SOW review you work through with the agents — every clause checked, every fix cited, before anyone signs
Vague scope and off-card rates fixed before signature, not paid for in change orders.
See one case, screen by screen ↓Statement of Work Review is SOW review software for services procurement. Seven agents read every services SOW before signature, check its scope, rates, payments and legal terms against the MSA, the rate card, the procurement playbook and the requester's brief, and propose a cited fix for each problem. The buyer works through the findings with the agents; counsel decides legal wording and the budget owner approves and signs.
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The SOW is usually the supplier's Word file, on the supplier's template, with the supplier's assumptions. The buyer has a day or two of spare time to read it against an MSA of 60 to 120 pages, a rate card kept in a spreadsheet exhibit, a procurement playbook and the budget owner's brief — and to spot anything non-standard before pulling counsel in by email. Approvers further up the delegation of authority see the value on a PDF, not the content.
What gets missed comes back after signature. “Support the transformation” instead of deliverables with an acceptance test turns a fixed fee into a stream of change orders. A role billed above the card hides in a price build-up nobody re-adds. Forty percent on signature leaves before anything is delivered, deemed acceptance removes the buyer's lever, and the supplier keeps the IP or touches personal data with no data-processing terms. Later, a milestone invoice is paid before acceptance and a change order pays again for work already in scope.
Estimated split for a typical services SOW, from arrival to approval-ready, by hand and with the solution. The working solution's sample company shows a median of 9.0 days before and 1.6 days in Q3.
Seven agents read every SOW, test its scope, rates, payments and terms, re-check each finding and propose the fix; people decide and sign.
Arcturus Consulting sends Kestrel & Vane Group a $480,000 fixed-fee SOW for digital transformation support in the Distribution division, against Tomás Ferreira's request and a $500,000 budget line. Here is how Maren Holt, a services procurement buyer, works it through with the agents, screen by screen, in the working solution.
Maren's Today screen: 12 SOWs in review worth $5.32M, 4 waiting for her, 7 high-severity notes open, each with a proposed fix, and $708,900 protected in Q3. Beside the list, her agents talk to her. The routing agent has ranked the morning; overnight, the checker agent re-checked a change order from Tessaline Studio and found 8 of its 20 assets already in the signed scope.
Routing agent: “Morning, Maren. 4 SOWs wait for you; the first is due today. Arcturus is the biggest: 3 high notes on $480,000.”
SOW-2026-0418 opens as the supplier wrote it, clause by clause. Next to each problem clause sits a note: scope too vague, key people not named, rate above the rate card. The top bar shows $480,000 against a $500,000 budget, fixed fee with 40% on signature, 16 weeks, and 46 checks run: 37 passed, 3 high, 4 medium, 2 low open. The intake agent has already linked MSA-AC-2024-07, its rate card Exhibit C and Tomás's request REQ-11842.
Checker agent: “I re-computed all 9 findings from the sources without seeing the other agents' working: 9 of 9 agree.”
The only deliverable is to “support the digital transformation” of the division — it fails all five parts of the deliverable test: a measurable output, an owner, a date, an acceptance test, what is out of scope. The scope agent rewrites it from Tomás's own request: D1 a current-state assessment of the six distribution centres by week 4, D2 a roadmap of at least 12 prioritised initiatives with business cases by week 9, D3 a slotting pilot at Rotterdam measured against the D1 baseline by week 16.
In the company's own signed SOWs, a deliverable like this had change orders on 61% vs 18% — a change-order risk of about $67,000. The scope agent never invents scope the request does not support.
The rate agent re-adds the price build-up and matches every role to the rate card. The Principal is billed at $295 an hour; Exhibit C, row 3, caps the role at $260, and clause C.4 says no SOW may exceed the card without written agreement. 320 hours × $35 = $11,200 over. One click on the source opens the rate card with the passage the agent relied on highlighted.
“The highlighted passage is what the agents relied on. Opened from the record; it cannot be edited here.”
Maren asks in plain words. The payment agent answers with its sources: $192,000 would leave on signature, before anything is delivered; playbook P-4 allows 10% mobilisation and the rest on written acceptance, and calls anything above 20% a walk-away. It opens the note on §5.2: a new schedule of 10%, 25%, 30% and 35% tied to D1–D3, adding up to $468,800, with each step of how it checked, a confidence of 98% and the checker's agreement.
$145,120 of cash moved behind delivery. The payment agent never moves a payment the budget owner has not seen.
