Typing contract terms and invoices into a system is slow and easy to get wrong. The contract reader and the invoice reader do the reading for you: upload a PDF or paste the text and Claude, the AI behind SupplierVault's assistant, suggests the values it finds. You then check each one, change or untick anything that's wrong and apply only what you're happy with. Nothing is saved until you click apply.
Where to find them
- Contract reader: on a supplier record, "Contract and money" tab, at the top of the "Contract, notice & renewal" section: "Fill in from the contract".
- Invoice reader: on a supplier record, "Contract and money" tab, in the "Payments & accounts" section above the invoice form: "Read an invoice".
Both readers are available on every plan, including the free trial. You need to be an editor or admin to use them.
Reading a contract
- Open the supplier and expand "Fill in from the contract".
- Click "Upload PDF" and choose the contract, or paste the contract text into the box. Plain text files (.txt, .md, .csv, .eml) work too.
- Click "Read contract". It shows "Reading…" while it works, usually for a few seconds.
- Check the suggestions. Each term found has a tick box (ticked to start with) and an editable box. Untick anything wrong, or correct the value.
- Click "Apply what's ticked", or "Discard" to throw the suggestions away.
What the contract reader looks for
It is told to fill in only what the contract actually says and to leave anything else blank rather than guess. Terms it can't find aren't shown.
| Suggestion | Saved to |
|---|---|
| "Start date", "End date" | Start, End |
| "Notice period (days)" | Cancellation notice (days before end) |
| "Auto-renews" and "Renewal term (months)" | Auto-renews tick box and Auto-renewal term |
| "Annual value, excluding VAT" | Committed spend |
| "Currency" | Contract currency |
| "Notice to change volumes or prices (days)" | The same field on the contract |
| "Yearly price increase or cap (%)" | Price escalator |
| "Licences or units", "Unit name", "Price per unit" | Reserved or licensed per month, Usage unit, Rate per unit |
| "Overage charge (%)" | Overage premium |
| "Liability cap", "Termination rights" | The matching text fields (one line each) |
It also quotes the notice clause so you can check the notice period against the wording, and lists "Service credits and obligations": service credits, reports, reviews, price reviews, audit rights, insurance certificates, milestones and notice duties. Each shows whose obligation it is ("Our obligation" or "Supplier's obligation"), how often it repeats, any due date and the clause it came from. Ticked obligations are added to the supplier's Obligations and milestones list, owned by the supplier manager and marked open.
After applying you'll see a message such as "Applied: 9 terms and 4 obligations", and the audit trail records which terms were applied and who checked them.
Reading an invoice
- Open the supplier and expand "Read an invoice".
- Upload the invoice PDF, or paste its text.
- Check the suggestions: "Invoice number", "Invoice date", "Amount excluding VAT", "Currency", "Billing period" and "Purchase order". The VAT and total are shown for reference ("Spend is recorded excluding VAT"), with the invoice lines.
- If the invoice shows a licence or unit count, you can tick "Also record {N} {units} as this month's usage".
- Click "Add this invoice".
The invoice is logged in the same way as one typed by hand: its status is "Received" if the supplier's bank details are verified, or "On hold" if not. In the live service the PDF is attached to the invoice record. If you ticked the usage option and there's a billing period, that month's usage is set to the invoice amount and the unit count.
Checks the invoice reader does for you
- Duplicates: "Invoice {number} is already logged for {supplier}." You can't add it twice.
- Wrong supplier: if the name printed on the invoice doesn't look like this supplier, it warns "The invoice is from "{name}". Check it belongs to {supplier}."
Once added, the invoice is checked against the fixed fee or recorded usage like any other. See Payments and invoices.
Limits
| Limit | Detail |
|---|---|
| PDF size | Up to 4 MB. For a bigger file you'll see "Upload one under 4.0 MB, or paste the key clauses instead." |
| Pasted text | The first 60,000 characters are read. Paste at least a few lines (a contract needs more than 40 characters). |
| Very long documents | "That document is too large to read in one go. Paste the key clauses instead." |
| AI allowance | Each read uses one question from your plan's monthly AI allowance (100 on Essentials and the free trial, 300 on Professional, 1,000 on Enterprise). See Plans and billing. |
| Busy | "Too many requests just now. Try again in a minute." |
Scanned PDFs (pictures of pages) can be read, but clear, text-based PDFs give the best results.
In the demo
The public demo has "Try the example contract" and "Try the example invoice" links. The demo doesn't use AI: it works the answers out from the example text and says so ("Demo: worked out from the example text without AI"). It can't read your own PDFs; the live service can.
Can I trust what it reads?
Treat every suggestion as a draft. The reader is good at finding dates, numbers and clauses, but contracts are written in many ways and AI can misread. That's why every value is shown for you to check, with the notice clause quoted, and why nothing is saved until you apply it. The person who applies the values is named in the audit trail as having checked them.
Where your documents go
The document text is sent securely to Anthropic, the company that makes Claude, to be read, and the answer comes straight back. Anthropic is listed as a sub-processor in our privacy notice and doesn't use your data to train its models. See Security and data.
Related
- Contracts, notice periods and renewals
- Contract obligations and service credits
- Payments and invoices
- The AI assistant