Finance
Vendor management that catches the notice window
Most money lost on vendors is lost by missing a cancellation deadline nobody had written down. A worker keeps the register and dates the deadlines.
What the worker does
An AI worker in Polaris keeps a vendor register by reading contract files in Google Drive, renewal mail in Gmail and actual charges in Stripe, then dating each renewal and notice deadline into Google Calendar and the Focus lane. It posts the register as a comment on the task. A person decides what to renew, renegotiate or cancel before each deadline arrives.
- Connections
- Google Drive · Gmail · Stripe · Google Calendar
- Tracked per vendor
- Renewal date, notice window, real spend
- Reviewed
- Quarterly, or before each deadline
Auto-renewal is a tax on not having a list
A thirty-day notice window on an annual contract is a real deadline with a real cost, and it is almost never in anyone's calendar. It is in a PDF, in clause 11.2, in a Drive folder, signed by someone who has since left.
The second failure is subtler. Teams track what they agreed to pay rather than what they are actually charged, and the two drift: a seat count that grew, an overage nobody watches, a plan that upgraded itself.
A vendor worker fixes both by reading the contract and the charge, putting them side by side, and putting the notice date in a place with a person's name on it.
The register the worker maintains
| Field | Where it comes from | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|---|
| Renewal date | The contract file in Drive | The thing everyone assumes is known and usually is not |
| Notice window | The contract clause, quoted verbatim | The deadline that actually matters, and it is earlier |
| Contracted amount | The contract file | What you agreed |
| Actual charge | Stripe, or the receipt in Gmail | What you pay. The gap between these two is the finding |
| Internal owner | You state it | An unowned vendor line never gets cancelled |
| Last price change | Renewal mail in Gmail | Tells you whether a renegotiation is overdue |
What the worker flags without being asked
The gap between contracted and actual
Where the charge does not match the agreement, the line is flagged with both figures and the source of each.
A notice window closing inside 30 days
It lands in the Focus lane under Today or This week, with the clause quoted so nobody has to reopen the PDF.
A vendor with no internal owner
Listed separately. These are the ones that quietly renew for three more years.
Duplicate tools
Two vendors billing for the same category is a question for a human, and the worker asks it rather than answering it.
The boundary
The worker
- Reads contracts and quotes the clause
- Reconciles agreed price against actual charge
- Dates deadlines into the calendar and Focus
- Drafts the cancellation or renegotiation email
- Researches list pricing for alternatives on the open web
You
- Interpret a contract term that is genuinely ambiguous
- Decide to renew, renegotiate or leave
- Send anything that constitutes notice
- Sign
- Close the task
Questions people ask
+Can it cancel a vendor for us?
No. Serving notice is a contractual act. The worker drafts the notice email and dates the deadline; a person sends it from their own mailbox and closes the task.
+What if our contracts are scattered across three Drive folders and two mailboxes?
Point the worker at all of them in the brief. It reads what the connections expose. Anything it cannot find is listed as a gap in the register, which is usually the most useful part of the first delivery.
+How does this connect to legal's version of the same list?
It should be the same list. Vendor agreement management is the legal-side view of the same contracts, with different fields mattering. Keeping both in one workstream stops finance and legal from maintaining two registers that disagree.
+Does the worker need access to our bank?
No, and it could not have it. The connection catalog is fixed and contains no banking connection. Actual spend comes from Stripe or from the receipts in the connected mailbox.
Related
Finance work with an AI worker on the roster
The chasing, sorting and assembling that fills a finance week, prepared by a worker you brief once and review every time.
A register of what you actually signed
Finance tracks what a vendor costs. Legal needs to know what you promised them, what they promised you, and which of those promises has a date on it.
Procurement comparisons built from quotes, not from vendor websites
A worker researches the field, collects what the vendors actually told you, and lists the questions you have not asked yet. You choose.
Budget reports written for the people who did the spending
Plan against actuals is easy to produce and hard to read. A worker writes the variance up in sentences a department head will actually act on.
Hire an AI ops coordinator
It writes down how your company does things, so the answer stops living in whichever colleague happens to be on holiday.
Connect Google Calendar to Polaris
Scheduling is the one thing an assistant is asked for first, and it is the one connection still waiting on Google sign-in.
The cost of AI subscriptions for a team
Five figures a year at fifty people, and no shared record of what any of it produced.
Focus lane
A commitment for a horizon, not a filter over everything you have.