The commonest finding is not an unfavourable term. It is a favourable one that was agreed on a call and never written down.
What we pull out
| Field | Why it earns a row |
|---|---|
| Price basis and currency | Whether the price is fixed, indexed, or open to adjustment — and on whose say-so |
| Incoterm and named place | An Incoterm without a named place is not a term. See our Incoterms guide |
| Payment schedule and triggers | What event releases each instalment, and who certifies that it happened |
| Lead time and its start date | From order, from deposit received, or from artwork approval — three very different contracts |
| MOQ, tolerance and over/under-shipment | Whether you must accept, and pay for, a quantity you did not order |
| Inspection standard and acceptance | Which standard is named, sampling plan, and what happens on failure |
| Warranty and remedy | Duration, what it covers, and whether the remedy is repair, replacement or credit |
| Liability cap and exclusions | The number, and what sits outside it |
| Tooling and mould ownership | Who owns it, who holds it, and what it costs to move it |
| IP, samples and drawings | What the supplier may do with your designs, and whether they may sub-contract |
| Force majeure and price adjustment | Whether trade-measure changes are inside or outside the clause |
| Termination | Notice, cause, and what happens to work in progress and tooling |
| Governing law and forum | What the document says, recorded as a fact — not assessed |
The second column is the point
Extraction alone is useful; the comparison is what people actually pay for. Before we start, you send us whatever record you have of the negotiation — an email thread, a term sheet, a quotation, notes from a call. We put your version beside the contract’s version, line by line, and mark each row matches, differs, or not found in the contract.
You are then having a specific conversation with your supplier — “clause 7.2 says forty-five days, your email of 3 June says thirty” — instead of a general one about trust. Specific conversations get resolved before signature. General ones get postponed until there is a problem.
What we do not do with it
We do not tell you the liability cap is too low, that you should ask for FOB instead of EXW, or that a clause would not hold up. Those are judgements about your risk and about the law, and they belong to you and to your lawyer respectively. Our table is deliberately built to be handed over: every row cites the clause number, so counsel can go straight to it. See what we don’t do for where that line sits and why we publish it.