How it works
Anatomy of a negotiation.
One master services agreement, from the counterparty's first draft to a signed file — and what happens on the platform at each turn.
The draft arrives
Monday, 16:40. A supplier sends their paper instead of accepting yours.
You bring the file into Apua, or open it where it already is — in Microsoft Word, through the add-in. Apua reads the document and you point it at the playbook that governs this kind of agreement.
Nothing about this step requires a decision from you. The work of getting a document into a state where it can be reasoned about is the part that used to eat the first hour.
The review
Monday, 16:47. Eighteen deviations, ordered by what could actually hurt you.
Apua checks the draft clause by clause against your playbook and returns what departs from it — not a summary of the contract, which you can read yourself, but the specific places where their paper differs from your position.
Each finding carries the rule it breaches, a citation to the source behind it, and a fallback already drafted in your language. A liability cap below your floor is not merely flagged; the clause that would fix it is sitting there ready to insert.
Where the sources do not support a confident position, the system says so rather than guessing. That is the difference between a tool you can hand to a junior and one you have to check twice.
The internal round
Tuesday, 09:15. Finance has a number. The deal owner has a deadline.
You bring the people who actually decide into the same document. They comment against the specific clause rather than replying to an email thread with a different version attached, and everyone is looking at the same text at the same moment.
You accept the redlines you want, reject the ones you do not, and rewrite where the machine was close but not right. Every change is attributed and tracked, so the document always knows who did what.
Back to the counterparty
Tuesday, 14:00. No attachment. A link.
Send the other side a secure link. They open the document in a browser with no account and no software, at the permission level you chose — read, comment, or edit — and that permission is enforced at the connection itself, not merely hidden in their interface.
Their edits arrive as tracked changes, attributed to them, which you accept or reject one at a time. What they cannot see is your side of the work: the playbook review, the risk scoring, the approval chain, the obligations register.
If they insist on working in Word, they can — and the document stays the same document.
Rounds two and three
Thursday. The part where versions usually get lost.
Each exchange creates a version rather than a new file with a longer name. Put any two side by side and see exactly what moved, who moved it, and when.
There is no reconciliation step, because there was never more than one document. The negotiation history is also the audit trail.
Approval
Friday, 10:30. In the order your policy actually requires.
Route the agreed text through the people who must sign off — head of legal, then the CFO, then whoever else your delegation matrix names — in sequence, with each step locked until the one before it clears. If an approver rejects, the chain returns to draft for another round rather than limping forward.
Where a contract does not need a full chain, it does not have one. The process should match the risk, not the template.
Signature
Friday, 15:00. Without a second vendor.
Signing runs on the platform itself: PAdES signatures with trusted timestamps, meeting the advanced standard under eIDAS. Signers are verified by email or phone before they can sign, and you choose whether they sign in sequence or in parallel.
The completed agreement carries a certificate of completion, and any later alteration of the signed file is detectable.
What the agreement left behind
And then, usually, silence — which is the real problem.
A signed contract is a set of promises with dates attached. Apua tracks them against the contract — what is owed, by whom, and by when — so open and overdue obligations are a view you can open rather than something you have to remember.
The positions you took also stay. What the market accepted, what it refused, and what was not worth fighting for informs the next negotiation instead of leaving with whoever ran this one.
Bring us one of your own.
The fastest way to judge this is on a contract you already know. Send us one — redacted as far as you like — and we will run it in a 30-minute call, including where your data sits and what it costs.
Request a demo