A slide deck cannot be wrong. That is the whole problem with slide decks as a way to evaluate billing software. Every vendor's deck shows a clean contract, a clean invoice, and a clean journal entry, because the deck author chose the example.
We ask for the opposite.
What to send
Bring the artefacts you actually bill from today:
| Artefact | What we will test |
|---|---|
| Signed PDF | Structuring, phases, gates, one-time fees, renewals |
| Carrier export | Column mapping, shipper match, rated charges, grouping |
| Seat snapshot file | Daily counts, confirmation windows, proration policy match |
| Usage CSV / query shape | Template mapping, idempotency, meter attribution |
Ideally include the painful ones: deferred setup with a gate clause, mid-term ramp, volume tier with overage companion, carrier file with ambiguous shipper names, seat export that ends mid-confirmation window.
What happens on a real run
- Ingest — upload into Sonic's real UI path, not a mocked screen.
- Review — you see the structured draft: schedule, rated rows, or seat preview.
- Reconcile — compare totals to your spreadsheet or vendor workbook.
- Discuss gaps honestly — if an edge case is unsupported, we name it and what build work would take.
Time-to-schedule on a straightforward contract is measured in minutes because parsing hands you a reviewable draft you approve, not a black box you trust blind. The same applies to shipment: map once, Process, preview invoices before Create.
What we are not proving
- That every legacy clause automates day one.
- That our AI never misreads a table in your PDF.
- That bank rec replaces your treasury team.
- That revenue recognition certifies your ASC 606 position.
We are proving whether the chain from your file to billable output holds on your numbers.
How to judge the output
Ask these questions before you ask about roadmap slides:
- Does the schedule phase structure match how you explain the deal in Excel?
- Do shipment rates match a hand-checked sample of rows?
- Do seat events reconcile to the vendor's daily counts without delta columns?
- Are sent invoices immutable when you try to "just add" late usage?
- Does Watchtower ignore drafts you have not emailed?
If the answer is no, note where it broke — parsing, rating, proration, or collections — not whether the demo presenter was polished.
Watch out for
- Sanitised files hide boundary bugs. Customer-boundary seat deltas are the classic example.
- Ask for approve + one invoice. Structure without billing proof is half the story.
- Freight needs shipper confirmation, not just rated amounts. SHIPPER NOT SELECTED rows are intentional stops.
- Payment-gated deals need a paid gate invoice in the eval script, not just parsed phases.
- If you only have room for a deck, insist on a follow-up file session before procurement sign-off.