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Getting Started with Contract Review

Your first look at Contract Review.

GroundControl Contract Review is AI-powered document review and discrepancy detection built for mission-critical aerospace and defense manufacturing. We help you catch discrepancies from incoming purchase orders and prevent costly mistakes within minutes. This guide will walk you step-by-step through completing a contract review.

Feel free to reach out to [email protected] if you have questions, or click the blue message icon in the bottom right corner to start a conversation with us now.

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Depending on your business, your account is set up in one of two versions of the application:

GroundControl Contract Review is built on AWS GovCloud and is ITAR registered. We are certified for FedRAMP Moderate Equivalence and on the FedRAMP Marketplace. We recommend saving a bookmark to your computer so this link is easily accessible.

During the onboarding process, an account will be generated for you and delivered to your email. Click the "SET YOUR PASSWORD" link in the onboarding email and follow the instructions to log in for the first time.

Going forward, you can return to this website and click Sign In using your email, password, and a 2FA code. The standard 6-digit 2FA code is delivered to your email. It is possible to set up 2FA with a different application — contact support if email is not accessible at your facility. If your facility is set up with an IdP login, this will be detected when you enter your email.

If you need to reset your password, click "Forgot your password?" beneath the Password input field.

💡 Entering a password too many times will result in your account being locked. Contact GroundControl Support to unlock your account.

Dashboard

Once you have successfully logged in, you will see the main dashboard. Here you will see a table of your company's contract reviews, key information about each one, and the ability to create a new review. Click on a row to open a review, or click "Start New Contract Review" to start a new contract review.

💡 All of your reviews are stored centrally on the dashboard, making it easy to query past contracts, quotes, and correspondence at any time.

To create a new review, select create Start New Contract Review in the top right-corner.

Alternatively, you may select “New” in the left-hand panel.

Creating a New Contract Review

After selecting the "Start New Contract Review" option you will have the opportunity to upload your contract in PDF, EML, MSG, DOCX, XLSX, OR JPG/PNG formats.

Once you have more than one contract uploaded to your account, then you may access previous contracts in the add files from your library option.

The Process of Contract Review

Choosing a Review Mode

When you start a new Contract Review, you'll now choose between two modes. Check Against Quote works by comparing an incoming purchase order to your accepted quotation.

Let's start with Check PO against Quote mode.

Navigate to the Compare PO Revisions section below for a detailed walkthrough of that mode. Note that the knowledge section remains consistent throughout the contract review process.

Data Ingestion

You have the option to drag and drop your files into the start new contract review space, as well as uploading multiple files at once.

Once you have uploaded all your files, the first step in our contract review process is to click the Upload and Start Review button below the panel showing the uploaded contract file or files.

Once clicked, you will be navigated to the main page of contract review, where all relevant data will automatically be read and summarized.

All relevant data is automatically ingested and parsed by our AI. You will see a summary of the documents received and the key data extracted from each.

The blue status circle will fill with the progress being done in initial checks as can be seen in the files dialogue box below.

The dashboard will also auto-populate with the relevant information:

💡 The information extracted is always displayed when you click on the details tab, where you can cross-check key information, and ensure accuracy and traceability.

This is what the page would look like after the data is summarized and processed, with the details tab showing the key details analyzed.

💡 We can always start performing checks during the process of initial analysis, so both processes can run concurrently.

The process to perform checks will occur after the data is summarized and processed, even if we can set up our checklist, add any custom checks, and also click the perform checks button while the initial analysis is underway.

To fit the contract review file to the window on the right panel you may click on the fit to page button in the top panel next to the zoom options.

For contract reviews with multiple files we can cycle through different files in the top right panel.

Create Your Checklist

Creating Checklists: Create custom rules specific to your organization's internal processes and terms & conditions.

This can be done by creating checklists consisting of multiple checks that can be used repeatedly. This can be created within the Knowledge section.

You may save custom checklists as well as create new checklists using the create checklist option.

There is also the option to add custom checks individually using the the Add Custom Check option.

💡 The checklist and creating checks is the most important part of contract review; the contract review is only as good as its checklist. The more detailed the checks created, the more methodical and meticulous the contract review and discrepancy tolerance.

You are also able to add any relevant context, company-specific information, or additional information for that specific review by clicking Yes on the “Anything else that is helpful to know” prompt.

This is one of the most effective ways to improve your review results.

Before running a review, you will see a "User Context" field where you can describe your organization's certifications, active supplier agreements, flow-down obligations, or anything else that should influence how the AI interprets the contract.

