Vendor Optic

AI-powered contract-to-payment assurance

Pay exactly what you agreed

Vendor Optic’s AI reads your contracts and turns every pricing term into a plain-language rule. Proprietary machine-learning models learn how each vendor bills, so every invoice line is checked before the payment run, and every overcharge comes with the clause, the invoice line and the math.

  • Private AI inside your environment
  • Learns every vendor’s billing patterns
  • English and French

Book a demo

The AI reads from the systems you already use

  • SAP
  • SAP Ariba
  • Oracle Fusion
  • Coupa
  • Microsoft Dynamics 365
  • OpenText VIM
  • Microsoft Outlook
  • Microsoft Teams
  • Excel
  • EDI
  • CFDI
  • SFTP

Vendor Optic reads from these systems. Product names are trademarks of their owners; no endorsement implied.

The problem

Where money quietly leaks

  • Rates change with amendments. Invoices don't.
  • Discounts and tier breaks get forgotten.
  • The same work gets billed twice.
  • Rebates are earned and never collected.
  • Auto-renewal deadlines slip by.

The evidence is scattered across scans, spreadsheets and inboxes, far too much to check by hand. Vendor Optic’s AI reads all of it

The AI engine

AI that reads every contract and learns how every vendor bills

Rules catch what the contract says. Proprietary machine-learning models catch what rules miss. Together they check every invoice line before you pay.

Document AI

Reads scanned and native contracts, amendments and rate cards like an expert analyst, and extracts every price, rate, cap, discount and effective date.

Pattern-learning ML

Proprietary models learn the normal billing pattern of each vendor, role, lane and item, and flag anything that breaks it, even when no rule covers it.

Learns from every decision

Each approval, hold and dismissal your team records sharpens the models, so findings get more precise with every payment run.

Private and explainable

Every model runs inside your environment and never trains on anyone else’s data. Every finding shows the clause, the invoice line and the math.

The 360 view

One view of every vendor, all the way around

One AI platform, from the contract, to every invoice, to the payment, to the money back, to the renewal, and around again.

AI reads contracts

Document AI reads contracts, amendments and rate cards, scanned or native, and works out what each file is and which vendor it belongs to.

Approve AI-built rules

The AI turns every pricing term into a sentence a person can check. A named person on your team approves the rulebook.

AI checks every invoice

Every line is checked against the rules in force on the date the work was done, and scored by models trained on each vendor’s billing patterns, before your payment run.

Prevent before payment

The AI recommends: hold, query the vendor or send to the contract owner. A person always decides.

Recover what's owed

AI-drafted disputes and credit claims are tracked until the money is actually back.

Renew smarter

Walk into every renewal with an AI-built scorecard, the overcharges by cause and the clause weaknesses ranked by cost.

How it works

From a folder of documents to money back, powered by AI

01. Drop your documents

No sorting. The AI classifies every file and matches it to the right vendor and contract.

02. Approve the AI-built rulebook

The AI turns each pricing term into a plain-language rule linked to the exact spot in the contract. Nothing is used until a person on your team approves it.

03. AI checks every invoice line before the payment run

Against the rules in force on the date the work was done, including every amendment, while machine-learning models flag anything that breaks the vendor’s usual pattern.

04. Decide with proof, then get the money back

Approve, hold and query the vendor, send to the contract owner, or dismiss with a reason. Every decision teaches the models, and recoveries are tracked until the money is back.

Accepted formats: PDF, Scanned PDF, Word, Excel, CSV, Email, ZIP, EDI, e-invoice XML.

From 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027, a Programmer Analyst at Level 2 is billed at $145.00 per hour

Illustrative example · Rulebook approved

See the proof

Every AI finding proves itself in under two minutes

Illustrative example

AI recommends a hold

This invoice bills a Level 3 Programmer Analyst at $175.00 per hour. The contract, as amended on 1 April 2026, sets Level 3 at $160.00 per hour. The difference on 120 hours is $1,800.00.

Schedule B is amended by replacing the rate for Programmer Analyst, Level 3, with $160.00 per hour, effective 1 April 2026.