Maren tells the agents what she wants changed. The scope agent redrafts D3 as a 6-week pilot at Rotterdam, measured on the last 4 weeks of warehouse data and still finishing by week 16, and marks it as a proposal on §2.1. Nothing in the SOW changes until she accepts it.
Scope agent: “Done, as a proposal: D3 is now a 6-week pilot at Rotterdam … Nothing changes in the SOW until you accept it on §2.1.”
Each note is accept, edit or reject with a reason code — “Matches our playbook”, “Matches the rate card”, “Rate exception requested”. Maren accepts scope, rate, payments, the expense cap of $37,504 (8% of fees under travel policy TP-3), a 10-business-day acceptance window, named key people and 30 days' notice. The IP clause and the missing data-protection terms go to Priya Anand: legal wording is counsel's decision. The SOW now shows every change tracked, and its value falls to $468,800.
Legal notes are never accepted in bulk: they go to counsel.
Maren sends the redlines with a cover note the routing agent drafted. Elias Brandt, Partner at Arcturus, accepts eight changes but wants to keep the Accelerate diagnostic toolkit. The terms agent reads the counter clause by clause and maps it to playbook P-7: Kestrel & Vane owns the deliverables, Arcturus keeps its background IP with a perpetual, royalty-free licence. That is the fallback position, so it is acceptable — with counsel's approval.
Terms agent: “No walk-away position is touched.” It never approves legal wording.
The routing agent builds one page for approvers — what we get, when, what we pay, what changed from Arcturus's first version and why — and routes it by delegation of authority DOA-2: $468,800 sits in the $100,000–$500,000 band, so counsel approves the legal wording first and Tomás approves on Maren's recommendation. Priya approves with reason LEG-OK. Tomás chooses BUD-OK, “Within the budget line; deliverables measurable”, types his name and signs. The routing agent sends the SOW to Arcturus for e-signature and creates PO 4500-88217.
The agents read, check, propose and route. Every acceptance, approval and signature is a person's, with a reason code.
Change orders are tested against what was already bought: Tessaline Studio's CO-03 asks $18,600 for 20 social assets, but 8 of them are the carousel cards already in §2.3 of its signed SOW. The agents propose $11,160 for the 12 new ones, and because the SOW would grow more than 25%, the budget owner and the category manager approve again. On Delivery, Copperfield Advisory's $64,500 invoice is held: milestone 2 has no recorded acceptance.
The routing agent never releases an invoice without a recorded acceptance.
The same SOW, seen by the four people who carry it — what their week looked like, and what it looks like now.
Seven agents read every SOW, test its scope, rates, payments and terms, re-check each finding and propose the fix; people decide and sign.
Reads the SOW in Word, PDF or a scan, from the SOW inbox, an upload or a request; splits it into clauses and finds the MSA, rate card and request it belongs to; extracts value, billing model, term, roles, rates and payments.
Tests each deliverable for a measurable output, an owner, a date, an acceptance test and what is out of scope; rewrites failing ones from the requester's brief; checks acceptance and key people; compares change orders with the signed scope.
Re-adds the price build-up, compares every role and rate with the MSA rate card, caps expenses under the travel policy and, on signed SOWs, compares billing with progress to forecast overruns.
Checks the upfront share against the playbook, reshapes the schedule so payments follow accepted deliverables and adds up to the fee, and computes service credits for late milestones.
Compares IP, data, confidentiality, liability and termination with the MSA and the playbook's preferred, fallback and walk-away positions; looks for staff-augmentation and off-payroll signals; reads the supplier's reply and maps each counter to the playbook.
Re-computes every finding from the clause and its sources without seeing the other agents' working; its agreement shows on every note.
Routes approvals by the delegation of authority and clause type, builds the one-page approval, sends for e-signature and creates the purchase order; after signature, watches milestones, acceptance, invoices and change orders.
Accept, edit or reject with a reason; sign. The agents propose; a named person decides.
Every screen has the agents at hand. Ask about any clause, rate or invoice — or give an instruction. Every answer cites the SOW, the MSA, the rate card or the playbook, and nothing changes until a person accepts it.
Why is 40% upfront a problem?
Because nothing has been delivered yet: $192,000 would leave on signature. Our playbook allows 10% mobilisation and the rest on written acceptance; above 20% is a walk-away. I tied the other 90% to D1–D3.
Make the pilot 6 weeks
Done, as a proposal: D3 is now a 6-week pilot at Rotterdam, measured on the last 4 weeks of warehouse data, still finishing by week 16. Nothing changes in the SOW until you accept it on §2.1.
Which change orders repeat work we already bought?
