Frequently Asked Questions

What is Accordable?

Accordable analyzes the contracts that define your business relationships and turns them into actionable business intelligence.

It goes far beyond document storage. Accordable extracts decision deadlines, tracks obligation fulfillment, assigns responsibilities to team members, preserves institutional knowledge when people leave, and provides portfolio-wide contract intelligence.

Accordable is your system for making sure everyone holds up their end of the deal.

Why not just upload my contracts into ChatGPT or another AI tool?

Generic AI tools read one document at a time and do not retain structured knowledge across multiple contracts over time.

Accordable converts contracts into structured data and tracks obligations, deadlines, and relationships across your entire contract portfolio. This allows the system to generate insights, alerts, and reports that generic AI tools cannot provide.

How quickly will I start seeing insights?

Most organizations see useful insights after uploading just a few contracts. Because Accordable analyzes deadlines, obligations, and financial terms immediately after upload, users often discover overlooked commitments or upcoming decision deadlines within minutes. Once you have a portfolio loaded, the Intelligence Center lets you ask questions across all your contracts at once.

Who is Accordable designed for?

Accordable is designed for organizations of all sizes that manage signed contracts — vendor agreements, leases, service agreements, employment agreements, loan documents, trust instruments, and NIL deals.

Typical users include founders, COOs, operations leaders, property managers, lenders, athletic departments, and administrators responsible for making sure contractual obligations are fulfilled and deadlines are not missed. Whether you're a 10-person nonprofit or a regional bank with hundreds of loans, Accordable provides the post-execution intelligence that dedicated CLM platforms don't.

What do you mean by Contract Portfolio?

Contracts rarely stand alone. They define a web of complex business relationships. With Accordable, you can load all your contracts and analyze how they interact across your business. For example, an apartment complex has leases, a mortgage, maintenance agreements and an employment agreement with the manager. Accordable can analyze the entire collection of contracts (the "contract portfolio") and provide key insights, including default risk, model profit and loss scenarios, or alert you to a potential wave of lease expirations.

How does the AI analysis work?

Upload a contract and our AI extracts the details that impact your bottom line: decision deadlines (when you must act, not just expiration dates), plain-English summaries, hidden costs (payment terms, due dates, insurance requirements), exhibits and addendums, insurance requirements with coverage limits, and termination conditions with notice periods.

How does Accordable preserve institutional knowledge?

Contracts often contain commitments that only one employee remembers. Accordable captures deadlines, obligations, summaries, communications, and audit history so that knowledge remains accessible even when staff changes.

What file types can I upload?

Accordable supports PDF and Word (.docx) files. DOCX files are automatically converted to PDF for consistent storage and viewing. For scanned or image-based PDFs, OCR Deep Scanning automatically detects and extracts text using advanced optical character recognition, even from complicated tables embedded in contracts.

How do I get started?

Apply to join the pilot, create an account, and start uploading contracts. The setup wizard guides you through creating departments, adding users, and configuring notifications. Most organizations are ready to upload their first contracts after about 30 minutes of set-up.

Does Accordable integrate with other software systems?

Accordable currently focuses on providing a dedicated contract intelligence platform. Future integrations with project management tools are planned for the near future.

Does Accordable track obligations owed to my organization?

Yes. Accordable tracks both obligations your organization owes and obligations owed to you by counterparties, including document submissions, insurance certificates, reporting requirements, and recurring deliverables.

How do renewal notifications work?

Accordable uses a 5-stage escalation system: emails at 90, 60, 30, 15, and 10 days before your Decision Deadline. Contract owners receive alerts first; if unacknowledged, administrators are escalated at 30, 15, and 10 days. Contracts with incomplete information trigger separate alerts. This multi-layer approach ensures deadlines are never missed, even if someone is on vacation or leaves the organization.

What are departments and how do they work?

Departments organize contracts by team or function (e.g., HR, Legal, IT, Marketing). Users are assigned to specific departments, ensuring they only see relevant contracts. Administrators have access to all departments by default.

What are the different user roles?

Accordable uses a three-tier permission system: Admins have full access to all contracts, users, departments, and settings across the organization. Contract Owners upload, manage, and own contracts in their assigned departments; they receive renewal notifications and can manage regular users. Users have view-only access in their assigned departments. This hierarchy ensures clear accountability with appropriate access levels.

How does auto-renewal detection and roll-forward work?