Contract clause: Amendment No. 1 to PSA-2025-031 · section 1 · page 1

This is 1 of 7 similar findings: 7 invoices billed the pre-amendment rate, $12,600.00 in total.

  • Approve as correct
  • Hold and query vendor
  • Send to contract owner
  • Dismiss with reason

What the AI catches

Twelve ways money leaks. The AI checks them all

Prices and rates

  • Unit price above the contract price
  • Labour billed above the rate for its category and level
  • Old rate still billed after an amendment, or a new rate billed before its effective date
  • List price billed instead of the negotiated rate
  • Volume tier reached but the tier discount not applied
  • Escalation applied early, above its cap, or compounded when the contract says simple
  • Index-linked escalation using the wrong index period
  • Negotiated discount missing
  • Markup on pass-through costs above the allowed percentage
  • Minimum charge misapplied
  • Items billed that are not in the contract at all
  • The same item at different prices across sites or affiliates

Quantities and delivery

  • Quantity billed above the purchase order or goods received
  • Partial delivery billed in full
  • Hours billed above approved timesheets
  • Services billed but never delivered
  • Work billed outside the period of performance
  • Invoice total that does not equal its lines, or tax miscalculated

Duplicates

  • Exact duplicate invoices
  • Invoice numbers altered with a suffix or leading zeros
  • The same work billed on a weekly and a monthly invoice
  • The same invoice paid to two vendor records or sibling companies
  • The same invoice arriving by PDF and by EDI
  • Carrier and broker both billing the same load

Money owed to you

  • Credit memos issued but never applied
  • Supplier credit balances nobody claimed
  • Volume rebates earned but never received
  • Performance credits earned with the claim window about to close
  • Early-payment discounts available before their deadline
  • Credits for returned goods never issued

Professional services and labour

  • People billed who do not meet the labour category's qualifications
  • Overtime without prior approval
  • Hours beyond a category's allocation
  • Travel and per diem above approved rates
  • Full 40-hour weeks billed in holiday weeks
  • Subcontracted work billed as the prime's own labour at prime rates

Freight and logistics

  • Lane rate above contract
  • Fuel surcharge from the wrong table or week
  • Unauthorized accessorials (liftgate, residential, detention)
  • Reweigh and dimensional-weight upcharges
  • Demurrage or detention billed past the free time

Construction and field services

  • Wrong labour classification
  • Burden rates wrong
  • Compounded overhead and profit markups
  • Markup on deductive changes
  • Retainage and allowances not reconciled
  • Equipment billed above its hourly, daily or weekly cap

Software and telecom

  • Renewal uplift above its cap
  • Seats billed beyond the contracted quantity
  • Telecom lines still billed after disconnection

Tax and currency

  • Sales tax on exempt items or at the wrong province's rate
  • Currency converted at the wrong date or rate
  • Invoice in a different currency from the contract

Fraud and control signals

  • Unusual billing that breaks a vendor’s learned pattern
  • Bank details on the invoice differ from the vendor master
  • Unknown vendor or PO-box address
  • Invoices split to stay under approval limits
  • Bursts of round or sequential invoices
  • Documents altered after issue
  • Hidden text in a vendor document aimed at software

Deadlines and contract risk

  • The date a contract ceiling will run out
  • Auto-renewal and notice deadlines
  • Option periods
  • Invoices still arriving after a contract expired
  • Contracts missing audit rights, escalation caps or late-billing clauses
  • Missed obligations that trigger penalties

Hard documents the AI still reads

  • Skewed scans of printed and signed copies with stamps over tables
  • Rate tables spanning many pages with merged cells
  • Handwritten or initialled changes
  • Amendments that change one row of a rate table
  • French and Spanish invoices
  • Several currencies
  • Password-protected, corrupt or duplicate files
  • Excel invoices with merged headers across sheets
  • Contracts of 500 pages or more

Money owed to you

Money that was always yours

Illustrative example

  • Volume rebate earned, not received: $48,300.00 (Claim by 30 November 2026)
  • Credit memo issued, never applied: $6,215.40 (Credit memo on file)
  • Early-payment discount available: 2%: $3,402.18 (Pay by 9 October 2026)

