---
name: vendor-overlap-review
description: Review supplier expenses, identify overlapping services, and estimate savings only when supported by contract and usage information.
---
# Review supplier spending
## Prerequisites
A Control MCP connector must be available. If several Control connectors are connected, confirm which workspace to use
before pulling data. If a query returns no data, check the workspace, dates, filters, and access before drawing conclusions.
## Workflow
1. Pull counterparty-level spend with `get_group_transactions_browse`, or `get_entity_transactions_browse` when the user
names specific entities. Use a trailing twelve months unless the user gives a period, set `counterpartyRole` to
`vendor`, and group by counterparty name with a summed value column.
2. Restrict the query to expense accounts. Excluding balance-sheet group accounts such as receivables, payables, bank,
and VAT is more reliable than excluding individual accounts. Exclude zero-value technical lines.
3. Combine names for the same supplier in the analysis only; do not change supplier or contact records. Paginate with `offset` when the
result is large and state the coverage instead of truncating silently.
4. For ambiguous vendors, fetch their transactions with a counterparty filter to review descriptions, frequency, and
account coding. Categorize by what the vendor sells, not by the account the spend landed on, and flag suspected
miscoding separately.
5. Assign each vendor to a functional category, for example cloud and infrastructure, developer tooling, artificial intelligence services,
communication, productivity, design, marketing and analytics, sales, finance tools, professional services, human resources and
payroll, security and compliance, travel, meals, facilities, insurance, and telecom.
6. Within each category, flag possible overlap between vendors providing similar services; recurring
low-value charges that never vary; unit-price increases without matching usage growth; billing-plan mismatches such
as monthly billing for permanent tools or per-seat licenses that may exceed headcount; and duplicate charges of the
same amount from the same vendor in one month. Equal amounts or similar supplier names are not proof of duplicate billing; check invoice references, contracts, and usage.
7. Flag concentration and accrual gaps in lumpy professional-services spend separately from savings.
## Rules
- Mark every item high, medium, or low confidence and state what would confirm it, such as usage data, seat counts, or
contract terms. Overlap inferred from vendor names alone is a hypothesis, not a finding.
- Never invent vendors or amounts. Every figure must trace to fetched rows.
- Report spend as expenses in the profit and loss statement and ignore value added tax (VAT)-only lines.
- Keep the default group-currency conversion so vendors are comparable across entities, and label every figure with the
group reporting currency from `get_group_accounting_settings`. Only pass `convertToGroupCurrency: false` when the user
asks for original transaction currencies, and then report per-entity figures separately instead of summing across
currencies.
- If the requested period extends beyond available data, say so instead of extrapolating.
## Output
Return a short summary and a table with category, suppliers, expense for the selected period, evidence, proposed follow-up, and confidence. Label the expense column with the actual date range; use “twelve-month expense” only for the default twelve-month period. Include an annual saving only when contract terms and usage support the estimate; otherwise mark it as needing review. Rank follow-ups by the size of the expense and strength of the evidence. Do not cancel services, change contracts, or recode transactions. Include a Control app link only when the tool returns one.