Our AI identifies auto-renewal clauses and marks them with a badge on the dashboard. When renewal occurs, Accordable automatically rolls forward the expiration date, recalculates the new Decision Deadline, and resets notification acknowledgements. You can configure the renewal term (1-36 months) per contract, ensuring continuous tracking without manual updates.

What is Enhanced Analysis?

Enhanced Analysis extracts additional detail beyond the core summary: payment terms and schedules, exhibits and addendums, insurance requirements with coverage limits, and termination conditions with notice periods. This deeper analysis is included with every contract upload. For domain-specific extraction (e.g., interest rates from loans, CAM charges from leases), see Intelligence Packs.

How do I find specific contracts?

Accordable offers full-text search across contract names, filenames, and executive summaries, plus filters by department, contract owner, and expiration timeframe (30, 60, or 90 days). The dashboard highlights urgent contracts requiring immediate attention.

Accordable's Intelligence Center lets you run natural language queries across your entire contract portfolio — searching extracted text, summaries, contingency data, and obligations — returning relevance scores, explanations, verbatim excerpts and insights.

What is the Intelligence Center?

The Intelligence Center is Accordable's hub for portfolio-wide contract intelligence. It includes:

• Ask Your Contracts — Query your entire contract portfolio in plain English. Get answers with relevance scores, verbatim excerpts, and AI-generated explanations.
• AI Contract Digests — Automated weekly and monthly portfolio summaries delivered to your inbox, highlighting upcoming deadlines, obligation status, and risk areas.
• Semantic Search — Search across all extracted contract data, summaries, obligations, and contingencies using natural language.
• Query Library — Save and reuse common queries for consistent portfolio monitoring.

The Intelligence Center is included with all plans.

What are Intelligence Packs?

Intelligence Packs are optional add-on modules that unlock domain-specific extraction fields, analytics, and dashboards for specialized contract types:

• Loan Intelligence — Weighted average cost of capital, maturity schedules, covenant tracking, refinancing analysis for loan portfolios.
• Commercial Lease Intelligence — Rent roll analytics, CAM reconciliation, tenant improvement tracking, lease expiration wave analysis.
• Trust Intelligence — Beneficiary tracking, distribution schedules, trustee obligations, amendment history for trust instruments.
• NIL Intelligence — Athlete compensation tracking, exclusivity windows, brand portal management for Name/Image/Likeness deals.

Learn more about Intelligence Packs.

Is there an audit trail?

Yes. Accordable maintains a complete, immutable audit trail of all contract actions: uploads, views, edits, analysis runs, acknowledgments, and deletions. Each entry records the user, timestamp, IP address, and action details. Logs cannot be modified or deleted - even by administrators - providing true accountability.

How does Accordable protect organizational continuity?

When key team members leave, institutional knowledge often leaves with them. Accordable protects against this through immutable audit trails preserving all contract history, admin reassignment with automatic notifications, complete export functionality, and AI-generated executive summaries capturing the essence of each contract. Even if your entire contract team turns over, institutional knowledge stays intact.

What happens when a contract is amended or replaced?

You can upload amendments or updated versions of a contract at any time. Accordable preserves the audit trail and allows you to re-run AI analysis so the system reflects the latest terms.

What is the Contract Library?

An archival repository for expired contracts. Contracts are automatically archived 24 hours after expiration (excluding auto-renewing contracts). Archived contracts are silenced from notifications but remain searchable. Administrators can restore them if needed, keeping your active dashboard focused while preserving complete contract history.

How does Accordable handle expired contracts?

Expired contracts (past expiration and not auto-renewing) appear in a separate "Expired Contracts" section with amber styling and "Expired X days ago" badges. Administrators can click "Send to Archive" to move them to the Contract Library. Auto-renewing contracts show "Auto-Renewal Active" status instead. The Safety Net Report shows expired status with days past due rather than countdown timers.

What about "surviving obligations?"

Contracts often contain obligations that remain in force even after the agreement expires. Confidentiality provisions, indemnification clauses, and intellectual property licenses are common examples. Accordable tracks these surviving obligations even after a contract has expired, so you don't lose track of commitments made years earlier.

What is a Contract Safety Net Report?

The Contract Safety Net Report is an AI-powered professional PDF covering: Contract Identity (counterparty, department, owner), Safety Net Deadlines (decision deadline countdown with urgency status), Operational & Financial Intelligence (business purpose, commitments, risk assessment), Termination & Compliance (cancellation logic, notice requirements, insurance), Contingency Analysis (conditional clauses creating obligations), and a full Audit Trail (notification history and activity log). Report generation is logged for compliance. Ideal for executive briefings, board meetings, or succession planning.

