Automation: what the system does for your people, and how much you let it do

SourcePro prepares some work for your people and does nothing by itself: a person always decides what happens to a draft. Settings → Automation (the company admin's) shows each piece of work on a card: what it is, what it touches, whether it uses an AI model, who settles its drafts, how often it was right, and its level.

The pieces of work

• Orders from a rate contract. When a buyer orders a request line from a rate contract, the system drafts the PO. The buyer issues it as drafted, changes it first, or cancels it.
• Reading a vendor's quotation. The system reads a vendor's file (a PDF, a photo, a spreadsheet or a Word file) into a quotation draft. The buyer confirms it as read, changes something first, or throws it away (or reads the file again).
• Reminding vendors. The system prepares the reminder to a vendor that has not answered by the time planned for it, from your own wording. It counts as having worked when the vendor then answers, and as not wanted when the buyer stops that vendor's reminders. Reminders can also go by themselves, if your company turned that on under Settings → Rules; those runs are counted with no person named.

What is counted

For each piece: Waiting (drafted, nothing done yet: never in the share), Went well (used as drafted), Changed first, and Not wanted. The page shows the share of the last settled runs that went well, for example *92% went well, of the last 50 settled runs*; until that many runs are settled it says how many more are needed. How many runs it is taken over is a rule (*Automation* under Settings → Rules; 50 by default).

Levels

Every piece starts at level 1: it drafts, a person decides. You can switch a piece off at any time (give a reason; it is kept with your name): it then prepares nothing for your people until you switch it on again. A contract is not offered to a request line, a vendor's file is not read, and no reminder is prepared. What it had already drafted stays for a person to settle, and its record is kept.

A higher level lets a piece do more without being asked. It has to be earned: enough settled runs at the level it has now, enough of them used as drafted (98% by default), every run settled by a named person, and no draft left waiting too long (14 days by default). The card shows each condition with its own numbers. A level is raised one step at a time, and only as far as SourcePro allows. Today SourcePro does not allow any piece to act without a person's tap, so there is no higher level to switch on yet. If a piece ever acts by itself and a draft is then refused or changed, it is moved one level down at once, and the card says why.

What it knows

A piece that asks an AI model lists What it knows: the written instructions it works from, each with its name, what it is for and a version. A change to an instruction is always a new version, so you can tell which instructions a reading was made under. A piece that asks no model has none: it works from fixed rules and your own wording.

How well it reads, and what it has learned

How well it reads your vendors' quotations compares, each time a buyer confirms a quotation the system read, what it drafted with what stands, figure by figure (price, the unit the rate is for, quantity, discount, GST, delivery). The share left as drafted, and each week's figures with the corrected ones in red, should rise as the system learns; a fall is the thing to look at. Under the chart, Instructions the readings were made under says which version of each instruction the readings of those weeks were made with, and from which week it changed, so a rise or a fall can be set beside a change.

What the system has learned lists habits of one vendor that your buyers kept correcting the same way where the reading had left the figure unsaid: its rates are always per 100, it always charges 18% GST. The system suggests a habit only when at least three readings (your rule) were corrected to it and it would have spoiled none that were right, and it says what it saw. It is judged on the readings made under the same instructions as the latest reading, so after a change of the instructions it is judged on new readings. Use it makes the next reading of that vendor's file start from it, and says so among the notes of the reading for the buyer to check: the quotation is still a draft that a person confirms, and what the file itself said is never changed. Stop keeps the habit on the page, marked stopped: it is never used and never suggested again. Under Rules > Automation you can switch learning off, let a habit that every correction agreed on act without waiting for you, and change how many readings it needs and how far back they count. Nothing is learned from a reading the buyer threw away, and nothing is shared with another company.

Who can see it, and what is kept

Only the company admin. Under the cards is a list of the latest runs of every piece, newest first, with what each was about, what happened to it, who settled it and when; you can narrow it to one piece. The record is only ever added to: nothing in it, and no change of a level, can be edited or removed afterwards.