Invoice checking alone never sees this money. Vendor Optic’s AI does

Coming up

Every deadline across every contract, found by AI, on one calendar

Illustrative example

  • Insurance certificate expires 15 Oct 2026 · ClearView Facility Services · 19 days
  • Auto-renews 31 Dec 2026 · last day to give notice 1 Nov 2026 · CloudLedger Software · 36 days
  • Escalation cap 3% applies 1 Jan 2027 · Borealis Freight Lines · 97 days
  • Ceiling projected to run out 14 Feb 2027 · Keystone Technical Staffing · 141 days

For your role

AI built for the people who sign, pay and negotiate

CFO & Finance

See every dollar you were overcharged, and get it back, with proof your auditors accept

  • Only prevented and recovered money counts as realized
  • Audit-ready evidence packs for every finding
  • Fits SOX-style controls and section 34 certification
  • No disruption to payments, ever

Procurement

The prices you negotiated, enforced on every invoice

  • AI benchmarking: what you pay each vendor for the same role or item
  • Savings opportunity against the median
  • A negotiation brief for every renewal
  • Analytics for sourcing, never an accusation

Vendor Management

Know which vendors bill accurately, and walk into every renewal with the numbers

  • AI vendor scorecards as trends
  • Exceptions per 100 invoices
  • Dispute outcomes and responsiveness
  • Obligations tracked to completion

Contracting

Your contracts, finally working after signature

  • Amendments applied from their effective date
  • Every clause scored for strength by the AI
  • Renewal and notice deadlines never missed
  • Ask a contract a plain question

Ask a contract

Ask the AI a plain question. Get the clause

Answers come only from your contracts, with the citation. If the contract does not say, the AI says so instead of guessing.

Illustrative example

Can Northstar bill overtime on Saturdays?
Yes, at 1.5 times the hourly rate, only with written pre-approval from the Project Authority. From the contract text · Section 6.3, page 12
What is Programmer Analyst Level 3 as of 15 April 2026?
$160.00 per hour, from the approved rulebook. From the approved rulebook · Amendment No. 1, Schedule B, row 3
Does the contract cover parking fees?
The contract does not address parking fees. Closest clauses: Not in the contract · 7.2 Expenses · 7.4 Travel

Coverage you can see

Nothing dropped silently

You always know what is checked, what is not, and what it's worth.

Illustrative example: The AI found 212 lines worth $184,000.00 for detention charges that no rule checks yet. Clause 14.3 in three contracts appears to govern them.

Start safely

Prove the value before you change anything

Retrospective review

The AI checks past invoices against your contracts. (No system access needed)

Shadow mode

The AI records what it would have held. (Touches nothing)

Hold list

A list for AP before each payment run. (No system access needed)

Hold flag

Sets the hold itself, for clear-cut cases only.

Each step is optional.

Trust and control

The AI proves. Your team decides

Private AI, inside your environment

The AI and its models run in your AWS or Azure account, your data centre or a disconnected network. No document leaves your organization, and your data never trains anyone else’s models.

A person always decides

The AI recommends; it never pays, approves or rejects anything. At most it places one payment hold, with a reason.

Fail-safe: payments never wait

If Vendor Optic is down, slow or unsure, invoices flow exactly as they did before.

Explainable AI your auditors can replay

Signed, tamper-evident evidence packs that reproduce identically a year later.

Personal information masked

Masked before the AI reads any document. Access to unmasked data is permissioned and logged.

Bilingual and accessible

Every screen, rule and report in English and French. WCAG 2.2 AA in both themes.

What Vendor Optic is not

  • Not a contract lifecycle management system
  • Not an accounts payable system
  • Not a general-purpose chatbot
  • Not an autonomous decision maker

It sits between the contract system and the payment system and makes sure they agree.

Explainable AI, not a black box: every result shows the clause, the invoice line and the math.

Deploy your way

Same AI, same results, wherever it runs

Your AWS account

Deployed in your own cloud account.

Your Azure tenant

Deployed in your own tenant.

Your data centre or a fully disconnected network

Air-gapped operation supported.

Value estimator

Estimate with your own numbers

Annual spend × share under contract = spend checked. Spend checked × your assumed overbilling rate = estimated overbilling.

This estimate uses only your own assumptions. It is not a promise of results.