How does Direct Email with Read Receipts work?

Direct Email lets you send emails to vendors and counterparties from Accordable. Emails are sent as "Your Name via Accordable" with Reply-To set to your actual address. A 1x1 tracking pixel detects opens and logs read receipts to the contract's audit trail, maintaining a complete communication history.

What are Contract Attachments?

Upload supporting documents - certificates of insurance, amendments, invoices, correspondence, exhibits - to your contracts. Each file (up to 25MB, 100MB total per contract) is encrypted at rest. Categorize attachments for easy organization; all upload/download/delete actions are logged. Professional Guests can view but not modify attachments.

What are Collaborative Notes?

Team members can add comments and notes to contracts, with author name and timestamp. Mark notes as "Internal Only" to hide them from Professional Guest users - useful for sensitive discussions, negotiation history, and decision-making documentation.

How does OCR Deep Scanning work?

When you upload a scanned or image-based PDF, Accordable detects it contains images rather than text. OCR Deep Scanning uses Tesseract to extract text from scanned pages, then analyzes it with AI just like a text-based PDF. You'll see a "Deep Scanning..." status while processing.

What is Professional Guest Access?

Invite external advisors - lawyers, accountants, consultants - to securely view contracts with time-limited, read-only access. Features include: magic link invitations (48-hour token expiration), time-gated access windows (Week, Month, Quarter, or Year), department-scoped access, and Internal-Only contract flagging. Guests see a countdown banner and can request extensions through an admin-approval workflow. All activity is logged; admins can revoke access at any time.

What types of contracts does Accordable support?

Accordable is designed for standard bilateral (two-party) commercial contracts - the agreements that make up the vast majority of business contract portfolios. This includes vendor agreements, service contracts, leases, NDAs, employment agreements, software licenses, and similar two-party arrangements.

Multi-party agreements, consortium contracts, and joint venture agreements involving three or more parties are not supported and may produce incomplete analysis.

Can I upload multiple contracts at once?

Yes. Admins and Contract Owners can upload up to 20 files (100MB total) per batch via drag-and-drop. Contracts are analyzed sequentially in the background - you can continue working while AI processes your files. A progress banner on the dashboard and a batch status page track each contract's analysis. You'll receive an email notification after the first 5 contracts are analyzed, plus daily digest reminders for unverified contracts.

What is Obligation Tracking?

Obligation Tracking optionally monitors contractual obligations in your contracts. It tracks what you owe counterparties ("We Owe") and what they owe you ("They Owe"), for both one-time and recurring obligations. Automated reminders escalate at 15, 7, and 1 day before deadlines. You can send documents directly through Accordable or request documents from counterparties via secure upload links. Recurring obligations automatically roll forward after fulfillment.

Does Accordable support month-to-month contracts?

Yes. Accordable provides full lifecycle support for month-to-month agreements. AI detects the term type and monthly cost from contract text. The dashboard shows "Ongoing" status with running duration and monthly cost instead of an expiry countdown. Quarterly review reminders are sent every 3 months to prompt cost evaluation. The Safety Net Report adapts to show running duration, total spend, and cancellation notice period instead of fixed-term dates.

What is Conflict of Interest Protection?

When inviting Professional Guests (lawyers, CPAs, auditors), Accordable auto-detects potential conflicts by matching guest type and counterparty keywords against your contract portfolio. Admins select which contracts to restrict via a checklist. Restricted contracts still appear on the guest's dashboard but sensitive details - counterparty name, financials, AI analysis, and document access - are redacted with "Restricted - Conflict of Interest" notices. All restricted views are logged in the audit trail.

How does Secure Data Export work?

Admin-only full data export with email verification. The export includes all contracts, attachments, collaborative notes, Safety Net Reports, and a CSV metadata file organized by department. This ensures complete data portability and supports compliance, succession planning, or migration needs. These are your contracts, and you take them with you when you no longer wish to use Accordable.

How does contract classification work?

Accordable automatically classifies contracts using more than 25 AI-driven contract types, including Employment Agreements, NDAs, SaaS Agreements, Commercial Leases, IP Licenses, and more.

You can also create custom contract types tailored to your business. These descriptions help Accordable's AI tailor its analysis based on the nature of each agreement. The system also automatically determines the contract's cash-flow direction — whether the agreement represents spending, income, or a neutral relationship. This classification structure powers dashboard filtering, portfolio analysis, and cross-contract insights.

How secure is my data?

