Starting a contract and reviewing an upload

A contract reaches Flowtly in one of two ways: you type it in, or you upload the signed document and let Flowtly read it. Both start from New contract on the Contracts list.

Typing it in

New contract → Manual entry opens the contract form. Three things are required before Save becomes available: a Name, the direction (Purchase or Sales) and the Currency, which starts as your organisation's currency. Everything else can wait, including the counterparty: a contract whose other party is not chosen yet is a normal state, not an unfinished one.

Uploading the signed document

New contract → Via upload opens a drop area on the list. Drop the files there or click choose a file:

• PDF, PNG or JPEG, up to 20 MB each.
• Several files at once are fine, and a file Flowtly already holds is caught before it becomes a second contract. Both are described in Contracts.

When at least one file is up, Go to review opens the review screen. Later, the Awaiting sorting tab on the contract list leads to the same place and shows how many uploads are still waiting.

The review screen

Review extracted contracts has three panes side by side, stacked on a narrow screen.

The queue, on the left. Every upload waiting for review, with a search box over names and file names. Each row says where it stands: Analysing the contract…, Ready to review, Saved, or a problem. A row that failed or has been reading for more than ten minutes offers Re-extract or Upload again, whichever can help.

The document, in the middle. The signed file itself, to read while you check the values. It is for viewing only.

The details, on the right. What Flowtly read from the document, ready for you to check:

• Counterparty (from analysis): the existing clients or suppliers the contract may be about, plus Create new from extracted with the name and tax ID it found, and Pick existing… to search for another one. How suggestions are chosen is in Contracts.
• Prices in this contract and Detected instalments: the amounts and the payment schedule found in the document.
• The contract form itself: direction, name, project, value, term, payment terms and notes. A change to a field is saved as you make it.

Next to each value read from the document sits a reference to where Flowtly found it; click it to open the document at that page. What the references mean is described in Contracts.

While a document is still being read, the pane says so and updates by itself when reading finishes, usually within a minute.

Finishing the review

• Save & validate accepts the contract. It links or creates the counterparty you chose, marks the upload as reviewed and opens the contract on the contract list.
• Reject deletes the contract made from that upload, after asking first, and moves on to the next upload in the queue.
• Re-extract reads the document again and overwrites the fields, so it asks first. When a reading fails, Contracts explains which failures a second reading can fix.

Saving checks two things about a new counterparty. The contract needs a direction first, because the direction decides whether the new record is a client or a supplier. And a new client on a Sales contract needs a country and a currency. For a Polish company with a tax ID, Flowtly fills in the address from the national register when it can.

A counterparty that already exists

If the name or tax ID Flowtly read belongs to a counterparty you already have, the screen says so before you create a second one, for example "Acme" already exists as supplier. When the existing record only lacks the role this contract needs, one click adds that role, for example Add client role to "Acme", and selects it.

If you go ahead and create the new counterparty anyway, Possible duplicate asks once more: add the missing role to the existing record, open it, or create a separate record with the same name.

Example use cases

• Upload a folder of signed supplier agreements in one go, then work through them in the queue one by one.
• Record a tender before it is awarded with Manual entry, leaving the counterparty empty.
• Check the payment schedule Flowtly read against the signed text by jumping to the cited page.
• Avoid creating a supplier twice when the same company is already one of your clients.