FAQ

Questions finance leaders ask first

Is Vendor Optic AI-powered?

Yes. Document AI reads your contracts and invoices, and proprietary machine-learning models learn each vendor’s billing patterns to flag what rules alone would miss. Every finding is explained with the clause, the invoice line and the math, and a person makes every decision.

Does the AI learn from our data, and who else benefits?

The models learn from the patterns in your own contracts, invoices and decisions, inside your environment. Your data never leaves your organization and never trains models for anyone else.

Does Vendor Optic pay or reject invoices?

No. Vendor Optic never pays, approves or rejects anything. At most it places one payment hold, with a reason, that a person releases.

Do our documents leave our organization?

No. Vendor Optic runs inside your own cloud account, your own data centre or a fully disconnected network. No document, number or result leaves your organization.

What if Vendor Optic is down before a payment run?

Invoices flow exactly as they did before. An uncertain result goes to a person and never blocks a payment.

Can it read old scanned contracts?

Yes: skewed scans, stamps over tables, rate tables across many pages, handwritten or initialled changes, and contracts of 500 pages or more.

Do we need to change our ERP?

No. Vendor Optic reads from SAP, Oracle, Coupa, Dynamics 365 and others. It writes exactly one thing: a payment hold with a reason code.

How do French invoices work?

French and Spanish invoices are read like any other. Every screen, rule, evidence pack and report is available in English and French.

Who approves the rules?

A named person on your team. Nothing is used until a person approves it, and each rule links to the exact spot in the contract.

What does our audit team get?

A signed, tamper-evident evidence pack for every finding and a full audit trail of who changed what, when and why.

Can our analysts extend what it checks?

Yes, without programmers. A second person approves every extension before it goes live.

How long until we see results?

Most teams start with a retrospective review of past invoices, which needs no system access. Results depend on your contracts and invoices.

See what AI finds in your contracts

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Vendor Optic
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AMENDMENT No. 1
to Professional Services Agreement PSA-2025-031
Effective 1 April 2026
BETWEEN Crestline Industries Inc. (“Client”) AND Northstar Digital Consulting Inc. (“Contractor”).
1. Schedule B is amended by replacing the rate for Programmer Analyst, Level 3, with $160.00 per hour, effective 1 April 2026, in consideration of the Client’s volume commitment in section 2.
2. The Client’s volume commitment is set out in Annex 1 to this Amendment.
3. All other terms remain unchanged.
M. Thibault
Marie Thibault, VP Finance
Crestline Industries Inc.
J. Reyes
James Reyes, President
Northstar Digital Consulting
MT
JR
Page 1 of 2
NORTHSTAR
Digital Consulting Inc.
INVOICE
NDC-2026-0418
1200 Carling Avenue, Suite 400, Ottawa ON K1Z 7K8 · GST/HST 12345 6789 RT0001
Bill to
Crestline Industries Inc., Accounts Payable
2400 Meadowvale Blvd, Mississauga ON L5N 7W5
Invoice date: 5 May 2026
Service period: 1–30 April 2026
PSA-2025-031 · PO 4500182231
Net 30 · Due 4 June 2026
DescriptionResourceHoursRateAmount
Programmer Analyst, Level 3PERSON_017120.00$175.00$21,000.00
Programmer Analyst, Level 2PERSON_022150.00$145.00$21,750.00
Business Analyst, Level 2PERSON_031140.00$135.00$18,900.00
Project Manager, Level 3PERSON_00980.00$175.00$14,000.00
Subtotal$75,650.00HST 13% (ON)$9,834.50Total$85,484.50
Remit by EFT · Account ending 6120 · Thank you for your business.
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Schedule B · Hourly Rates ($)
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NORTHSTARNDC-2026-0418
5 May 2026 · PSA-2025-031 · PO 4500182231
1 · Programmer Analyst, L3 · 120 h × $175.00$21,000.00
2 · Programmer Analyst, L2 · 150 h × $145.00✓ $21,750.00
3 · Business Analyst, L2 · 140 h × $135.00✓ $18,900.00
4 · Project Manager, L3 · 80 h × $175.00✓ $14,000.00
Total (incl. HST 13%)$85,484.50
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