One: CO-03 from Tessaline asks $18,600 for 20 assets; 8 of them are the carousel cards already in §2.3. I propose $11,160 for the 12 new ones.
Does finance need to sign?
No. $468,800 is in the $100,000–$500,000 band: Tomás approves and signs on Maren's recommendation. Above $500,000 the divisional finance director would also sign.
13 screens from the working solution, on its sample data. Pick one to see it large.
What the agents flag and who approves are settings. A change is a proposal that the Head of Procurement approves, and it applies to SOWs that arrive afterwards.
| Setting | Default | Choose from |
|---|---|---|
| Largest payment before a deliverable is accepted | 10% | Your share of the fee, changed by approved proposal — playbook P-4 allows up to 15% only where the supplier buys equipment or licences for you, and walks away above 20% |
| Rate above the rate card allowed | 0% | Any rate above the card goes to the category manager as an exception |
| Expense cap, share of fees | 8% | From travel policy TP-3, unless the SOW sets a lower cap |
| Shortest review window for acceptance | 10 business days | With one rework cycle and acceptance in writing by the budget owner (playbook P-5) |
| Longest notice to end for convenience | 30 days | Playbook P-9 walks away above 60 days |
| Re-approve a change order above | 10% of current value, or 25% above the signed value in all | Budget owner and category manager approve again (playbook P-11) |
| Flag a SOW that repeats another by more than | 60% | Compared with the company's signed SOWs |
| Ask a person when an agent is less sure than | 90% | Below it, the agent asks a person; separately, the checker re-computes every finding |
Every figure is labelled: a target the solution is built to, an estimate, a typical published result, or a proven one.
“demo” = seen in the working solution, on its sample data · “target” = the design goal, measured in the live solution · “estimated” = our estimate · “typical” = published figures (WorldCC, ROI of Contracting Excellence — 8.6% average contract value erosion; SIA, VMS spend rises to $303B with increase in SOW, 2026 — 39% under SOWs). People, companies, agreements and documents named on this page, including Kestrel & Vane Group and Arcturus Consulting, are fictional — characters and sample data in the working solution.
Statement of Work Review is SOW review software for services procurement. Seven agents read every services SOW before signature, check its scope, rates, payments and legal terms against the MSA, the rate card, the procurement playbook and the requester's brief, and propose a cited fix for each problem. The buyer works through the findings with the agents; counsel decides legal wording and the budget owner approves and signs.
The rate agent re-adds the SOW's price build-up and matches every role to its row on the rate card in force. Any rate above the card is flagged with the difference on the SOW's hours — in the working solution, a Principal at $295 against $260, $11,200 over 320 hours. A justified exception is sent to the category manager to decide.
Yes. The scope agent tests each deliverable for a measurable output, an owner, a date, an acceptance test and what is out of scope. When one fails, it rewrites it from the requester's own brief, citing the sentence each new deliverable comes from, and asks the budget owner when the brief is silent rather than inventing scope.
Counsel. The terms agent compares IP, data, liability and termination with the MSA and the playbook and proposes wording only from the clause library, but every legal change goes to counsel. When the supplier counters, the agent maps the counter to the playbook's preferred, fallback and walk-away positions so counsel sees what moved and why.
Yes. The terms agent looks for worker-classification signals such as supervision by your managers, your shift pattern or a single-person supplier. In the working solution it flags a labour SOW whose operatives report to the client's shift supervisors, and a UK single-director company that needs an off-payroll status determination before the start date.
The same agents keep it honest. A milestone invoice is held until the acceptance is recorded, every change order is tested line by line against the signed scope, late milestones are flagged with the remedy in the SOW, and billing is compared with progress to forecast an overrun before the cap is hit.
Yes. The agents never accept, approve, sign, send or release anything. The buyer decides each change with a reason code, counsel decides legal wording, the category manager rate exceptions, and the budget owner approves and signs under your delegation of authority. Every action is on a read-only audit trail.
The Agentic Solution Engine builds and deploys it from your requirements and documents — your MSAs and rate cards, playbook, clause library, delegation of authority and a sample of signed SOWs — and it goes live once every quality gate has passed. Set-up includes calibrating the agents on 20 of your signed SOWs. We will walk you through it on your own SOWs first.
Hidden costs priced before award, and every score backed by the page it came from.
1-min demoSpend AnalyticsEvery dollar classified, and every saving pinned to the invoice lines behind it.
1-min demoRFP CreationHalf the bidder questions, because every gap past bidders asked about is closed first.
1-min demoWe'll run Statement of Work Review on a sample of your own SOWs, against your MSAs, rate cards and playbook.