The more specific you are, the more targeted the output.

Knowledge

You may also add any knowledge, context, and company-tailored information to the section labeled Knowledge on the left hand panel.

If there is information that applies to every review your site runs — for example, your ITAR registration status or a standing quality clause — you can save it in the "Knowledge" section. Anything stored there is automatically applied to all future reviews without needing to re-enter it each time.

This should be filled out before clicking the perform checks option, and it would include any relevant information for every review performed for your company.

This differs from the “Anything else to Know” prompt which would have relevant information just for that review, while this is information for every review for your company.

Checklists

Within the knowledge section, the checklist section allows for setting up company-wide standard checklists.

💡This can be used to set up default checklists that would allow for efficient and company-specific checks that can then be used for all your contract reviews and saved as a default.

Perform Checks

Once done adding:

  1. Your specific Checks and Checklists

  2. Information specific to the particular review in the “Anything else that is helpful to know” prompt

  3. Company specific information in the Knowledge section

You can click "Perform Checks".

Our AI organizes, reviews, and correlates all ingested data to search for findings across every line item, clause, and term.

While the review runs, you will see a progress indicator with a blue circle. Review time depends on the number and size of documents uploaded.

Reviews are not locked in once you start them. You can attach or remove documents at any point, and you can re-run or edit your checks even after they've already produced findings, so your review can keep up as your documents change.

The review page now collapses its sections by default, so you can expand only the parts you're actively working on instead of scrolling through everything at once.

Discrepancy Findings

Once the review is complete, discrepancies identified in relation to the checks created will be displayed. The discrepancies are organized by each checklist item, each with cited sources so you can trace exactly where in the uploaded documents the issue originates.

  • Discrepancy: Our model suggests that there is a discrepancy.

  • Not Discrepancy: Our model suggests that there is no discrepancy.

💡 You can always check the sources and cited data by clicking on underlined items in discrepancies. Please note that the findings will appear before the detailed cited data and additional information appear, so it may take a short time to load the detailed data after the finding is displayed.

Each finding includes:

  • Check: What the model is measuring against.

  • Key Information: The specific clause, line item, or section in your uploaded documents where the issue was found. This can be accessed by clicking on the underlined portion of the check results.

  • Status: Discrepancy or Not Discrepancy

💡Click on any finding to expand its full detail. Click on the underlined text to access the location of the finding in your uploaded file.

This is the expanded view for each check.

For each item you can always override or change the findings based on prior context.

  • In this example, our model marked this as not a discrepancy, but we can manually edit the finding to be a discrepancy by clicking the discrepancy button below.

💡All changes are saved automatically as you work through the list.

Below is an example of a real discrepancy:

Auto-Generating a Discrepancy Email

Based on the discrepancies found, the final option available is to generate an email body that will address discrepancies and their exact citations, all in one click.

When you are ready to communicate findings, click "Draft Email".

Contract Review automatically drafts a discrepancy email summarizing all rejected findings, with cited sources included so the recipient can quickly locate each issue in their own documents.

Review the generated email in the preview pane.

If no discrepancies are found, you still have the opportunity to draft an email.

The email will generate a subject line and message that you may copy-to-clipboard or edit as needed.

Remember that this is just an email format, which you can easily copy-paste, but cannot send from our application.

💡 You can always add additional checks but only by running the contract review function again, after adding the additional checks required.

Compare PO Revisions Mode

Compare PO Revisions is built for comparing two versions of the same purchase order against each other.

When to Use Compare PO Revisions

Use Compare PO Revisions when your customer sends you a revised purchase order and you want to know exactly what changed since the last version, rather than checking it against your original quote. This mode expects multiple revisions of the same PO, not a PO and a quote, so keep that in mind when choosing between the two.

For the mode to compare PO revisions, there are a few changes to set up the comparison.

There is no checklist option since we are comparing two files, so the compare revisions button replaces the performing checks button.

To fit the contract review file to the window on the right panel you may click on the fit page button in the top panel next to the zoom options.

💡 For contract reviews with multiple files we can cycle through different files in the top right panel.

Once we click the Compare Revisions button, the scanning process starts and we can see the progress below.

The final output displays as below, under the changes section.

The expanded view can be accessed by simply clicking on the change you want to expand.

We still have the same optionality in terms of email drafting, as well as the ability to regenerate the email draft.


Related Articles

  • Setting up Checks - Contract Review

  • Frequently Asked Questions - Contract Review

  • Contract Review: File Formats

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