Otherwise, the winning pilot and the purchased service may describe different things.
| Contract schedule | Minimum proposed contents |
|---|---|
| Scope and acceptance | Required outputs, excluded tasks, complexity bands, acceptance-standard version and authorised approvers |
| Pricing | File starts versus accepted files, minimums, software charges, revisions, exceptions, surge rates and pass-through costs |
| Revision taxonomy | Production defect versus new evidence, changed carrier instruction, expanded scope and post-acceptance supplement |
| Service measures | Clock start and stop events, permitted pauses, tail targets, backlog reporting and exception ownership |
| Quality and evidence | Sampling rights, file-level outcomes, severity definitions, root-cause access and corrective-action deadlines |
| Change control | Notice and approval for material workflow, rule, model, subprocessor or processing-location changes |
| Continuity | Reserved versus shared capacity, overflow arrangements, prioritisation, recovery and fallback ownership |
| Exit | Usable formats, originals, versions, approval records, transition assistance, prices, retention and lawful deletion |
Avoid paying for apparent quality improvement achieved by refusing harder eligible files. Pair first-pass acceptance with assignment acceptance, coverage of the agreed scope, fallback cost and end-to-end yield.
For an internal plan, replace the supplier contract with an operating charter, funded resource commitments and enforceable agreements with its technology and service dependencies. Do not mark commercial or exit criteria “not applicable” by default.