Multiple layers of protection: file encryption at rest (Fernet symmetric encryption), encryption in transit (HTTPS/TLS), rate limiting, secure password policies (minimum 8 characters with uppercase, lowercase, and numbers), HTTPOnly secure cookies with 30-minute session timeout, two-factor authentication (2FA) via authenticator app or SMS, login history tracking, multi-tenant data isolation, and comprehensive security headers (CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options). Your data is never shared with third parties.

Does Accordable support two-factor authentication (2FA)?

Yes. Two options: Authenticator App (TOTP) - scan a QR code with Google Authenticator, Authy, or similar; or SMS Verification - receive a 6-digit code via text (10-minute expiry, 60-second cooldown). TOTP also provides 8 backup codes for account recovery. Once enabled, 2FA is required at every login.

Can I see my login history?

Yes. Security Settings shows your last 20 login events with timestamps (local time zone), device type, browser, and OS. Sessions are labeled "Current", "Active" (within the 30-minute window), or "Expired". IP addresses are privacy-masked (e.g., "192.168.*.*"). Administrators can view organization-wide login activity and terminate sessions remotely.

What happens if I leave my session idle?

Sessions expire after 30 minutes of inactivity. A 2-minute warning modal lets you extend your session with one click. If you don't respond, you're signed out and redirected to the login page automatically. Use "Log out all sessions" in Security Settings to terminate sessions on other devices.

Are downloaded contracts watermarked?

Yes. Every download or print is watermarked with the user's name, organization, timestamp, and a "Confidential" warning. This creates accountability and helps trace any leaked documents. Watermarks are applied at download time, personalizing each copy.

Can Accordable staff see my contracts?

No. Staff cannot access your contract content without explicit consent. If technical support ever requires viewing contract data, it will only occur via screen share with an Admin or Contract Owner present.

Is my data used to train AI models?

No! Your contract data is never used to train AI models. We use Google Gemini's API, and per Google's enterprise terms, data is processed for analysis only - not for model training or improvement.

Who owns my contract data?

You do. Accordable provides secure storage and management - we make no claim to your data. Admins can download everything at any time via "Export All," which creates a complete backup organized by department with all AI-extracted metadata, summaries, and audit history. You're never locked in.

What happens to my data if I cancel?

You have 30 days to export your data via the Admin "Export All" feature. After that, all contracts and associated data are permanently deleted. You can request immediate deletion at any time by contacting support.

Is Accordable compliant with privacy regulations?

Yes. Accordable complies with applicable data protection regulations and provides tools for data export and deletion to support your compliance needs. For specific questions, contact our support team.

How accurate is the AI analysis?

Highly accurate for well-formatted, text-based PDF or DOCX contract documents. Accuracy may vary with document quality, formatting complexity, and unusual structures. Always review and verify AI-extracted information against your original document. Accordable detects if a contract contains images or tables rather than plain text. OCR Deep Scanning uses Tesseract to extract text from scanned pages, then analyzes it with AI just like a text-based PDF. You'll see a "Deep Scanning..." status while processing.

Is Accordable a substitute for legal review?

No. Accordable is a contract intelligence platform that transforms contracts into actionable business insights. It does not provide legal advice. The AI extracts and summarizes key terms, but always consult qualified legal professionals for interpretation, negotiation, and legal decisions. Accordable is not liable for missed deadlines or misinterpreted terms.

Can I edit the AI-extracted information?

Yes. After AI analysis, you can edit all extracted fields - dates, summaries, payment terms, and more. This lets you correct inaccuracies or add missing information. Changes are tracked in the audit trail.

Can I re-run the AI analysis?

Yes. Trigger a new AI analysis from the contract detail page at any time (e.g., after uploading an updated version). The new analysis replaces previous extracted data.

What plans are available?

Accordable is currently accepting applications for its pilot program. Pilot participants get their first month free, with the opportunity to earn five additional free months by uploading and verifying 20+ contracts. After the pilot, standard pricing applies. Join the pilot to get early access and help shape the product.

What support options are available?

All plans include email support. Higher-capacity plans receive priority email with faster response times.

Is there an AI help assistant I can ask questions?

Yes. Accordable includes an AI-powered chat assistant that answers platform questions, explains features, and helps navigate your contract rights and obligation workflow.

What are the support response times?

Standard email: 24-48 business hours. Priority support: 4-8 business hours. Live chat (where included): real-time during business hours (Monday-Friday, 9 AM - 6 PM ET).

How do I contact support?

Email support@accordable.ai.