A contract register that flags in time — stop losing the index increases you are entitled to
Consultancies billing by the hour against public framework agreements are entitled to annual index adjustments but the process runs on PDFs in folders, metadata in Excel and someone remembering to start. At one 40-consultant firm a missed adjustment meant a 17.6% uplift was never claimed. We design contract registers with AI parsing, deadline watch and an index calculation engine.
Challenge
The problem pattern.
Framework agreements live as PDFs in a shared network folder. The metadata — client, agreement number, base month, index model — is typed by hand into a spreadsheet. When someone remembers it's time, the agreement is opened manually: may the price be adjusted? Which model? Which base month? The calculation happens in Excel, the request goes out by email, and after approval the price list is updated by hand in the ERP.
Solution
What we build.
An internal web tool that owns the agreement lifecycle:
- AI ingestion. Upload the agreement PDF; AI parsing extracts the key data — client, agreement number, base month, index model, percentage rules, last/next adjustment. A review view shows document and extraction side by side; values under ~70% confidence are flagged amber, missing data red. The team verifies before anything is saved.
- One register. A dashboard with every agreement, status indicators (active / expiring / adjustment due), all metadata, the source PDF a click away.
- Deadline watch. The system computes upcoming index dates, flags agreements needing action inside a configurable window, and notifies the responsible person — clients are notified the contractual months in advance.
- The calculation engine. Stores base index values, applies the right rule (100%, 90% or fixed %), computes new hourly rates per role, and presents an old/new comparison table. The team always reviews before sending.
- Status tracking. Pending → ready to send → sent → approved/rejected — so nothing dies in an inbox.
Deliberately out of phase one: automatic index feeds, automated client emails, ERP write-back — all designed-for, none required to get the value.
Questions about contracts
How do we make sure we claim the index increases in our framework agreements?
By holding the agreements in a register rather than in folders. Each contract's index clause, base month and notice period is read out and watched, so the deadline arrives as a task rather than as somebody's memory. The uplift is calculated from the published index, so the claim is ready before the window closes rather than after.