (if any).
• Your stakeholders (name, team and role) and your purchasing thresholds.
• For each supplier that isn't closed: name, area, tier and recommended tier, stage, owner, contract dates and notice period, auto-renewal, committed value, renewal status and key dates, 12-month spend and capacity use, inherent and residual risk, next risk review, whether bank details are verified (yes or no only), required forms and their status, open and overdue tasks, next step, handover note, open escalations and improvements, and up to four contacts.
• Up to 25 purchase requests that aren't cancelled, open sourcing events, and the top 25 "needs attention" items.
• The last 12 messages of your conversation.

It only sees the areas you have access to. If you've picked an area in the top bar, it sees only that area. Closed suppliers are left out.

How it answers

The assistant follows fixed rules:

• It answers only from your records (or from what its tools look up). If something isn't recorded, it says so and tells you where in SupplierVault you could record it. It's told never to invent suppliers, dates, figures or people.
• It uses British English, plain words and short answers, usually under 150 words, with the answer first.
• Supplier names in answers are links: click one to open that supplier.
• On legal, contract, tax or regulatory questions it gives general guidance only, and says it's a guide, not legal advice. Topics it can explain include UK GDPR Article 28, the Modern Slavery Act 2015, the Bribery Act 2010, Cyber Essentials, UK sanctions screening, Companies House and VAT checks, and bank-detail fraud.
• If your question is unclear, it asks one short question back.

Drafts and buttons it can give you

When you ask it to do something, the assistant prepares it and shows a card with a button. Nothing is saved until you open it, check it and save it yourself.

Behind the scenes it can also look up the full list of open tasks (up to 40) or a supplier's last 20 activity entries to answer you more fully.

What it can't do

• Approve, sign off, reject or change anything. Sign-offs always need a named person.
• Send emails or messages.
• See bank details, or areas you don't have access to.
• Remember past chats. Conversations live only in your browser tab and are cleared by "New chat" or reloading the page. Nothing is saved on our server.

Your monthly allowance

Each organisation has a fair-use allowance of assistant questions per calendar month. It resets on the 1st.

• One question counts once, however much work the assistant does to answer it (looking up tasks, drafting an email and so on).
• Each document read by the contract or invoice reader also counts as one question.
• The allowance is shared by everyone in the organisation, whatever their role.
• See how many you've used on the account button's Plan tab: "X of Y questions used this month (fair use)".

Messages you might see

Where your data goes

Your question and the snapshot go to SupplierVault's server, which checks you're signed in and a member of the organisation, takes one question from the allowance, then sends them to Anthropic (the company that makes Claude) to work out the answer. Anthropic is listed as a sub-processor in our privacy notice and doesn't use your data to train its models. Nothing from the conversation is stored by SupplierVault. If your organisation would rather not use AI at all, an admin can switch the module off.

In the public demo

The demo on our website doesn't use AI. Its assistant works out answers from the made-up example data in your browser and recognises a handful of question types (what needs attention, notice dates, tiers, drafting an email, raising a request and summarising a named supplier). The live service answers any question about your records.

Related

• Contract and invoice reader
• Modules and forms
• Plans and billing
• Security and your data