Vendor Contract Reviewer
Every software, lease and supplier contract read before you sign it, with the auto-renewal, the exit terms and the price escalator pulled out onto one page and the questions to send back
The problem
The point-of-sale contract was 31 pages. You read the price. Fourteen months later you find out it renewed itself for three years because the cancellation window was days 60 to 90 before the anniversary, the price went up 7 percent on a clause you never saw, and getting your own sales data out costs a fee. None of that was hidden. It was on page 19, in the language contracts use, and you had a store to run. A lawyer for every vendor agreement isn't realistic at your size. A first read that finds the clauses worth a lawyer's hour is. This skill is that read.
The tool
Once installed, this skill reads a contract you paste the way an experienced operations manager does, hunting for the eight clauses that cost small businesses money: auto-renewal and the cancellation window, the term and the early-exit fee, price increases and what triggers them, minimum commitments, what happens to your data when you leave, liability caps and indemnities that run one way, service levels with no remedy, and governing law in another province or country. It pulls each one onto a single page in plain words, with the page or section it came from, and rates it: standard, negotiate, walk away.
Then it writes the email back to the vendor: the three changes worth asking for, worded politely and specifically, because vendors expect pushback on exactly these clauses and have a version two ready. It keeps a renewal calendar, so the cancellation window for every contract you've fed it becomes a reminder sixty days out. It isn't legal advice and it tells you when a clause needs a lawyer, which is usually the indemnity and anything involving a personal guarantee. Before you sign a software contract at all, the Software Buying Scorecard decides whether you should.
What's inside
- A one-page clause summary: the eight money clauses, in plain words, with where they sit in the document
- A rating per clause: standard, negotiate, or walk away, with one line of reasoning
- The vendor email asking for the three changes most worth having
- A renewal calendar with the cancellation window for each contract, and the reminder date
- A "needs a lawyer" flag with the specific clause and the question to ask them
- A comparison view when two vendors' contracts are on the table
How to use it
- 1Click "Install skill" on this page and copy the install prompt.
- 2Paste it into your AI assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, anything that accepts pasted text).
- 3Answer the setup questions once: what kind of contracts you sign, your province, and the ones already in force with their anniversary dates.
- 4Paste a contract (or the relevant sections) and ask for the clause summary and the rating.
- 5Send the vendor email, book the lawyer hour if a clause is flagged, and log the signed contract's dates in the renewal calendar.
Example
A three-location coffee roaster in Hamilton is about to sign a 36-month agreement for a loyalty app. The summary finds an auto-renewal for a further 36 months unless cancelled in writing between 90 and 120 days before the end, a 5 percent annual increase "or CPI, whichever is greater", a $4,000 early termination fee, and a clause saying customer data is "retained by the provider" after exit. Three of the four are rated negotiate; the data clause is a walk-away as written. The email asks for a 12-month term, a 30-day cancellation window, a CPI cap, and a data export in a standard format within 30 days of exit. The vendor accepts three of the four. The roaster signs, and the cancellation window goes into the calendar for 2029.
Pro tip
Ask for the cancellation window to be a date, not a range. "Cancel any time with 30 days' notice" is a sentence you can keep in your head; "between 60 and 90 days before the anniversary" is a sentence designed to be missed. And when a vendor says the contract is standard and can't be changed, ask for the renewal and the data clauses anyway. Those two move more often than vendors admit.
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